I read the other day that pain is inevitable and joy is avoidable. It didn’t cheer me to know that pain is going to enter our lives in various ways. That to me is the most overwhelming part of life. But, what I read and re-read was the part that said “joy is avoidable.”
There is a choice to joy. We often avoid it because the pain of what we are going through is so great and we don’t think we can see anything else. And sometimes we can’t. We expect that joy will come unexpectedly like pain. That is where we are wrong. Seldom does joy just happen. We have to choose to see it, choose to enjoy it, choose to be thankful for it.
Today I pray to see joy. Every time I enter a state of overwhelm, I pray to take a moment and see the joy surrounding me however small it may seem.
