The Gospel of Joy

It is interesting that the word “happy” can be augmented to say “unhappy”, but “joy” cannot be changed from, “joy” to “unjoy” and be linguistically correct. I believe that there is both a divine and biblical reason why this is true. Take your pick. Joy is an attribute that is given to us by God. It is listed as one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in Galatians 5:22&23.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

Happiness is conspicuously absent from that list.

Happiness is dependent on temporal things. The other day I went to get my car out of the shop. Let me pause and say, “God bless that old car.” When I looked at the bill I became temporarily unhappy; but when I got in the car and cranked it up…