Read today’s texts first: Philippians 1-4
Real joy doesn’t depend on what’s going on outside.
It’s all about what, or rather who, is on the inside!
It’s all about what, or rather who, is on the inside!
Most think joy, or at least happiness, is dependent on circumstances, like health and wealth. Immigrants arrive in droves to Canada and the US in their “pursuit of happiness,” which usually means finding financial comfort. But the arrival of the Son of God to planet earth, compared to the American dream, seemed more like a Jewish nightmare!
Chapter two chronicles what Jesus left behind to become our Saviour, giving up His palatial home in glory, His rights as God, to become not just a man but a servant, not just any servant but one obedient to death, and not just any death but the most tortuous death imaginable. With that end in sight, His inauspicious beginning makes more sense: showing up as a baby, in an insignificant town, dependent on poor parents, dressed in rags, laid in a feed trough, housed in a barn, and announced first to shepherds, who were right up there with tax collectors in reputation. Not exactly the circumstances you would expect with “good news of great joy!”
Paul had learned by following Jesus that his joy was independent of his circumstances. That is why he writes his most joy-filled letter (1:4,18,25,26,2:2,17,18,29;3:1;4:1,4) while being held as a Roman prisoner awaiting execution. Real joy doesn’t depend on what’s going on outside. It has everything to do with what’s on the inside, or rather, who’s on the inside. There’s joy because the Lord has come - to us and in us.
I’m learning that in new ways now that I’m no longer doing the things that I once thought were the source of my joy. “Lord, thank You for showing me again that there is joy in my world because the Lord has come to me!”
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