Joy and hope are an inseparable package. I have never been hopeful and depressed or joyful and hopeless. Have you? How do we acquire such a valuable, positive package? Unlike happiness and comfort that are products of our environment, joy and hope cannot be pursued or attained by our efforts; they are attitudes we must choose to have.
When we receive the gift of salvation through God’s mercy and grace, the Holy Spirit comes into our heart with God’s love. He also brings with Him the bonus package of joy and hope. As with all presents, we must accept it, open it and then put it to good use. Did you receive a gift this Christmas and leave it unwrapped? Did you unwrap a gift to find a nice warm sweater or coat and then put it away in the closet or drawer without wearing it on these cold winter days? Of course you didn’t! Why then would we receive salvation and God’s love, but not open and put to use the joy and hope that God so graciously makes available to us? Even when you receive a gift you don’t like or can’t use, do you reject it and return it to the giver? Not if you care about their feelings! So why would we reject such a wonderful package of joy and hope from God; preferring our own attitudes of doom and gloom?
Once we choose joy and hope as our daily attitude, we see our life and our situation from a very different perspective. There is a message circulating on social media this difficult year. “This year, instead of getting what we want; maybe it is a year to be thankful for what we have.” That is an attitude of joy in spite of what is going on around us and it reminds us of our hope for a brighter tomorrow. I have experienced joy during the worst storms of my life and have never lost sight of the glimmering light of hope on the other side of the storm.
As Paul so aptly put it in his letter to the church in Rome, “I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13) If you haven’t already done so, I pray that as you read this you will choose to make your attitude one of joy and hope. It is that attitude, along with love, that makes the Christian life shine brightly in a world of darkness.