1 - 4 - 18 Chase Joy (4 minutes)


“Jesus turned … and said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’”
What am I looking for, what are we looking for?
Why are we pursuing this whole thing, what’s the question in our lives that needs answering, why do we have this perception that this God thing might be a unique part of our lives? And indeed, maybe not even part of our lives, but the essential part, the core?
The only practical answer that came to mind for me was that I desire some form of durable happiness. I want something that will let me feel good even on days the circumstances dictate that I should feel otherwise.
I guess that’s not really happiness though. I’ve come to form my own definitions of joy and happiness that are helpful in my thinking.
This durable happiness is what I would consider joy. It’s not terribly dependent on outward conditions, it’s more of a state of mind. It is something that is accepting, unreserving, and powerful, powerful enough to conquer the most inhospitable environments we may encounter ourselves in.
That would leave happiness as the more transient feeling, something that is, indeed, merely a feeling. Getting what you want generates happiness. Treats, the indulging of temptations, and winning all generate happiness. Happiness occurs when the external world is aligned to our perception of what it should be. Well at least that’s the more noble way of saying it. Happiness occurs when the external world satisfies our desires.
This quality immediately shows how fragile happiness is. If we are pursuing happiness rather than joy we’d need to control the entirety of the world to be happy.
Joy is not dependent in this way. Joy does not depend on the conditions we face. When does joy occur?
That is an all-together harder question to answer than the occurrence of happiness as our own experiences of joy are far more fleeting and less frequent than our experiences of happiness. At least if we are not terribly spiritually developed and have a comfortable standard of living.
To find joy we must find something that satisfies us in a way that is independent of our physical situation. So then the thing we are satisfying must not be a physical desire. This immediately shows how different joy must be from happiness as much of our happiness is derived from the satisfaction of physical desires.
Not that much of our happiness is derived from the physical sensations we experience. I think that we actually extract considerably less pleasure out of our eating and resting and walking than God intended. What I mean is that the roots of this happiness are physically manifest. It may be our sense of importance being fed by a recent promotion or recognition. Or our pride by an affirmation. In any case, there’s a real, traceable event within our life that an outside observer could see.
So, developing the definitions I’ve proposed, I’m not sure that we could derive happiness from prayer. Surely it is one of the more consistent sources of joy in our lives, and we may experience happiness through the people we pray with or our method of prayer, but I think the actual conversation with God must be a dealing in joy.
Because, so far as I can tell, God does not bother giving us what is weak, what fades, what does not truly satisfy.
Joy is that pleasure that is nearly sweeter in the recollection than in the present. It is something we can enjoy and then look back upon fondly, being glad of the fact that we enjoyed that thing.
I think many of the things that bring me mere happiness seem silly or worse in retrospect. I may see that things like seeing a film were necessary for my psyche, to unwind. But it’s not something I can really hang my hat on. Whereas when I look back on a musical performance, especially a ministerial one, I can feel good about having done it. In fact I might even decide that I would have done it had it not been pleasurable in the moment.
Which is an interesting distinction. There are certain things that both make us feel good in the moment (happiness or joy) that we can also look back upon favorably, a trait of joy. Some things we are so glad we did, we may have done them without the initial pleasure because they did something beneficial inside of us, changed us for the better.
Chase joy, not happiness.

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