Joy
Charles Swindoll inspired me when I read the following. See if you will be inspired too.
I know no greater need today than the need for encouragement and joy. Just look around-ours is a world of bad news and sad faces. Our stooped shoulders and deep frowns convey the heaviness of our hearts. If music and films are the pulse of society, then little more needs to be said. Our plays and movies and television dramas depict despairing messages and themes. Watch any late-evening newscast. Read tomorrow morning’s newspaper. Pick up the majority of best-selling novels. Listen to a radio talk show. Believe me, for every positive, joyful sound you hear there will be dozens of depressing and discouraging messages coming through loud and clear.
The longer I live the more convinced I become that the most magnetic quality of the Christian is not faith or mercy or courage or loyalty or even love, but joy. Those other qualities are often seen more clearly after we’ve gotten to know another person, but joy is the contagious magnet that draws people to one another. Joy takes the grind out of life. It is the oil of the machinery of life. Joy is the main quality that keeps the missionary on the field. The missionary without a sense of humor is the one who must come back often for furlough. There is nothing like a superlative sense of humor to get you through the day-to add joy and various dimensions of happiness to life. A joyful person is a balm of healing to hurting hearts. This is an important message for those Christians who sometimes seem to look and act more like basset hounds on the way to the pound than heaven-bound saints on their way to glory.