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Practicing Joy doesn’t mean necessarily feeling really happy all the time, in fact you can practice joy and feel pretty sad. Feeling joy is like an outside thing, you FEEL JOY when something that happens.
Practicing joy is a deeper, inside thing and is there whether you are happy or sad. You practice joy when even on a terrible, horrible, awful day you still KNOW that God created everything for good, including you and that God loves you and wants only what’s best for you and that this terrible, horrible awful day will pass.
Practicing joy is what happens on a day in the autumn, early in the morning, and the sun catches the dew covering a perfect spider web and you take a minute to just be amazed.
Practicing joy is what happens when your very good friend gets a kitten that they have really, really wanted and you are so happy for them that your heart is so full it hurts.
Practicing Joy isn’t hard, but you do have to think about it, you have to practice.
-Carolyn Hayes
Director of Children & Young Family Ministries
© 2022 Gaithersburg presbyterian church
