Sorrow or Joy - what is our choice?

WORD 2day: Thursday, 6th week before Ascension Sunday

May 18, 2023: Acts 18: 1-8; John 16: 16-20

What would be your choice, your natural spontaneous choice: sorrow or joy? Of course, we would choose joy or that is what we think we would do. But today, there is so much sorrow in the world because we think we choose joy, while in fact we are constantly adding to our sorrows. Is that confusing? Not really. It is an easy perspective that the Word offers today to understand our situation. Let us contrast these as the 'perspective of the world' and the 'perspective of the Word'.

The perspective of the world says, with a faulty understanding of the phrase 'here and now', choose what gives you utmost happiness at any given moment and that will add to your joy. This is why people end up frustrated, ruined and wrecked in their life, making all the wrong choices possible, adding to their own woes and to the others'. The disciples could not understand what Jesus was telling them, because they only had a limited perspective of the here and now, until the Spirit arrived to open the eyes and their hearts.

The perspective of the Word says, have the ultimate Joy, the Joy that the Lord alone can give, in your mind. You would then be ready to choose at a given moment even a bit of pain and struggle, because you know you have a joy, a glory, an eternal happiness that awaits you! Look at Paul, Aquila, Priscilla, Titus Justus... they were wantonly choosing trouble and opposition, because they had their ultimate joy in perspective. Paul said that emphatically: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us (Rom 8:18).

Now let us consider that question again- what is our choice: sorrow or joy?