Quotes about Joy

We may be abominations, but we are still God's pride and joy. All of us in the church need "grace-healed eyes" to see the potential in others for the same grace that God has so lavishly bestowed on us.

Everywhere a greater joy is preceded by a greater suffering

My anger about pain has melted mostly for one reason: I have come to know God. He has given me joy and love and happiness and goodness. They have come in unexpected flashes, in the midst of my confused, imperfect world, but they have been enough to convince me that my God is worthy of trust. Knowing him is worth all enduring.

Somehow we need to reclaim the "goodnewsness" of the gospel

At the end of her story she said simply, "As I look back, this is what matters. I have loved and been loved, and all the rest is just background music.

Fulfillment comes not in pursuit of happiness, but rather in pursuit of service.

Where did our sense of beauty and pleasure come from? That seems to me a huge question—the philosophical equivalent, for atheists, to the problem of pain for Christians. The Teacher's answer is clear: A good and loving God naturally would want his creatures to experience delight, joy, and personal fulfillment. G. K. Chesterton credits pleasure, or eternity in his heart, as the signpost that eventually directed him to God:

Where did Christians get the reputation as life-squelchers instead of life-enhancers? Jesus himself promised, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. What keeps us from realizing that abundant life?

Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.

One of the gifts that comes with age is an appreciation for some of the more simple, more commonplace things that seem mundane earlier in one's life. As the years pass, the hidden treasure to be found in humble and unpretentious virtues becomes more accentuated—things like rest, silence, and the joy of an ordinary day. The attraction toward activity and achievement lessens, becoming slowly, steadily, and appropriately replaced by an interest in more internal matters.

That in the midst of heartache so deep it was a physical pain, she was finding a deeper joy and contentment in life than she'd ever known.

One cannot be a good person without gratitude, and one cannot be a happy person without gratitude. This provides a vital link between goodness and happiness.