Editorial January 9, 2017 Issue

The joy set before us

Kim Crooks Korinek

“Oh, be joyful!”

That was the first thing the Christian Science practitioner said when I called her as a young girl, asking for prayerful help in healing a painful condition. And the healing came quickly, as did the surprising realization that God loves me with consistency and joy. As I grew into adulthood, there were numerous times when I got to see how joy, brought on by understanding there can never be a separation from God, broke through the mesmerism of doubt, anxiety, and fear, and replaced it with a calm and confident assurance of God’s consistent love—and how this brought healing.

Trials and self-denials are a part of the human condition. And yet, in times of unrest, we can still expect to feel a Christlike joy. We need never despair. Joy can appear even in the most daunting of circumstances, and with that joy comes triumph. Trials can go deep and shake up the status quo. Trials can expose political and personal division and derision, but they can also bring us to something so fundamentally spiritual, bringing us to our knees in ways both humbling and hopeful, that we see things with new eyes. Trials can teach us the irreversible nature of joy that comes from understanding our equally irreversible oneness with God, which always triumphs. This is the joy set before us.

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Bible Lens—January 9–15, 2017