Where joy is a habit, love is a reflex

​"Where joy is a habit, love is a reflex." - Bob Goff.

This morning, Goff was talking about joy and hope and peace as habits. Which, to be honest with you, many days that is counter intuitive to the way I think, and maybe the way other people look at it.

My running - well, it's not hard for me to see that as a habit. I wake up in the morning, I know it's a day I planned to run, it's cold or rainy or I'm just plain tired and don't feel like following through with the plan, but out of habit, I do it anyways.

Too often, though, when I go to bed, I do so hoping and praying the next day will come with joy. Oh please, God, let joy come with the morning. Like joy is a spin of the wheel and far more uncontrollable than my commitment to running.

But God already answered that prayer. In Psalm 30, God says "joy comes with the morning." He doesn't say it might come, or sometimes it does, or if you sleep good it will be there. No, he says it like a promise - joy comes with the morning.

I think, sometimes, I confuse joy with happiness. Or maybe with a great mood. When I think about it, both of those things - happiness and a great mood - they seem to go along with this idea that everything in life is going my way. But do you want to know what percentage of my life sees everything going my way - how much of it meets this ideal picture of a happy life for me. It ain't much, I'll just say that.

It's not because I don't have a good life, but once we get to a point of happy in life, we begin searching for that next thing that will make us happy - put us in a good mood. No, happiness seems to be always temporary, always fleeting.

But joy, Goff seems to be saying, is more a practice of finding the good in every moment. It's a practice of recognizing the beauty in this minute and not dreaming of all the good that might come our way with the next one.

I get that. I think sometimes we think our role in life is to be happy. It's not. It's to find joy. Find it in every moment. Even the ones that might not make us happy.

I also get the link Goff is making between the practice of finding joy and loving other people. I mean, if we're always using our energy engaged in a pursuit of happiness, and, many times coming up short, how much energy do we have to love others? And, if we can't find joy in our own lives, how willing are we going to be to find something worth loving in someone else's life?

So this morning - get up - go for that run or write in that journal or eat that healthy breakfast - follow through on those good habits. And find joy. Find it around you, because it came with the morning. If you don't feel it, if you don't feel happy, it doesn't mean it's not there. It just means you're not looking in the right place.