Shared Joy

Christians know an awful lot about what joy is not—how it's not the same as happiness or it's not circumstantial or it can't be temporary—but what can we say joy actually is? Drawing on emerging insights from neurobiology, perhaps we can say that joy is a communal experience, something that emerges when we're glad to be together. If that's true, then the fact that God is always near to us and always glad to be with us can transform our experience of togetherness, allowing us to rejoice in the Lord always.