Finding joy is hard. That's not to say it's impossible – but it's hard. It’s so easy to simply sit and let your mentality slowly degrade, making finding that joy all that harder. And sometimes, even when we try our best to find joy, life hits us with a bus. And the bus is going 20 miles over the speed limit. And it's on fire.
But all that doom and gloom comes with a hopeful little message. Actually – it’s quite a big message. The biggest of messages. All of this can get swallowed up in the joy of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. It just takes a little work.
The idea of ‘reaching out for the joy’ is something that, throughout my relatively short 18 years, despite growing up in the Church, I’ve really had to grapple with and learn for myself what it truly means.
When I think of the term ‘reach out’ traditionally it often means to extend a hand, to stretch to grasp something – a quite literal way of looking at it. And this act of stretching – of truly reaching and yearning for something – takes effort. And that's the word I want to focus on: Effort.
Finding joy, especially in difficult times, takes a sizeable amount of effort. But lucky for us, as President Russell M. Nelson tells us: “The Lord loves effort.”(1) Sometimes the effort required for that step towards joy is peeling yourself from your bedsheets on a rainy Sunday morning to get to Church. Sometimes it's making a conscious effort to smile to yourself and to others throughout a particularly rough day. Sometimes it is simply thinking kind thoughts to yourself.
And a lot of the time this doesn't come easily. But making a true effort to look for that joy, to find it in places that sometimes seem so bleak that you don't even know where to go next, let alone where you'll end up, is a step in the right direction.
And I can do you one even better – we don’t have to do it alone. Our Heavenly Father is constantly, consistently, and cheerfully waiting by us to support us in every way imaginable. We are here to learn, and yes, that does require suffering, but our yolk can be shared, thanks to Him. We read in 1 Peter, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”(2)
In order to find joy through Christ and our Heavenly Father, we must come to Him with our broken heart and contrite spirit and humble ourselves before him.(3) We must soften our hearts and listen. We must change, adapt, and understand. This, friends, is what our key to finding joy in our adversity is.
All we need is a humble heart, a willingness to change, and an expectation of effort. I testify to you that these things will guide you to your Heavenly Father, to your joy, and to finally seeing just a little further through that dark mist.
This does not mean ignoring the darkness that surrounds us, but making a conscious effort to choose to focus on that light at the end of the tunnel, and then further choosing to put one shaky step in front of the other to get just a little closer to it.
We’ll still get hit by buses. That's just life. But focusing on joy in Christ helps to make sure that the bus is going the appropriate speed… and is not on fire.
1. Joy D. Jones, “An Especially Noble Calling”,Liahona, May 2020, p15
2. 1 Peter 5:6-7
3. Ether 4:15