The conversion is earthly resources—not just money, but your time, your talent, your prayers, whatever you can give—converting that to joy. The investment benefits you and its recipients, and the yield compounds into eternity. Don’t you want that?
Tag: Philippians
When people talk about joy, it’s easy to think of it as a passive experience. There will certainly be moments when joy overwhelms you. Those moments are sweet gifts, but they’re just moments. The Christian call to joy isn’t a call to chase more and more of those unique moments. It isn’t even a call to put yourself in a position where you might get swept up in that current. It is a call to create the current, to actively cultivate joy in your own heart and mind.
If to live is your family, then at death you will lose them. If to live is your career, then at death you will be separated from it. If to live is to obsess about your appearance, then at death you will lose it all and the worms will be sure of it. If to live is influence, then death will bring loss. But if to live is Christ, then death will bring gain. Why? Because at death you will gain an eternal measure of that which you have most longed for: that is, Christ himself.
