JOY is not superficial effervescence. To be real, joy must have a sure foundation. A glad appearance is a vast improvement over a gloomy one, and we shall seek to present it irrespective of our conscious sense of gaiety at the moment, if we respect and obey the Golden Rule. But real joy is spiritual. It glows with praise to God.
Indeed, to be genuine, joy must derive from trust in God. Anyone can be gay and sing, perhaps, when all, humanly speaking, is going well. But to sing under difficulties shows courage. And courage of the highest order is a trust in God so deep, so absolute, and so unshakable that it must express itself in joy.
No one is really trusting God unless he is joyous. When we know God to be good and All-in-all, as Christian Science teaches, we understand that good is the only possible reality. As we recognize that good is all there is to have, all there is to have had, all there is to experience, all there is to expect, we are trusting in what we know of God, and we must, therefore, feel the joy of that assurance. If we are not expressing joy, we are believing in something besides God, believing that there is something to interfere with, cloud, or frustrate God's goodness and His plan for His creation. Awareness of and consequent trust in the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of God make joy inevitable. Joy is the indicator of trust, the harbinger of harmony.
