2. YOUR MOST ATTRACTIVE QUALITY

Come, share your master’s joy.

Joy is surprisingly scarce these days. Technology makes you ever busier, and the frenzy around you increases. Joy is often the first thing to get squeezed out of your life. That’s because joy finds it difficult to grow where stress is abundant. Stress chokes off joy like weeds choke off the growth of plants in your garden.

Even worse, pessimism and negativism kill joy. Scientists have even proved that your joy can be extinguished by negative people. Researchers studied the habits and lives of unhealthy families. Discovery: Negative fathers and husbands breed negative wives. Moreover, negative parents breed negative children. In other words, negativism is contagious—so contagious that your children can be swept up in its tidal wave if you are not careful.

How many miserable people have you known? Did you notice how negative people always found and surrounded themselves with other negative people? Did you notice how, when forced to interact with joyful people, the negative people tried to persuade and discourage the more positive people around them? Negativism breeds negativism. It is not difficult to find people to tell you why things won’t work out like you hope and plan. It is easy to find people to rain on your parade. Most negative people are more than willing to share their dark thoughts and worries with you. In fact, they often can’t wait for the opportunity.

These same researchers also discovered that while negativism is highly contagious, joy is not so contagious. Joyful husbands do not necessarily help foster joyful wives. Nor do joyful parents always produce joyful children. Joy is not passed on as easily as negativism. Joy must be cultivated. Joy requires effort. Joy can be hard work.

However, the apostle Paul reminds us that joy is at the center of the Christian’s life. We are Easter people. Christ has defeated death. God has vanquished Satan. Easter has conquered Good Friday. That means we are people of joy. That is how Saint Paul, writing from a Roman prison, a difficult circumstance that would cause most people to lose hope, writes to the Christians in the church at Philippi, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again:rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4). Roman prisons were dark, dank places of death. Most prisoners died there. Yet, Paul found joy in his imprisonment.

In fact, in a letter from prison to the Philippians, rather than writing of his sufferings and worries, Paul mentions his “joy in Christ” more than twelve times in just four chapters. That is worth hearing: Even in the most difficult times in your life, you can rely upon the deep, abiding joy that comes from Jesus Christ. The wor