Choose Joy

Ever been just really ticked off for no good reason?  It happened to me earlier this week...

I went through the drive-thru of McDonalds on my way to work.  Like I always do, I ordered a breakfast sandwich and a large soda (yep, I drink soda for breakfast...I'm that addicted).  As I was pulling away from the window, I opened my bag to get the straw for my drink...AND IT WASN'T THERE!  They'd given me a drink without a straw!  At that moment, for no good reason (I mean, it's a straw...), a rage came over me.  AAAARGH!  Now I have to park my ^@#%^%# CAR and walk into the @^#%^$# RESTAURANT to get a @^#%6@ STRAW!

I slammed the car into the nearest parking space, shut off the engine, and stalked into the restaurant.  Anyone who saw me would know that I wasn't happy just by looking at my face, contorted into a grimacing frown.  I snatched a straw out of the stack and stalked back out of the restaurant.

On the way back to the car, my heart rate started to settle, and I started to think.  "What in the world am I doing?  Why am I so upset about a straw?"  I thought about how much energy I had just expended by being so angry for no justifiable reason.  World hunger?  Sure, I could be angry about that.  The bombings at the Boston Marathon?  Absolutely, I could be angry about that.  How Obama's running of the economy is mortgaging my kids' future?  I won't even go into that...but a straw?

So my next thought was, "I'm gonna choose to be happy."  The more I thought about that statement though, it didn't ring true for me.  I can't choose to be happy all the time.  Happiness is an emotion, and emotions come and go.  If my wife needs sinus surgery, I don't have to be happy about it.  I my father-in-law has a heart attack and needs bypass surgery, I don't need to be happy about that either.  But JOY, that I can choose to have no matter what.  So my statement for that day became "I CHOOSE JOY!"

Joy isn't an emotion that comes and goes.  It's a confidence that no matter what happens, I know that my God is bigger than that situation.  It's a belief that everything that I face here on earth - the good, the bad, and the ugly - is temporary, and that something even greater than the best thing I could experience here on earth is waiting for me in heaven.

That's why James 1:2 says "Consider it pure JOY, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds."  Even the things that make me unhappy in the short term, I can see God's hand involved, working things out for the eternal benefit of the most people possible.  Even when they don't give me a straw.


P.S.  After this whole episode, during my drive into the office, I dug deeper into my bag and found that they HAD given me a straw........