Joy comes now, not "when..."

I finally got a new job.

I had been working the same one for years, and I really thought that everything in my life would change once my job description did. I thought for sure that more friends, more opportunities, and more money waited at the end of my next submitted application.

It didn't.

The long and short of it? The grass isn't greener on the other side. I started the new job, and found that the long and somewhat brutal hours were incredibly taxing. The pay is meh and the days are long and sometimes full of rude, smelly, or belligerent customers.

In other news, I've been talking to someone. ("talking").

I have waited for so long to be here, in this exciting, on-the-edge-of-all-things-new point of my life. And yet here I am, and after a time, the job feels like more than I signed up for, and pre-relationship blues nag at my mind.

Why isn't it enough? I thought it would be enough!

It can't be enough.

These things never promised to satisfy, and if they did, they lied. These things don't satisfy because they aren't designed to. Our hearts and our souls were created to be satisfied by something, Someone, so much more.

Our souls crave eternity. At some point, for most people, you look in the mirror and ask yourself, "what the heck am I doing?" The job sucks, the house isn't right, the friends abandoned you, the kids left home, and your marriage is falling through the cracks.

We can't truly enjoy any of these things until we learn that our Joy comes first from Christ.

Paul says in Philippians 4:11,  "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances..."

When Christ is our source of joy, in addition to the fact that we are able to love the people and enjoy them more, we no longer view these other blessings in our lives as things we deserve, but rather as gifts He has chosen to give us.

Oh friends, we don't deserve any of this.

The new job, the new relationship, the new house, the new baby. It doesn't matter how long or hard you have prayed, in light of eternity, we don't deserve them.

But we get them. So make Jesus your first JOY, so that when you get these things, you can truly enjoy them.

Otherwise, we have put our stock in joy in the gift rather than the Giver.

I love the end of the quote "the grass is greener where you water it."

Find joy where you are, no matter where you are, and then we may count it all as pure joy! (See James 1:2)