Why Are We Sad?

In looking at the lesson this week about Paul and his Joy serving Christ
in the midst of jail and persecution I am struck by the question:

Why was Paul so joyful?

and then:

Why are we so sad?
Why is humanity so sad?
Why are Christians sad?
Why am I sad?

Well, I'm not always sad i guess - but i don't often feel happy and joyful, unless I am in the midst of all my friends. But Paul wasn't in contact with his friends all the time and he was being beaten and starved for his faith. Here I am nearly 2,000 years later and i have all this "stuff," all these "things" - but do these really make me happy, do these make me joyful?

There is something very vital about having relationships with people, about connecting with others. People who do not connect with people, those who have no one to open up too not only usually are depressed and lonely but also mostly they have no accountability in their faith, no friends, no mentors, maybe no mentees. I guess sometimes i feel like i am in the middle, somewhere between happy and depressed, some kind of calm middle - stoic ground. I am not really an emotional person, but i will show my different moods and emotions when i feel i want or need too - other than that I am just kinda there, just kinda going along and doing whatever it is I'm doing.

but there has to be something different between being stoic and having this joy that Paul had, and that i believe Jesus had as well. I think it is because Paul and Jesus opened themselves up fully to those around them. They both shed everything that no longer matted, they were no longer attached to certain things and objects but knew that the person and their relationship with God, with the church, and with others were the only vital things in life.

Why was Paul full of Joy?
Why does humanity not have this joy?
Why are Christians not joyful?
Why am I not joyful?

These are all good questions... I think a lot of it has to do with sometimes envying others, maybe sometimes feeling like an outcast because i am big or because i am single or because i just got my drivers license or because i have never had a girlfriend or because part of me wants to follow God in whatever he desires, yet i desire at the same time to follow myself and what i want.

Where is Joy????

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! - Romans 7:14-25a

- Daniel