Must I Be a Cheerful Christian?

"This is the day which the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it!"

~Psalm 118:24

I wonder how much personality and temperament profiling and the "keepin' it real" movement have quieted this truth--as Christians we're called to be joyful! There are those in my life whom I can always count on to lift my spirits when I'm around them. My pastor's wife is one of them. Week in. Week out. No matter what is going on, she has a smile to give. It's not that she doesn't have heartaches or worries, she just chooses to be joyful in spite of them.

I also have those in my life who live in the negative. It's draining to rarely see them smile, or to always hear something depressing. Misery does love company, and I find myself wanting to pull away because the constant stream of bleakness leaves me wondering what more there is to say. "But God..." often isn't enough for those who choose to live looking at the glass as always half empty.

I fall into the trap, too, especially at home. I'll find myself sighing. And then I hear the children sighing. I start to murmur. And then I hear several copycats in the next room. The great Puritan, Stephen Charnock, would call this practical atheism, and so would my pastor.

"Men's practices are the best indexes of their principles: the current of a man's life is the counterpart of the frame of his heart."
~Charnock

So, I remind myself, even as I remind our children, that we often have to choose to be joyful, even when we want to complain. Or sigh. Or walk around talking about how bad everything is. It's good to consider how our own attitudes affect those around us, and to remember that Christians are called to be a joyful people.

"A Christian should and must be a cheerful person. If he isn't, the devil is tempting him. I have sometimes been grievously tempted while bathing in my garden, and then I have sung the hymn 'Let us now praise Christ.' Otherwise I would have been lost then and there. Accordingly, when you notice that you have some such thoughts say, 'This isn't Christ.'...Christ knows that our hearts are troubled, and it is for this reason that he says and commands, 'Let not your heart be troubled.'"
~Martin Luther

With love,
Trisha