I was in a dark place at age 19. I felt like a prisoner. But one afternoon as I searched a mountain for blackberries, I paused to look around. For some reason, my heart leapt with a wild kind of joy.
I immediately corrected myself. Such an irrational wild joy was simply a figment of my imagination. It was an escapist emotion to protect me from harsh realities.
But now, decades later, I discover that there are several Bible words for joy.* One is agalloasis – a WILD JOY.
God gave it to Jesus when he anointed him “with the oil of [wild] joy” (Hebrew 1:9). And Jesus gave it to his followers, as they “ate together with [wild] joy and sincere hearts” (Acts 2:46).
And he gives it to us, for we can stand “before his glorious presence without fault and with [wild] joy” Jude 1:24.
Oh, to embrace this in our hearts…
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com
* research from https://biblehub.com/greek/20.htm