Joy

i am currently reading a book on endurance, and the current and last chapter in on william wilberforce. i didn't know to much about him when i started to read it, but now i want to know more. he was summed up to be a man permeating with joy, in all circumstances. he was in terrible health, yet he played with his children and would laugh during meetings of parliament. he was always humming a hymn or singing. this really stuck out to me. i am not the most joyful of people, some would probably call me depressed or something along those lines. i'm not really, though i do generally look like it. though i am not sure that i could ever be as joyful as william, i know that i have the ability to, so this is something that i need to work on. he was a light to those around him through his joy, for people christians as being old, stuffy people and not people showing the joy of Christ. a lot of people missed that back then, and even know, but william got it. he had it. with out it, he could have very easily gotten depressed and died earlier, for his life was not one that should have been joyful except for the work of christ moving through him. 

i often look at the stuff that needs to be fixed and changed instead of the stuff that is working and in good order. i think that is one of the main reason for my pessimistic view, but also because i don't tend to look at things as a blessing from God but that it is just how life is. like the sunrise, every morning, if she remembers, my mom will look out the window at the sky to see it change colors and such, and she almost always says, "how beautiful" or something of that rendition. i need to start to look for and at the beauty of life and not at the problems of life. i even find myself doing this with people, i look at their flaws and at the things that bug me and not at their uniqueness and the stuff that makes them special. if i can look at people and not at their mistakes, i think that can make all the difference with me and how i treat people. though it will take God to do this in me because it will be reversing 18 years of habit, not an easy thing to do