Joy or Happiness: Which Is Better?

What do you think about the following quotes concerning happiness?

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.”
Gustave Flaubert - French Novelist

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
Mark Twain

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
Ernest Hemmingway

“Happiness is a warm puppy.”
Charles Schulz

“Happiness is a warm gun.”
The Beatles

“Happiness depends on ourselves.”
Aristotle

Most people will choose happiness over joy because joy has a religious connotation which usually means some kind of good experience based on something to do with God rather than having fun. And to be honest, human beings would rather have fun than have God.
Glancing at the quotes above, however, shows that not only is there a great deal of confusion over a definition of happiness, but some thinkers aren’t even sure it is a possibility!
This Sunday marks the beginning of the third week of Advent – the week of joy. In Paul’s New Testament letter to a group of Christians in the Greek city of Philippi he talks about joy at length. What we discover from his letter is that joy centered on the Christ of Christmas beats human based happiness hands down.
Have you been chasing happiness only to come up empty handed? Maybe what you really need is joy – the joy of Christmas. Join us this Saturday evening (6:00 pm) or Sunday morning (10:00 am) for our weekend worship. You may just find what you’ve been looking for.