A Joyful Year
My word of the year this year is Joyful
This year my Word or Theme of the year is Joyful.
First, let’s define this term:
In the online dictionary:
Joyful - adjective; feeling, expressing, or causing great pleasure and happiness
1. full of joy, as a person or one's heart; glad; delighted.
2. showing or expressing joy, as looks, actions, or speech
The base word is obviously joy, which is a noun and is defined as a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.
So often though we think of joy as happiness, but as you can see from the first definition happiness is a feeling that comes from being joyful. So what is the difference between happiness and joy?
“Joy is an inner feeling. Happiness is an outward expression. Joy endures hardship and trials and connects with meaning and purpose. A person pursues happiness but chooses joy.”
Something I stumbled on as I was looking up definitions was that the verb form of joy is rejoice!
Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, rejoice! - Phil 4:4
For my word, I usually like to take a scripture that defines how I want to think about this word throughout the year. Romans 12:12 does this perfectly:
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
As I said in my wrap-up for last year’s theme, I do love me a good word study in the Bible. What does that mean?
When I first started doing word studies, I would just flip to the glossary in the back of my Bible, find the word I was curious about, and go through and look up all the other verses it also listed as having that word. And that works as a great easy beginner level. This gives you a broader idea of how a word is used in the scriptures and can deepen that word’s meaning for you.
But a really good in-depth word study gets into the original languages that the Bible was written in. And no you don’t have to know those languages, but having some solid tools at your disposal is essential. A Strong’s Concordance is a good start. Personally, I love using the Blue Letter Bible. But you choose what will work best for you. If your word appears in the New Testament then it will be in Greek. If it’s from the Old Testament it will be in Hebrew. I could go on and on about the whys a wherefors of how those two languages are the original languages of God’s word, but I know we are busy people here and I’m just trying to give you a flying overview of how to do a word study. ;)
For my word Joyful (or Rejoice) the transliteration of the Greek word used in this scripture is ‘chairō’.
Blue Letter BIble defines it as:
to rejoice, be glad
to rejoice exceedingly
to be well, thrive
in salutations, hail!
at the beginning of letters: to give one greeting, salute
Transliteration: to represent or spell in the characters of another alphabet.
In the Old testament the Hebrew word is gil (pronounced gheel) and the definition from Blue Letter Bible there is:
properly, to spin round (under the influence of any violent emotion),
i.e. usually rejoice, or (as cringing) fear:
—be glad, joy, be joyful, rejoice.
Don’t you love that idea of spinning around in a joyful kind of way?!
The art page I made has that spinning motion going on, but in the rain. I wanted to show how joy is a choice, not based on circumstances, but by an inner strength.
How will I be joyful this year?
How will I be joyful in my marriage?
How will I be joyful in my parenting?
How will I be joyful in my art?
Can I make my reading more joyful?
All great questions to ask myself this coming year.
Do you do a theme or word of the year? If so, what?