Part 1 – The Definition of Joy
The first part of a four-part series, Dr. Bill St. Cyr, Executive Director of Ambleside Schools International gives us the definition of joy: providing examples of what it is and is not, contrasting it with happiness, and establishing it as a foundation of character.
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Bringing up Joyful Children Part 1: The Definition of Joy

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We humans are destined to live in troubled times. As novelist and screenwriter William Goldman puts it in The Princess Bride, “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
Goldman echoes the words of Jesus, who made this clear to His followers, “In this world, you will have tribulation.” Trouble is the norm, not the exception, and troubled hearts always tend toward paralysis and polarization.
In troubled states, one wants desperately either to despair and quit, or to do something. But what?

Calming the Troubled Heart

Take a moment to imagine a time when someone was truly interested in you.
What would it be like for you to give this same kind of attention to your spouse, to your children, and to others?
This Christmas, consider giving the greatest gift of all: your sacred presence.

The Greatest Gift of All (Christmas 2020)

The Pilgrims defined daily living in relationship with God; He was ever before them, the primary thing for them; their unfailing constancy in need and in provision, lives sustained in Him and through Him. May we gain daily perspective through the uncertainty of our times lived in and through Him and pause for Thanksgiving.

The Primary Thing For Them

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we find three major players, each with a different orientation toward life:
The younger brother who seeks to ESCAPE and INDULGE
The older brother who seeks to PERFORM and CONTROL
The father who seeks TO KNOW and TO LOVE
A true education must promote knowing and loving, not performing or indulging.

To Know and To Love

To believe in Divine Providence is to accept that we do not always know what is best, and the world does not conform to our will but to God's.

Bringing up Joyful Children Part 1: The Definition of Joy

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