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Joy - The Most Important Treasure to be Protected

I discovered that once I lost my job, my apartment, my boyfriend, my car and eventually my sanity, that things could only go up from here.  I felt like I lost everything, everything that I valued.  My life was a snapshot of a rampaged home where robbers had come in, torn everything apart, and had taken everything they could find.  I didn't know where to start to pick up the pieces.  But it could get worse.  The unemployment I was depending on to pay my rent fell through on some technicality.  And my landlord decided this is the month she wants to get rigid.  What now?

I recited 2 Corinthians 4:7-9, "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.  We are pressed on every side, but not constricted, unable to find a way out but not utterly without a way out; persecuted but  not abandoned; cast down but not destroyed." And then I realized what the robbers were looking for, the most valuable treasure - my light, my joy. 

The enemy of our soul doesn't care about cars, money or possessions of any kind. In fact, we live in a world where all the glitz and glam are his to bestow.  So, why come into my life, my relationship, my home and begin taking and ravaging through my things?  The enemy is trying to steal my joy.  He doesn't know how to get to it so he figures I will take this of value and that of importance, this of significance and that of comfort.  He's a gambler trying to hit the right combination. 

As I grabbed my broom to clean up the mess he made I began singing songs of praise, songs of joy.  I made sure he didn't find what he was looking for.  I think of the enemy now as that rabbit on the Trix cereal commercials, always trying to get a bowl of the children's cereal.  His countless ploys and schemes, though well thought out, always leave him empty-handed.  As children of the Most High God, joy is for us and us alone - it is our treasure, our gift.   So, next time you'll know when your world is being turned upside down and frustrations mount, give God the praise anyway and say, 'Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.'

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