Happiness is based on circumstances, joy is based on biblical truth.  In 1943 Nazi Germany, at the time  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the quote below, he was under severe persecution from the Third Reich for courageously standing against Hitler.

Bonhoeffer’s classic, The Cost of Discipleship, is well-worn on my bookshelf. Bonhoeffer’s devotion to Christ cost him his life. Two and a half years after this quote was penned, Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler’s Secret Service  He was 39. Be encouraged:

“The joy of God goes through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable. It does not deny the anguish, when it is there, but finds God in the midst of it, in fact precisely there; it does not deny grave sin but finds forgiveness precisely in this way; it looks death straight in the eye but finds life precisely within it.”  Dietrich Bonheoffer (Christmas, 1942)

Joy to the world, Nick