On most workdays, we tend to concentrate on the things that must be done. Thus, the operative question that we ask ourselves when we first wake up in the morning is, “What do I have to do today?” On the weekends, however, that question changes. We no longer ask ourselves, “What do I have to do today?” but rather “What do I want to do today?” In effect, because we have the day off, we are suddenly free from our usual burdens. We can sleep late, we can dress casually, and if we wish, we can leave our cell phones and Palm Pilots on the dresser and completely forget about the demands of our Monday-thru-Friday schedules.

But these two questions are not simply different ways of starting the day. They are actually rival ways of spending our time. In fact, they are rival ways of living our entire lives. And to be honest, many of us feel constantly pulled back and forth between the two. Do we spend our time attending to what we “have” to do today … or do we take advantage of the tantalizing freedom of what we “want” to do? Do we satisfy our duty … or our desires?

For people of faith, however, there is yet a third way to frame the question. Not “What do I have to do?” or “What do I want to do?” but “What can I do today that would be joyful?” Now, this may seem a little Pollyannaish to some of you. After all, it’s only in Disney movies that people bound out of bed, wipe the pixie dust from their eyes, and exclaim, “What can we do today that would bring joy?”

But as a matter of fact, the question of joy is a very different question from that of obligation or pleasure. Joy is not the same thing as duty, nor is it the same as desire. On the obligation side, not every task entered in our Palm Pilot is going to be a joyful one. Frankly, some of the things we may “have” to do today, we will find boring, frustrating, and just plain difficult.

And yet, on the other hand, joy and pleasure are not exactly synonyms either. Some joyful things—like childbirth, for example—may involve more pain than pleasure, and more sacrifice than self-indulgence. So joy is not to be equated with either obligation or pleasure.

But the interesting thing is that it does have something to do with both of them. If you will, joy stands between obligation and pleasure, between duty and delight, and mediates back and forth between them. In other words, joyfulness is about being fully human. It’s about throwing back the covers on this brand-new, completely unused day, and choosing to be who we were created to be by God. It’s about taking the “have to’s” of a given day and joining them together with the “want to’s.”
Or to put it another way, the question joy asks us first thing in the morning is, “What commitments can I attend to today that will enable me and the people around me to be more fully God’s children?”