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My husband came in from outdoors and said, “You wouldn’t believe all the lightning bugs in our front and back yard. There are hundreds of them.”

His words took me back to my childhood, chasing lightning bugs in the dark of the night. We can all remember when we thought we had one, opened our hand, and saw nothing but disappointment. If we did catch one in the air, we usually smashed it in our hand, and the twinkling light was either minimized or diminished.

Sometimes, joy can be elusive too. We get up in the morning with joy, but then life happens. When we think we have joy, it disappears as quickly as the lightning bug’s twinkle.

James says we should be joyful when we face trials because the testing of our faith will produce patience. But what does it mean to count it all joy? We should evaluate how we look at trials and consider them from God’s perspective. Trials are painful, but they exist for a purpose: to produce something good in us. And this is a reason for joy.

In 2015, doctors diagnosed our forty-six-year-old son with heart cancer and gave him five months to live. Two months later, they diagnosed my husband with colon cancer. As I look back on that extremely difficult and dark time, I remember so much joy and laughter in our home. It spilled out all over us and on everyone we met.

Joy is a gift from God and a fruit of the Spirit and cannot be taken away from God’s children, no matter what we’re going through. When we passed through our devastating trial, we had to choose to wallow, whine, and complain or grab God’s joy and choose it every day. By God’s grace, we chose joy.

Joy has the opportunity to shine the brightest through God’s kids in the dark of the night during seasons of hardship. Think about what trial you are facing that is threatening to cover up the twinkling light of your joy. Reach out and grab your gift of joy from Jesus. He’s where your twinkling light is.