Okay, so it is a sermon from a Baptist Minister and you will need to overlook a few things here and there. But in the main, this is right on target and wonderful for us today.
from a Sermon by Geoff Thomas
Rejoicing in the Lord does not mean we are not to rejoice only in the Lord and not in all of God's temporal mercies to us. We can trace them all back to the goodness of the Lord. We are told to rejoice in the wife of our youth, in food on the table and full refrigerators, in oil to anoint the face and wine to gladden the heart, in deliverance from dangers, toils and snares, in arriving home at a journey's end, in healthy newly born babies and in long life, in feasts and birthdays, in the victorious end of just wars, in recovery from illness, chemotherapy and operations, in a harvest safely gathered in, in examinations passed, and jobs obtained. When you have found a delightful present for a family member at the right price you rejoice. When you find something at last that you have searched for half the morning you rejoice. When you look through some old photograph albums, or slides, and see the children as they used to be, and all the joy of earlier times comes flooding back, you rejoice. We join with the world in rejoicing in those things. Rejoicing for us is gratitude to a living personal God who is the author of such blessings and ten thousand more.
