Sustaining the Joy of the Lord While Advocating for Animals

Shepherding All God's Creatures

Fixing Your Eyes On Jesus, by Elizabeth Spencer
Courtesy CreationSwap

Psalm 56:8 “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”

I don’t know about you, but the joy of the Lord can escape me with all the cruelty I see happening to animals.  It is easy to allow the thoughts and pictures in my mind of these abuses consume everything else.

But then I ask, in the face of such extreme suffering:  Since God is asking us to be joyful (for the “joy of the Lord is our strength” – Nehemiah 8:10), how can he expect us to have joy in the face of all we see?  It feels like we are not to feel pain or get angry, but to constantly be in some state of happiness or “joy”!  How can this be? …

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