By intensity? By frequency? By duration? By its cause? By its intentionality or spontaneity?

Perhaps these are all good qualities to consider. If you feel like you’re lacking joy, weighing these kinds of questions might pinpoint some barrier to joy. Or maybe even point out some joy that has been running deep in your heart like a subterranean stream, quiet and subtle and as of yet unnoticed.

It’s hard to hold anything together over the long haul. If for no other reason than it’s our human tendency to break up. To divide. To disagree. To rub each other the wrong way. To find it easier to go our own way.

And on the whole, this isn’t just because humans are rotten, but because life is challenging. Life is hard. Adversity comes. Seemingly insurmountable challenges come. We end up facing things we have no idea how to face. There are questions posed to us to which there are no simple answers.

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.”

“I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin.”

“You will weep and mourn while the world rejoices.”

“The time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.”

“In this world you will have trouble.”

A lot of his more difficult sayings tend to be pretty dark. At worst depressing; at best mysterious. But then there’s this, at the beginning of the longest prayer of his that we have recorded, a prayer for his disciples: “And glory has come to me through them.”

Not a taker. More generous than exacting. More keen on blessing than extracting. More into surprising than expecting. More interested in what he can contribute than what he demand.

It can be easy to unwittingly accept an image of God as the Great Demander. The Domineering Father. The Exacting Boss The By-the-Book Judge. Always with a keen eye to whether or not we’re paying our dues or living up to his standards.

And doing the work in front of you that day is all that God really asks of you. Just attending to and finishing to the best of your ability whatever the work is he has given you to do. Maybe simply living your life to the best of your ability brings all the glory to God that he desires from you.

Brew the coffee. Make the bed. Pack the kids’ lunches. Get them to school. Show up to the office. Respond to the emails. Pay the bills. Prep the meals. Take your meds. Get back to bed at a decent hour.

All the normal, uneventful, innocuous tasks that come with being human. Nothing fancy. Nothing extravagant. Nothing with the potential of going viral on social media.

According to Jesus at least, doesn’t simply mean living forever, on into eternity. Nor does it simply mean existing in a blissful, pain-free state. Those may very well be true. I suspect that they are.

For the record, by “eternal life” Jesus also does not mean going on to live in some sort of disembodied, floating-in-the-ether, angel-like state. No. There is something about embodied existence that is good and that will forever be a part of “eternal life.”

For the voice of God is this: peace.

Whether it’s a though popping into your own head, or a feeling stirring in your own heart, or a word from a trusted spiritual friend, or a supposed prophecy from a stranger—or a more abnormal source like a talking donkey—wherever or through whomever your receive a possible communication from the Divine, begin by asking one simple questions: Does this bring me peace?

Not fear, or anxiety, or anger, or contempt, or judgment, or hopelessness—not anything like that. Only peace. That almost nonsensical, beyond-understanding, doesn’t-make-sense-given-the-circumstances-kind of peace. Everything on the outside may remain the same, but deep down there is equanimity. Calm waters.

Is what helps you believe.

Most likely it is not the same thing that will make someone else believe. Share your story, but don’t be discouraged if your listener doesn’t find it particularly compelling. It’s still your story; it’s still the genesis of your belief. Rejoice in the seemingly inconsequential or unconvincing thing that helps them believe.

If God truly is as vast and incomprehensible as any honest definition of “God” implies, then reasons to believe must necessarily be as numerous as there are people to believe. No one-size-fits-all. No clincher of an argument. No silver bullet.

And where he came to, and where he then went after that—and where he is ultimately going to call his forever home—those are central plot movements in the Christian story.

He came from the Father’s presence—”heaven” we often say. God’s reality. God’s dimension. God’s kingdom where his good rule and reign are perfectly realized.

He came to the world. He entered into what we know as reality. Our physicality. Our time and space. All the beauty and joy and pain and suffering that make up our human lives. He stepped right into the thick of it and made himself at home—at least temporarily.

A huge problem with attempting to read the Bible literally is that there is so much damn metaphor.

Metaphors by design are problematic. Metaphors are by design unstable, wobbly words that can be interpreted (or, I suppose, misinterpreted) any number of ways. In an attempt to communicate something that cannot, or is best not, described directly or in precise terms, they can be as confusing as they are helpful.

There is hardly a page of the Bible that does not contain metaphor. Which, I can’t help but believe, is by necessity when talking about the Divine.