Here’s a fairy godmother question for you: if someone waved a magic wand over you and granted you an opportunity to temporarily have any job you wished, what would you pick? I’m guessing it’s not flipping burgers. What dream job would you want to do for a day, a week, a project? My answer to that question is easy and immediate: I would be a voice actor for Pixar. I don’t really know if I’d be any good. But it sounds like tremendous fun.

Ever since the release of the first Toy Story film in 1995, I’ve been a huge Pixar fan. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched The Incredibles. I still choke up every time I watch the opening montage in Up. And as someone who teaches in the area of psychology and family relationships, one of my favorite films is Inside Out.

If you haven’t seen it, I’ll try not to spoil it for you. The story centers on an 11-year-old girl named Riley, who is forced to move with her parents from her comfortable, familiar Midwestern life to San Francisco. She feels uprooted and lonely. But sees how her parents are struggling with the move too, so she stuffs her feelings, trying to be helpful. The movie shows us her internal world, the tangled relationships between the emotions of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust, each personified as a living character.

Joy (Amy Poehler) is perennially perky and optimistic; her mission is to keep Riley happy, no matter what. But Sadness (Phyllis Smith) inadvertently keeps frustrating Joy’s plans, setting off a disastrous chain of events. In the end, the central question is this: can joy and sadness coexist? Can our memories be both happy and sad at the same time?

Joy is an important biblical theme, an expected part of a flourishing spiritual life. But our typical understandings of joy are often too contaminated by common, culturally-defined conceptions of happiness. It may sound odd, for example, for the apostle Paul to command the Philippians to be joyful:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. (Phil 4:4-5, NRSVUE)

That might sound as insensitive as telling someone who’s just received terrible news, “Hey, cheer up!” Remember, these are people facing persecution from their neighbors. Two key women in the church are at odds with each other, and though the conflict probably isn’t a major one, it’s enough of a concern for Paul to worry about how it might spread to the rest of the congregation. Rejoice? Always? Is that possible? Is it realistic?

Some of us have spent time in churches where we got the sense that it wasn’t okay to struggle. We were supposed to be smiling, “joy-filled” believers, lest we make others uncomfortable and even damage our witness to a watching world. We might be given some room for grief in the face of traumatic loss, but then were expected to get the “victory” over it fairly soon. It’s like Joy in Inside Out, drawing a tight circle on the floor around Sadness: Your job is to stay in this circle. Don’t go anywhere, and don’t touch anything.

But that defensive, everybody-be-happy stance is not what Paul means by joy.

For Paul, joy is not just intense positive emotion. It is a specifically eschatological joy, that is, a kind of unshakeable confidence that the future is both glorious and in God’s capable hands. That’s why he reminds them, “The Lord is near.” He isn’t asking them to deny their circumstances or pretend that their troubles don’t exist. He is writing as a friend and pastor to people whom he loves, wanting them to not get too wrapped up in worry, wanting them to rediscover their joy.

Nor is he chiding them for not keeping smiles on their faces and giving a bad impression. Yes, “everyone” is watching. But what Paul wants outsiders — including, perhaps, their persecutors — to see is not a sunny but superficial optimism. Nor is a happy-clappy denial of difficulty much of a witness. What he wants others to see is gentleness. The word suggests forbearance, a willingness to cut each other some slack. It’s a lesson for the entire congregation, of course, but I imagine Paul specifically thinking about Euodia and Syntyche here, the two women he urged to reconcile just a few verses earlier.

When we’re stressed out, when we’re preoccupied with our difficulties, it’s easy to lose perspective. We get impatient with the situation and impatient with each other. Instead of giving gentleness, we exert control: You are being a problem right now. Stop. Listen to me. Do what I say!

That’s not what Paul wants for the Philippians; it’s not what he wants others to see. He wants their neighbors to see a people who show grace under pressure, who don’t let difficult circumstances keep them from treating each other well, with patience and love. It’s not a choice between joy and sadness, as if to have joy sadness must be denied; it’s a matter of finding joy in the midst of sadness and anxiety by reminding ourselves that the Lord is near.

And how do we do that?

By prayer, of course, as we’ll see next.