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Psychiatrist William Frey spent years studying the dramatic impact that laughter, humor, and joy have on our lives. He found that joy increases our pulse rate, blood circulation, and oxygenation. Joy causes remarkable relaxation. Frey discovered, "Humor banishes the tightness and the severity necessary for anger. If mirth is experienced, rage is impossible."

Joy is a kind of relational glue. It gives us intrinsic motivation to pursue intimacy and oneness in marriage. Bill Bright says it this way: "As long as you're going to be married the rest of your life, you might as well enjoy it." In other words, marriage is supposed to be a source of joy.

And it's God's plan for marriage. Throughout the Bible marriage is used as a picture of joy that God feels for his people. For instance, the prophet Isaiah tells us, "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so God will rejoice over you" (Isaiah 62:5).

Joy does two things for our marriages. It causes us to remember the good. When something wonderful or fun or funny happens, as we go through the years together, we often look back on that experience and have almost as much joy reliving it. But joy also causes us to live in the present. That's a place far too few of us live often enough. For just a moment when we're experiencing joy, thoughts of what's to come and all the things we need to do vanish. That's a great gift to give our marriages.

How does joy come? It comes by making a pledge to pursue oneness in marriage. Through commitment and fidelity. Commitment isn't just about avoiding divorce. The kind of commitment God calls people to make isn't just to say, "I'll try to get to the end of my life without having had sexual relationships with somebody other than my spouse." It's a commitment every day, every hour, every week and month and year to pursue greater oneness. And in the commitment to pursue oneness is also a commitment to pursue joy.

In Philippians 4:4 the apostle Paul tells us, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" It's a command. Often we take that verse in an individualistic way and think, I'm supposed to rejoice through the day. Although that's certainly true, Paul also aimed it at the community—of which marriages are a part. As a married couple part of our job is to pursue joy, to rejoice together, and to bring joy to each other.

Often we run across articles that ask, Are you intentional about saving enough money for the end of your life? You know the kind of stories, where you're supposed to put so much money aside per month, and if you don't you're going to end up on the streets.

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