The joy of the spirit is no cheap joy...

For the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God.  ~Hebrews 12:2

The joy of the spirit is no cheap joy. It has scars on it -- radiant scars! It is joy won out of the heart of pain. Those who know it have found one of life's deepest and most transforming secrets; the transmuting of pain into a paean. Sorrow becomes not something to escape; we can make it sing. We can set our tears to music, and no music is so exquisite, so compelling. The Christians learned immediately and at once the truth which the philosopher Royce puts in these words: "Such ills we remove only as we assimilate them, take them up into the plan of our lives, give them meaning, set them in their place in the whole." When their heartstrings were stretched upon some cross of pain and the winds of persecution blew through them, then from this human aeolian harp men heard the very music of God. They did not bear pain, they used it.  ~from Springs in the Valley by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman

For me you have changed my mourning into dancing, you removed my sackcloth and girded me with joy.  So my soul sings psalms to you unceasingly.  O Lord my God, I will thank you for ever.  ~Psalm 29:12-13