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This devotional address entitled The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength was given on November

21st of 2000 by Truman G. Madsen, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Brigham Young

University.

I have a cheerful message and smiles will be permitted and even encouraged.

I'm writing a book on joy, said a rabbi to a colleague of mine in New York.

That book found that the root of the word joy in the Old Testament is Khemda, which when it

is conjoined with the phrase of the Lord means three things.

It means gladness.

It means togetherness or being joined one with another.

And it means something about the temple.

Nehemiah was the rebuilder of the temple.

The phrase joy of the Lord attends his invitation to the newly rebuilt temple.

Now our sacred texts place joy in the same mode and our history writes it in flesh and blood.

Brigham Young, this is his institution, but he said this about the terrible persecutions

and drivings of our people.

He said, you who have read about this and did not go through it may say to yourselves,

I could never have endured that.

Then he responds,

I was in the heat of it,

...