It’s that time again once again when American everywhere are all fired-up about football season! But this year’s fire is fueled by something a little different than the usual. Among the traditional social media posts with fans rooting for their teams, grieving losses and trash-talking rivals, news feeds everywhere are filling up with responses to NFL players protesting during the National Anthem. And in the true American fashion, the responses are intense and diverse.

I recently had a conversation about joy, kind of. I was at a Bible study where the topic of the day was authenticity, and how we go about living more authentic lives. When we broke up into small groups to go over the discussion questions, the last one read as follows:

One way we can be authentic with ourselves is to know what brings us joy. What delights you? What causes you to lose track of time? What brings you joy?

For Christians, prayer is an answer to virtually every possible question—right up there with Jesus and the Bible. (And Apostolic Tradition, of course, for those of us who have unchecked the "Protestant Reformation" box on our heavenly applications.) It’s almost as if the little prayer hands emoji was created just for us so we can let each other know we’re praying for each other without actually using words, which is just so deep.

This may come as a surprise, but having a good attitude does not always come naturally to me. In fact, there are days when—if I got there—it probably took a some work.

Sure, the Sun is always shining! I know that! But when I look around and see a world full of injustice, corruption, confusion, melting ice caps, and dying coral reefs, I tend feel the weight of these things a little more than any excitement over the Sun (which, they say, may actually burn us all up in a few years or so, according to the internet).

The word religion has been getting a pretty bad rap these days, often taking blame for most of society’s major problems. As a result, there are many well-meaning Christians trying to rebrand the faith by disassociating from that term altogether. You'll hear them say things like, “I love Jesus, but I hate religion.” Or “Christianity is not a religion; it’s a relationship.”