When you wake up in the morning, turn your heart to joy rather than duty. Better yet, make duty your joy. Let your responsibility for the world be your joy. It is not that you carry the world on your shoulders. Carry it in your heart where I AM. You can believe that I am not a burden. I am the Remover of Burden. I whisk it away. I turn every perceived heaviness into joy. I turn on the light, beloveds, and light is never heavy. I give you My joy. I give you My love. I give them to you to use and use well. I do not loan them to you. I give them to you.

Somehow you may have had the idea that you are duty-bound to lack joy, if not to suffer, to drag your feet around as though you were chained to a cement wall. Instead of dragging your feet, dance. Dance in your heart, and you will be light-footed.

Love is available. It is available at every turn. Would you not avail yourself of it? Would you not turn dross into gold? Would you not turn every situation around and make it joyful? If not for you, for someone?

Or let's put it this way: No longer remove joy from your heart. No longer twist joy into something else, anything else. Accept nothing less than joy into your heart. You have been careless. You have let woe in, as if it had a place in your heart. Your heart is meant to be tender, and not toughened up. Let your heart stay in its lovingness. No longer let anything intrude on the joy. Anything else that may enter your heart is an intruder. It does not belong in your heart. I belong in your heart. All that I AM belongs in your heart. Let there be room for nothing else. Fill your heart to overflowing.

Carry a sign in your heart that says: "I am full. Only love and joy may enter. I am the decider of my heart, and I accept gold. I accept no less. I, your heart, let everyone into the warmth of me, but anything less than love and joy have to stay outside. Of course, there is no place in me for anything but love and joy in the warmth of me."

And so reads the sign in your heart.

Another way to say it is that your heart is full of Me. Fill your heart with God. Fill your heart with the love of God, and all that enters your heart will be transformed. You will have eyes to see. You will have a heart that knows. Your heart will not do the bidding of every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Your heart will do My bidding, and My bidding is that you feature love and joy. What else would you want in your heart anyway?

Have an open-door policy in your heart. At the same time, shoes have to be left outside. All baggage has to be left outside, not checked but thrown away. All baggage thrown away, and then only joy and love exist to enter.

Let your heart be a streaming river. Let your heart be the Ocean that embraces all, washes all, and lifts all high in the timbre of its love. From the Ocean you came and to the Ocean you return. What else should you be doing but creating love and joy?

On your way to whatever you are up to, follow love and joy. Let them accompany you. Let them be your loyal companions. Let My love and joy follow you and greet you in your swim to the shores of Heaven.