I'm currently reading the book of Jeremiah, which is not a very joyful book. However, when  you come to chapter 29, that seems to be the central message of the book. Jeremiah was prophesying against Israel:

The truth is that you will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me in earnest, you will find me when you seek me. (Jeremiah 29: 10-13)

I think the point of this is that the people had stopped looking for the Lord, and decided they could go on their own strength, or perhaps some other nations' gods were appealing (why, I'm not sure). At any rate, they had fallen away from the Lord and that's why they were being exiled to Babylon. But the Lord already had a plan to bring them back from Babylon. Sometimes I wonder if that's what needs to happen to us sometimes. We fall away, and think we can make it on our own. We voluntarily exile ourselves to our own personal Babylon. But God always has a plan to bring us back. It may be a painful road home, but in the end it will bring us much joy. If God feels far away to us, maybe we've exiled ourselves, and we need to let God lead us home. Because God always has a plan, and that plan gives us a hope and a future. It don't get much more joyful than that!!! Amen.