The Gift of Joy
I find these Advent posts tricky to write. Each word: Hope, Joy, Love, Peace are concepts that are just too big for one blog post.
I struggle with the reality that I can't guarantee you or I will leave this post with more joy. If I could bottle that stuff up, I would be a millionaire.
I so deeply desire each of the Advent attributes and yet I feel that I hardly know the first thing about them.
Maybe you feel the same way.
I have spent most of my life wondering about joy. It is both my middle name and something I wish I had more of. My knee jerk reaction to life tends to be a bit more glass-half-empty. A little more Eeyore than Winnie the Pooh. I so long to be filled with joy.
There was something about Jesus’ birth that created joy - it is one of the only Advent words to be found in Matthew and Luke’s account. John the Baptist leaped with joy in utero, Mary sings of joy after her visit from Gabriel, the angels proclaim it from the heavens.
Why was there so much joy around Jesus birth?
In the Old Testament, we see rejoicing and joy among the people when God has done a new thing, when God has intervened and set things right, when God fulfilled His promises.
The Incarnation checks all those boxes.
Jesus is God’s greatest gift, the gift of Himself. The angels knew it and told the Shepherd’s,
“Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11
God’s great work and perfect intervention into the darkness of the world is the Incarnation of His Son Jesus, Saviour of the world.
This is the reason for their joy.
Our world tells a different story.
Our world would equate joy with pleasure or happiness. “Choose joy” is all over home decor shops, social media and in self-help aisles. But, often, the message is about choosing our self, our own pleasure, or our own way.
Joy should not be confused with pleasure. Pleasure is human, joy is heavenly.
The only way we can truly “choose joy” is to choose Jesus.
Looking anywhere else for it is futile.
Our world is drunk on pleasure but starving for joy. Because Joy is a person. Joy is only found in the story of God. It is calm delight - an underlying peace that points us heavenward.
So how do we become joy-filled people this Christmas and in our everyday lives?
1) Ask - if joy is a gift from the Father, through Jesus by His Holy Spirit, then we must start by asking Him. We must be like little children asking their parents for everything they want for Christmas. The source of all joy is pleased to give good gifts to His children.
2) Get into God’s story - you and I need to steep ourselves in God’s narrative and silence the other competing narratives of our world. If we want to rejoice at what God is doing, we have to learn what He is truly about.
Joy has very little to do with us and everything to do with God’s work in the world and His love of it.
Joyful people are those that are awake and alert to God’s narrative. We need God to resurrect us our inner lives to the joy of His story. The angels knew how wonderful the news about Jesus was going to be to those in darkness, most significantly because they spend their entire lives in the presence of God.
Being people of joy is synonymous to being people living and breathing the story of God.
And this means silencing those other narratives that compete with God’s. Sifting and sorting out the lies and things we are chasing. Getting down to the one single story with God at the centre, rather than ourselves.
It is in radical obedience and the laying down of our lives, following what God says we were made for and made to do in this world.
The world is running after pleasure but God is the only one with the gift of joy.
If we wish to have our eyes opened to the joy of God’s action in the world, we must be connected to his story, his Spirit, his presence so that our hearts can rejoice when we see Him act and move in the world.
May the God of all hope fill you with joy. May joy be resurrected in your mind, body, and soul. And may you be made awake and alert to God’s story in this world.
This Advent, may the story of Jesus’ Incarnation fill you with joy.