Advent: Joy

Joy: a simple word for a complex emotion. What is joy? We know that joy is an emotion that we feel but is there a difference between joy and happiness?

The word happiness comes from the root word, happen/hap. “Hap” means chance or fate. Happiness is merely what comes to a person by chance or in reflection to something that happened.

Joy, however, is a source of true delight. It lies under all emotions no matter what happens to a person. Joy comes from one source and one source only: our Heavenly Father. This world is corrupted but His love and His joy is pure and untainted.

The second week of Advent is focused on Joy. We talk about the joyful season of Christmas and we sing our songs. Let’s pause to take a look at the lyrics for this week’s carol.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And Heaven and nature sing,

And Heaven and nature sing,

And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

Our joy is arriving because the Lord is coming. While we focus this holiday on the little baby that is born, our joy and hope are so much bigger than this one moment in history. Yes, a baby is born but where our real joy lies is in who that baby was and what He did. He is our Savior, His coming has been foretold for ages throughout the Old Testament, and the moment of His arrival has finally come. Take a moment to reflect the emotion from going to hopeless to filled with pure untainted joy because your Savior has arrived.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found,

Far as the curse is found,

Far as, far as, the curse is found.

This song is about eternity, and what it will be like now that Jesus had been born. It is genuinely the essence of joy: try to imagine a world without sin. It is difficult to conceive but that is what Jesus’ coming promised. Have you prepared room in your heart for Him? Have you allowed His joy to fully and completely overtake your soul? He has come to make His blessings flow and no matter what this corrupt world brings, we have an underlying joy that can’t be tainted. No one can take that away from us. That is something to rejoice about! No matter where you are right now, Jesus meets you there and lifts you up with His truth, grace, and His unblemished joy.

Advent

Recently I was asked by someone what the advent season was – and to be honest, I didn’t quite know how to respond to her. I know that I love it and I know that it is in preparation for Christmas.

What is Advent? Advent is a season of expectation and preparation. The Lord is coming and we are yearning for his arrival that will change the world. The term literally means “coming” and was used in the preparation for the coming of a great person or a king. Advent gives us a month to fully prepare our hearts and our minds for the coming of our saving King.

The first advent’s focus is on hope. A couple weeks ago I touched on the epidemic that is sweeping across the world: the epidemic of hopelessness.

Hopelessness is a condition that eats away at the soul of man and rips him apart from the God who sent His son to save him. For hopelessness is the loss of future, the loss of present, and the collapse to self-centered torment. Many put on the mask of survival only to have the undercurrent of hopelessness eroding who they are and who they were meant to be in Christ.

There is hope. Advent is the season of hope. Our savior is coming. The cure for this epidemic is simple because it only takes a flicker of hope to set the contagious flames afire in our souls. The flames that will heal the damage of the dark hopelessness.

Hopeless people are everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if the person sitting next to you on Sunday morning was infected. It’s the weight of the fallen world and Satan’s tool of separation. This isn’t a new thing. Hopelessness has been around forever. Before the arrival of Jesus, the chosen people cried out for that hope, that saving Grace called Emmanuel. We sing the song every year – have you ever focused on the lyrics?

O come, O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.

Wow, the power of these words shakes me to the core. I can image the people of Israel, on their knees begging for help. They cry out to their God who they have faith is there but they are captive. Imagine the hopelessness of being captive and exiled and having the loss of present and future. Israel is begging God to pay their ransom, to free them because they mourn deeply in being exiled.

Their only hope is the Son of God’s birth. Their only hope is a prophecy of the coming King. So with hope they rejoice knowing that one day, Emmanuel will come and will save them but when that will be no one knew.  

God heard their cry, He knew their pain and He listened. Even though He knew the fate of His son would be torment and death, He was willing to sacrifice Jesus, to pay that ransom and to save His people…to save me. This is the season of hope. For God paid it all and the flicker of hope is ignited in the birth of his Son, Jesus.

Today, if you find yourself in a hopeless situation know that this advent marks the coming of the King. We have hope in Christ and he is coming! Rejoice! Hope is coming!

This month, I pray that everyone can help spread hope to all who suffer from this epidemic. For there is hope and it can be freely given to all who need it, reach out and help bring life back to the world’s hopeless and helpless.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.