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.