Day 4: The LORD Is Come

continued from yesterday...

Or maybe joy is just under-realized and misunderstood.

A dictionary definition of joy goes something like this: “a very glad feeling, happiness, great pleasure, delight.”

I am not satisfied with that definition. I don’t necessarily have a better one to offer, but I think joy is deeper than a very glad feeling and it’s more grounded than happiness. It may result in feeling happy, but I wonder if that feeling isn’t a product of joy, rather than joy itself. It’s more than just being in a good mood—it’s something that resonates in our souls. Maybe joy is more of a disposition that we root ourselves in, rather than a feeling that changes as our circumstances change.

It’s really hard to be happy in the midst of trials and heartbreak. But maybe, maybe it’s possible to still be rooted in joy—it might be a quiet joy, a joy that whispers rather than shouts, but maybe joy can be present, nonetheless. Joy and pain can be found in the same moment—maybe joy that has known pain is a deeper joy.

This is true of worship—our songs of praise have more substance when they are honest, when we acknowledge the brokenness of our world and of our lives. Praises that are sung after songs of lament are praises that somehow have more depth to them.

Joy to the world can only be sung with honesty in a broken world because of the line that comes next: the Lord has come!

The Lord has come!

The Lord has come to the world that is filled with families that don’t get along and children that starve and wars that rage. The Lord has come to the world where there is brokenness and pain and tears and death. And that is exactly why we can sing Joy to the world. That is exactly why we can know joy—because the Lord has come—he didn’t wait for things to be good here—he stepped into our messiness, he walked into our pain. Joy to the world that is hurting and broken—this is the world that Christ was born into, this is the world that God so loves that he sent his only son.

The Lord has come. He was born in a dark and smelly stable—if that doesn’t remind us that we have a God who enters into our brokenness, I don’t know what does. And can you imagine, after the whispers and the sideways glances Mary received when she had first started to show, after the hard travelling that Mary and Joseph had to do to get to Bethlehem, after being told there was no place for them to sleep, after the pain of labor, can you imagine the joy that filled the hearts of these young new parents when they heard this tiny baby cry for the first time? In some ways, maybe it was like the joy that most new parents feel. But in other ways, it was probably so different—because they knew who this little baby was.

The Lord has come. And nothing will ever be the same again. Our joy is rooted in this—that God is present and active in our world, that God created and is re-creating our world. Our joy is rooted in the fact that Jesus showed up and proved that death does not win, that evil does not get the final word. No more let sin and sorrow grow, or thorns infest the ground—that line in the song gets me every time I sing it—he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

to be continued...