Joy Joy Joy
It’s the third Sunday of Advent and time to sing “Go Tell It on the Mountain”! Well — not necessarily from a mountain — that would mean we’d have to go climbing! Perhaps we can start right here on level ground to be joyful and full of the good news of Christ’s coming to this world for you and me.
The third “pink” candle is lit on the Advent wreath today. It symbolizes JOY. The third Sunday of Advent is meant to remind us of the joy that was born into this world when God became man. Joy that we can live in daily.
St. Paul wrote about that joy in Philippians 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord always: again, I say rejoice.” He wrote those words from a dark, cold, and damp prison cell. Paul is the kind of role-model we need in a world of idolizing sports figures, music, and film stars. The kind that finds JOY in the good news of Emmanuel, God with us, in the middle of our circumstances.
Aw! Sweet joy down in my heart to stay! PINK is the color for this 3rd Sunday of Advent. Typically, when we think of pink – we think “girly”. We put our little girls in pink outfits with a pink bow in their hair to declare “It’s a GIRL”! In my case, my little Staci had NO hair so I scotch-taped a bow on her head. It’s hard to believe that when we see the massive head of hair she has today!
Pink isn’t just about girls. God painted all shades of pink into a sunrise. And, like the various shades of pink, our expressions of joy can be so different. Joy can be exuberant — that jumping up and down of a child who is about to open a present.
That was my daughter when she opened one of her birthday gifts from me a couple of days ago. I sent her the precious “Bread of Life” scripture box that held tattered, worn, and well used scripture cards. It had been Granny and Papa’s who used it daily to get one of God’s scripture promises. She was overcome with joy.
JOY is also that calm and peaceful experience of God’s faithfulness. It can be calm confidence in His sovereignty, or pure delight as He expresses His love.
PINK is also about a teenage “virgin” girl named Mary, pregnant outside of wedlock. She could have been frozen in fear of her circumstances, of disappointing her fiancée and her parents – never mind the “talk” of the townspeople.
But instead of being frozen in a “woe is me” attitude, she took ACTION and “went with haste” to her “old” cousin Elizabeth who was six months pregnant. Her pregnancy confirmed the angel’s words of “Nothing is impossible with God”. Mary took the ACTION word “REJOICE” to the level that St. Paul did in his prison cell. In Luke 1:46,47 she said these words: “My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit REJOICES in God my Savior!”
That’s the kind of JOY to this world that changes everything. That joy should never be determined by how we feel, but on WHO God is. The joy of the Lord can thrill us AND it can make us steadfast in the secure knowledge of Emmanuel, God’s presence with us.
Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:16: “REJOICE always!” Jesus tells us in Mark 9:24: “With God all things are possible.” That combination of trust should help us carry on from this 3rd Sunday of Advent to EVERYDAY being full of rejoicing and great joy!