“Then the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.’” Luke 2:10-11
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the notion of joy. What is joy, exactly? As we consider it in light of the other Advent themes of hope, peace, and love, what differentiates joy from these attributes? I invite you to consider this with me.
As Luke’s account says, the angel brings the shepherds “good tidings of great joy....” I take this to mean really good news and likely something even deeper. As we consider the context of the day in which Jesus was born, good news was needed! Most people were not finding life to be easy or particularly enjoyable.
The shepherds to whom the angel appeared were outliers under the oppressive rule of the powerful and ever-expanding Roman province. There were unfair laws and restrictions, there were misguided ordinances and demands from the king and other authorities that made life unnecessarily hard. It was in this setting that the angel appeared to this lower level of society and said, “I bring you good tidings of great joy....” What must the shepherds have imagined? What must they have thought as the Messiah’s birth was announced to them?
I wonder if joy was something they would not fully realize until they saw the Baby in the manger. I wonder if joy was a word in their vocabulary just as it is in ours, but they could not even comprehend its truest and fullest meaning until they encountered Jesus. I wonder if we could ever experience what the shepherds experienced as the angel proclaimed such incredible, life-altering news to them that night.
It seems the invitation to us is to follow the star, so to speak, to walk through these next few December days allowing ourselves to be guided by a light far brighter than that which may typically guide us, to let go of anything that might hinder us from following that light, to intentionally keep our gaze upon the light instead of the many other pseudo or dim-at-best lights that inevitably distort our vision.
I wonder if, in truly following the light that seeks to guide us every year during Advent, in truly preparing Him room in our hearts as we go, in truly opening our souls to the proclamation of good tidings of great joy... that we would actually discover it. That we would discover what lies beyond our effort. Beyond our work. Beyond our play. Beyond our family, our friends, and our circumstances. And while joy may certainly come through any or all of those things, maybe, like the shepherds, we would find in Jesus Christ our truest and greatest joy. Maybe, like the shepherds, we would truly know joy when we realize that Jesus has come for us—for you and for me. And maybe, as the traditional posture of the shepherds expresses, our only response would be to kneel before Him and call Him Messiah, Savior of the world. And in that, we, too, would truly know hope in light of peace, in light of love, in light of joy.
~em
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