Where is Our Joy?

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… but honestly, it doesn’t feel like it. The air is turning cold, the presents are under the tree, the refrigerator is full of Christmas cookies, the parties are planned but my heart is heavy. Usually around Christmas, spirits are high and I feel like a snow flake falling joyfully from the sky. But right now I am not sure where my joy is?

 I know it’s there some where deep inside my heart. I know happiness is fleeting but joy lasts forever. So is that joy just misplaced or hidden deep in the worries of my heart. As I was reading the Christmas story this morning trying to find joy in the beginning of it all, I realized a lot of times we do misplace our Christmas joy in things that really have nothing to do with Christmas at all. We have the tree, the cookies, the presents and the Children’s Christmas program, but thats not Christmas. In Matthew chapter 1 verses 22-23 it reads “All this took place to fufill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with Child and give birth to a son and they will call him Immanuel”, which means, “God with us.”

God with us. Immanuel, Immanuel, Immanuel. That is it, that is where my Joy is hidden. It’s been with God the whole time for He is my joy. When Jesus came into the world many of the jews had given up hope. They were in a place where God seemed distant and they thought they could not have joy under the Roman rule. Recently, I have had my moments where I felt just like those jews, God has felt distant and I’ve honestly been disconnected. Living here in the South a lot of times I feel like an alien, an outcast, or completely unwelcome, at times even in the church I serve at. Like those jews living under Roman rule they had freedom, they had rights, jobs, and some place in society, but they were not Roman citizens, they had no voice and had to do what was expected of them without question.

It’s no wonder by the time that Jesus showed up that many of the jews were simply looking for someone to over throw the Romans. They were tired, weary and had very little to be joyful about. I think thats why many of them missed the fact that Jesus was the Messiah. They missed that he was God with us. They thought their joy as a nation and a people would be restored when the Roman’s were gone, but Jesus was not here for that. He came to bring Joy to the world, to set the captives free, to bind up the broken hearted and to simply be God with us in the fullest of senses.

I think one of the things that has been stealing my joy is our Children’s Christmas program. Last year was my first year ever writing the Christmas program and it went really well. But this year, my heart has not been in it. When I read the script it lacks joy. There are these expectations that every year the children have to preform a Christmas program, and there is this feeling each year that this really isn’t for the kids at all, it’s for the parents and grandparents which is okay, however, at the same time it is one of the saddest things I have ever experienced.

Where is our joy? In a silly Christmas program (I can call it that cause I wrote it). Is it in our children half singing a song or two, in knowing that we are carrying on some tradition thats losing its meaning. I honestly want to scrap the whole play even though it’s happening this sunday and simply read the Christmas Story to the children, reminding them that God is with us. That Joy doesn’t come from presents, or trees, or cookies or santa. Our joy should be found in knowing God is with us. We should wake up each morning reminded that God is with us, that he is not distant, that we are not alone, that no matter what the world says or no matter how much someone doesn’t really like you, God loves you.

I think we have lost where our hope and joy should be. We have misplaced it…But we have to wake up, we can’t give up hope, we have to dig deep, look upon the face of God and ask him to restore our joy. A joy in him, a joy that flows over from a heart that knows love, a joy that understands God is with us, a joy that sings loud for all to hear because everyone should know and experience this joy.

May any who read this have a Merry Christmas full of God’s Joy!

God is with us

-Caleb Ross Hunter