Advent 2025, Day 15
Theme:
Readings:
Reflections:
Light three candles per day starting today.
Get ready because I'm really enjoying writing this series, and today has more readings than normal, and they are each filled to the brim with exuberant joy.
Consider dividing this reading across the day. Savor the readings, don't rush through them. Pray earnestly for joy in your life.
Isaiah's prophecy is visual, poetic, and stunning: The desert, known for scarcity and barely surviving, will rejoice, bloom, and reverberate with joy. This passage really speaks for itself. So I will let it. Please re-read the passage in Isaiah more mindfully and slowly this time. Let the vision of God's kingdom inspire and marinate in your mind. Hold the images. Maybe try reading now a third time aloud, perhaps a bit dramatically. Practice a bit of joy as you reread this passage. Pretend like you are preaching. Or, maybe if it suits you better, read this passage of Isaiah 35 as if to children who were hearing it for the first time. Read it to your soul: "They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away."
Can you imagine every sorrow and all that makes you sigh and groan running away from you?? What a great prayer or chorus to a new song:
Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Sorrow and sighing will flee away.
Away from the redeemed who walk in the Way
((I'm gonna work on this as a song.. comment or contact me if you want to collab))
Speaking of songs, in Today's Psalm reading, look at all that God does:
He...
...makes heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them—
..remains faithful forever.
...upholds the cause of the oppressed and
...gives food to the hungry.
...sets prisoners free,
...gives sight to the blind,
...lifts up those who are bowed down,
... loves the righteous.
... watches over the foreigner and
...sustains the fatherless and the widow,
...frustrates the ways of the wicked.
...reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Reading this passage should make us all want to shout and praise God! God did, does, and will do all these things. He is involved, he is personal, not just conceptual. He is caring like a parent. He created parents! God is all good, all loving, all knowing, and he is FOR us.
Joy, in James, is both the anticipation of a farmer who knows a bumper crop is coming, and the exuberance in today's reading in Isaiah and Psalms, AND it is also the patience described in James. Joy and patience play off each other, and they erupt in praise, song, celebration, tears, and other body language. Joy is visceral and experiential. Let us pray earnestly for joy and all that it requires and all that it produces as we enter a week of Joy.
Traditionally, Joy is so special and unique, a different candle, a pink one, is lit to honor Joy's role in Advent. The first two weeks are celebrated with purple candles, but Joy is special. Be sure to now light three candles per morning or per day for a moment and look at the gentle expansion of light. Compare this week's light with the first and second weeks. Or simply take a breath or pray briefly between each candle's lighting.
Finally, in the gospel of Matthew, look at the Joy of Jesus in the face of John's suffering. John sends his disciples to Jesus to receive a word of confirmation and comfort, and Jesus does one better: he brags on how great God his Father is! Listen for joy as you read this aloud, from Jesus: "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”
Then, in classic, surprising, Jesus fashion, he encourages the messengers, worried about their rabbi in prison, about to lose his life, their beloved radical, John. Jesus takes them back to their conversion and the source of their connection with John: "What did you go into the desert to see? A wimp? NO WAY! John is the greatest ever. He's the final act before I come on the scene and change the whole story forever!” Jesus was exuding the same pride and validation that God showed when Jesus was baptized by John, and God spoke clearly: "This is my son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased." Oh! To see and feel how that must have impacted John when his guys returned to him with this message from Jesus!
May you slow down to enjoy joy this week!
Song: Wait For The Lord, Taizé. This song is multilingual, epic, beautiful, choral, and it is as exuberant as we should be as we wait for the Lord, knowing that His coming will be utterly awesome.
Bonus!
Bonus! My Advent 2025 playlist is ready for you to listen to on Apple Music. It's diverse, and it was so much fun to put together as I read through the scriptures and wrote this series.
NOTE the songs are on Apple Music, which you can get for a month for free if you are new... I just didn't want an obnoxious YouTube Ad ruining your quiet time :-)
Please comment on today's devotional below. A Gmail account is required to comment.
If you are looking for a nondenominational church in the Denver area, check out denverchurchofchrist.org
Link to song on Spotify: Wait For The Lord, Taizé
ReplyDelete