Christmas Countdown 2023….Day 17

This morning we light the third candle of Advent. This is the rose colored candle because the liturgical color for Joy is pink. It symbolizes the joy we feel as we celebrate the birth of our Savior. So today we will set aside the list of things that need to be done for a while and celebrate in our hearts the joy of this season. 

So many parts of this month have brought me joy. The lights inside and outside of the houses we pass at night give me joy. The music playing over sound systems and at concerts has given me joy. Even the silly and secular Christmas songs lift my heart. 

I have experienced joy with each gathering of friends or family and even more joy when it is a mixture of both. There is joy opening cards with photos and joy as I carefully select a gift for each of my people, hoping they will see my love for them in the choice I make. There is joy on children’s faces as they tell you where their elf was discovered and joy when we reunite with old friends who have returned home for a visit. 

All of these are just the proverbial iceberg tip of the deep, deep joy that we have from the heart of Christmas. Because even if we have none of the things I mentioned above, we are like the Who’s down in Whoville.  We still rejoice. 

Because we have the one thing that makes all the other things so sweet to us. We have the unquenchable joy of knowing that God sent His only Son into the world to save us. And that Joy undergirds any absence of happiness or fun or fulfilled holiday expectations. 

That Joy carries us and sustains us when our hearts are shattered, our dreams have been dashed, we face an empty chair around the table  or nothing is turning out at all the way we had hoped. 

Joy to the World is the main song that plays on a loop in my head this week. I think of one of the phrases from Chris Tomlin’s version – Joy, unspeakable Joy, rising in my soul, never lets me go.

This kind of joy can be experienced in some of the darkest places when we are hanging on by a thread. It intensifies, perhaps when we are moved with feelings of happiness, but it never is extinguished when sorrow overwhelms us. 

This Joy sustains us and keeps us going. It believes for a better tomorrow and looks for the return of Christ to make all things right when nothing makes sense. Having finished The Watchmaker’s Daughter last month, a quote from Corrie Ten Boom speaks this so well:

“I have experienced His presence in the deepest Hell that man can create. I have really tested the promises of the Bible, and believe me, you can count on them.”

And so we rejoice today. 

We rejoice because we have a Savior who understands us. A Lord who lowered Himself to walk among us. A King who saves and serves. And promises that we can count on, no matter what.

Joy. 

Unspeakable Joy. 

Unending joy that never lets us go <3