Advent Devotional Guide - Week 3: Joy and the Shepherd's Candle
Week 3: Joy and the Shepherd’s Candle
This week we continue our Advent series by exploring the third theme in the season — Joy! Last week, we dove into the theme of Peace, and before that, we kicked off our Advent Series exploring the theme of Hope as well as giving a bit of an overview of what Advent is all about! If you haven’t yet, hop over and check those out! These Advent guides are here for your benefit and can certainly be utilized even when the season comes to an end! The theme of joy is recognized by lighting the third candles in the Advent Wreath — the Shepherd’s Candle. Traditionally, this candle is lightly different from the others in that, instead of being violet, the joy candle is rose colored, which symbolizes — you guessed it - JOY! Of course the color of the candles are not by any means mandatory. Use whatever candles you’ve got!
Joy is one of the most commonly expressed sentiments in scripture. Throughout the Biblical texts, we see God’s people expressing joy all over the place. The narrative in scripture begins with God speaking creation into existence. When He finishes His work, God declares His work to be very good. Naturally it stands to reason that God’s people find joy in things that are good, beautiful, pure, and life-giving. Weddings, celebrations, friendship, childbirth, tasty food, victory over struggle -- all of these things and more are named as sources of joy in scripture.
Because we live in a world tainted by sin, our world is filled with darkness that can rob our joy, even blotting it out all together. In the midst of such great suffering, joy not only seems out of reach, but at times almost even offensive. We create this picture that joy and sorrow are two polls on a light switch -- to have one requires negating the other. God’s people were never immune to this brokenness, often suffering slavery, violence, and oppression. This is where biblical joy takes a radical shift from what we may typically think of as joy. The joy experienced by the Israelites was not contingent upon their circumstances. Rather, they found their joy in God’s love and promise. When things got rough, they remembered all that God had done in the past or looked ahead to a day when God’s promise of salvation would one day be fulfilled. When their focus shifted from themselves and their circumstances to God, they could truly and honestly rejoice!
Biblical joy challenges our understanding of conditional joy, suggesting that joy and sorrow are not mutually exclusive. In fact, we see embodied in Jesus this very paradox. In the book of Hebrews chapter 1, we’re told that it was “For the JOY set before Him,” that Jesus “Endured the cross!” Furthermore, we see many of Jesus’s disciples displaying an endless joy even when they were being severely persecuted. In Acts chapter 16, the apostle Paula and his ministry partner Silas are placed under arrest and beaten by Roman guards. While locked in chains, Paul and Silas begin singing songs of PRAISE! As a result, many of the prisoners come to know Christ, and even one of the guards! This kind of inexplicable joy can only happen when we shift the source of our joy from our circumstances onto something greater -- God’s unchanging, never failing, faithful love.
Biblical joy challenges our understanding of conditional joy, suggesting that joy and sorrow are not mutually exclusive.
Biblical joy does not mean ignoring or suppressing grief or sorrow -- that is neither wise nor healthy. Rather, to have joy in Christ is to understand that joy can not only live, but truly thrive even in the very presence of sorrow. We rejoice because even when we feel like everything is falling apart, we know our God is with us in the midst of suffering, comforting, empathizing, and working out his plan for eternal glory. We also rejoice knowing that one day God will usher in the fullness of his kingdom in which all sorrow and pain will cease forever. In the meantime, we embrace joy not as a feeling, which can be fleeting, but as a posture or an attitude rooted in our hope in Jesus!