A Candle for JOY -- 3rd week in Advent

Psalm 30:4-5
Sing the praises of the Lord, you faithful people;
    praise God’s holy name.
For disfavor lasts only a moment, but favor lasts a lifetime;
   weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning.
​

Today is the third Sunday in Advent and the theme for this week  is JOY.  Just as with the two previous Advent themes we’ve looked into recently, Hope and Peace, Joy is a word that can have a multitude of different applications for different occasions and different people.

Joy is closely related to happiness, and it would be easy to think the two words are interchangeable but they truly are not.  Things make us happy – usually things on the surfaces of our lives.  People, and experiences, and spiritual revelations can bring us joy – a response from deep within us.

We are used to thinking of joy as our response to the birth and life of Jesus --- especially at this time of year.  Joy is one of those “church-y” words that we sometimes think are only connected to bible stories.   But again, as we’ve found out in the past two weeks with hope and peace, joy definitely has its place in our here-and-now world too – often in circumstances that might not leave us happy, but bring us joy regardless.

I’ve enjoyed finding stories to illustrate this point for both Hope and Peace, so I hunted down another story for today.  I found it in several slightly different versions all over the internet.  The original story appears to have been written by a Rian B. Anderson but it’s gone through a lot of alterations from a lot of people.  It’s a long story so I’ve had to do a lot of editing and whittling to make it fit our time and space here:

• It was Christmas Eve 1942. I was fifteen years old and feeling pretty down because I knew there hadn’t been enough money to buy me the rifle I’d wanted for Christmas.  We did our regular chores early that night for some reason, so after dinner when Daddy bundled up again and went outside, I stretched out by the fireplace and wallowed in self-pity.
• But soon Daddy came back and told me to bundle up good and come out and help him.  So not only wasn’t I getting the rifle I wanted for Christmas, now he was dragging me out in the cold, and for no earthly reason that I could see.
• There in front of the house was the work team, already hitched to the big sled.  Whatever it was we were going to do wasn't going to be a short, quick, little job, I could tell.  Daddy pulled the sled around the house and stopped in front of the woodshed.  Then he went into the woodshed and came out with an armload of wood -- the wood I'd spent all summer chopping and sawing and splitting.
• “You been by the Widow Jensen's lately?" he asked.  Her husband had died a year before and left her with three little children.  "I rode by just today," he said. "Little Jakey was out digging around in the woodpile trying to find a few chips. They're out of wood, Matt."  That was all he said and then he went back into the woodshed for another armload of wood.  We loaded the sled so high that I began to wonder if the horses could even pull it.
• Then we went to the smoke house and he took down a big ham and a side of bacon and told me to put them in the sled and wait.  When he returned he was carrying a sack of flour over his shoulder and a smaller sack of something in his left hand.
• "What's in the little sack?" I asked. “Shoes, they're out of shoes.  Jakey just had gunny sacks wrapped around his feet this morning.  I got the children a little candy too. It just wouldn't be Christmas without a little candy."
• When we got to the Jensen house we unloaded the wood, and took the meat and flour and shoes to the door.  Mrs. Jensen opened the door and hesitantly let us in. She had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The children were wrapped in another blanket and were sitting in front of the fireplace by a tiny fire that hardly gave off any heat at all.
• “We brought you a few things, Ma’am,” Daddy said, and set down the sack of flour. I put the meat on the table. Then he handed her the sack that had the shoes in it.  She opened it and took the shoes out one pair at a time. There was a pair for her and one for each of the children – sturdy shoes, shoes that would last.  I watched her bite her lower lip to keep it from trembling as tears started running down her cheeks. She looked up at my Daddy like she wanted to say something, but it wouldn’t come out.  “We brought a load of wood too, Ma’am,” he said. Then turned to me and said, “Matt, go bring in enough to last awhile. Let’s get that fire up to size and warm this place up.” 
• I have to say, I wasn’t the same person when I went back out to bring in the wood.  I had a big lump in my throat and much as I hate to admit it, there were tears in my eyes, too. I kept seeing those three kids huddled around the fireplace and their mother standing there with so much gratitude in her heart that she couldn’t speak.
• I knew then what people mean when they say their heart swelled within them.  A joy that I’d never known before filled my soul.  I had given at Christmas many times before, but never when it had made so much difference.
• I soon had the fire blazing and everyone’s spirits soared. The kids were giggling when Daddy handed them each a piece of candy and Mrs. Jensen looked on with a smile that probably hadn’t crossed her face for a long time. She finally turned to Daddy, “God bless you. I know the Lord sent you. The children and I have been praying that he would send an angel to spare us.”
• In spite of myself, those tears welled up in my eyes again.  I’d never thought of my Daddy in those exact terms before, but after she mentioned it I could see that it was probably true.  I was sure that a better man than my Daddy had never walked the earth.  Tears were running down Mrs. Jensen’s face again when we stood up to leave.
• On our way back home that night, Daddy turned to me and said, “Matt, I want you to know something. Your Mother and me have been tucking a little money away here and there all year so we could buy that rifle for you, but we didn’t have quite enough.  Then yesterday a man who owed me a little money from years back came by to make things square.  I started into town this morning to buy you that rifle after all, but on the way I saw little Jakey out scratching in the woodpile with his feet wrapped in those gunny sacks and I knew what I had to do.  Son, I spent the money we meant for your rifle for shoes and a little candy for those children.  I hope you can understand.”
• Oh, I understood.  That rifle seemed very low on my list of priorities now.  From then on, whenever I saw any of the Jensen’s, or split a block of wood, I remembered, and remembering brought back that same joy I felt riding home beside my Daddy.  He had given me much more than a rifle that night.  He had given me the best Christmas of my life.

There is so much in that story that is sad that at first glance maybe no one would think it’s a story about joy.  And yet there is also so much beauty – the deep kind of beauty that brings us a deep joy.

According to the bible story, Jesus came to live among us because we humans weren’t getting the message.  We thought the important things were things like power and wealth or even just avoiding trouble for ourselves when the reality was (and still is) that God wants us to care for each other and help each other through this life.  This why Jesus lived with us and suffered all the pain of being human.

​The boy in this story, Matt, wasn’t a bad kid but he was wrapped in his own wants to the point of not noticing anyone else’s needs.  He doesn’t wish anyone ill – he just doesn’t see them.  It isn’t until his father places him right in the middle of another family’s desperate need that he begins to understand – and then – when he sees and becomes part of doing something about the family’s need – then he experiences true joy – maybe for the first time in his life.

This is what God wants from us and for us – that we learn to care about each other.  Whether the world says they are our responsibility or no is irrelevant – it is our task and our joy to join our lives with theirs in some way so that, in the words of Ram Dass:  We are all just walking each other home.

This is where we find joy – in our own hearts – when we reach beyond our own wants and needs and discover there is so much more to care about.

May your heart be filled with God's Joy --- in this season and always.