Looking Ahead to December 14, 2025 -- Advent 3

 

The Scripture Readings this week are:

• Isaiah 35:1-10
• Psalm 146 (We will use the responsive reading from Voices United)
• Luke 1:39-45

The Sermon title is The Christmas Dream: Blossoming Joy

Early Thoughts: Where do you find joy this year? When has joy been absent or difficult?

For that matter what does Joy mean to you?

Just for fun I went to dictionary.com and found this

OR if I clicked on the "American" tab I found:

So there are options. I think many people tend toward the American focus on great happiness or delight. Certainly that seems to be how the word is often used. I tend to lean toward the British usage, particularly when we talk about Joy in a faith sense. The Joy of Christmas comes from that deep feeling of contentment. Joy as great happiness can then, I truly believe, flow and grow out of that sense of contentment. 

In fact I think Christmas Joy is first related to trust and then later to happiness. We trust that, as the New Creed reminds us, we are not alone and the Christmas story reminds us that God not only is with us but chooses to become like us. Out of that trust can come contentment even when happiness would be totally out of place.

What would it take for Joy (either deep contentment or great happiness)  to erupt in your life today?

Isaiah speaks of the wilderness and the dry land bursting into flower and then of the liberation that is to come. The Psalm reminds us that happiness (or maybe even joy) lies in trusting in God (with another reminder of liberation that is to come). Elizabeth's unborn child leaps for joy at the mere presence of Mary and her unborn child (after which Mary sings of the liberation that is to come). Joy breaks into our story over and over, Joy that comes with the active presence of God in the world.

When Joy comes into our lives colour returns. Like the desert after a rain can burst into fresh new growth God pouring into our lives makes us bloom. Sometimes life can be hard and joy, particularly that definition of great happiness, seems like nothing more than a pipe dream. But God is active in the world. God calls us to trust and seek contentment in God's presence. That needs to be the source of our Christmas Joy. 

Joy can come to the wilderness places in our world. The wilderness can break into bloom. It takes faith and trust. It doesn't come, as the Grinch once learned, from the store.  

Let us all look for signs of Joy blossoming in the world around us this Christmas.
--Gord