Still Chasing the Joy?

The joy candle broke a few years back. You can see it up there in the picture. And I keep forgetting to buy a new one. As if a trip to the store could simply replace the broken joy. I believe it was a ball that someone threw or the after-dinner wrestling match that snapped the joy right in half. It doesn’t really matter how it happened; the truth is, joy is barely holding it together.

Here we are with only a few days left in our Advent waiting and joy still sits there taunting me; crooked, busted and leaning precariously on the edge of our Advent wreath. Of all the candles to break?

The boys laugh at the sad state of our little wreath and wonder if we shouldn’t just replace them all; hope, peace, love and joy. Then it would look new and shiny for Christmas, they insist.

But something in me loves that lopsided old wreath. Because, yeah. Me too.

It is the most wonderful time of the year and yet I find myself leaning hard to find the joy and bending low to pick up the peace and the hope I dropped somewhere along the way. I break with just the slightest push and stand awkwardly under the weight of it all. Can anyone relate?

It’s a lot of work trying to make all the magic happen this time of year, isn’t it? Everything should be perfect and glowing; beautiful and lovely. It’s Christmas for heaven’s sake! But something about this season also brings hard things out and sets them right in the light; it amplifies the background noise of our lives, exposing sharp edges and hidden heart ache.

Maybe that’s why I can’t help but love the broken and bent wreath. It reminds me of what’s real. Because the truth is, Jesus didn’t come into this world to bring us good cheer and perfectly decorated houses. He came to heal what we had broken. He came to bow low and to show us the way home.

He came because we are a lot like my little wreath. Unable to light ourselves and so easily tipped over.

He came because of a love that burned fierce and long. A love that God proclaimed through his prophet Jeremiah generations before the baby was ever laid to sleep in a manger:

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you in with loving-kindness. I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out and dance with the joyful” (Jeremiah 31:3-4).

We could not find the joy. We could not join the joyful on our own. So, the joy, the peace, the hope and the love came to find us.

I light the broken candle as the winds blow cold here in the South. It’s light still illuminates the room, and in the middle of all the rushing and the wrapping; we bow our heads for just a moment.

“I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Jesus was always clear about his mission. He entered humbly, silently, quietly. A king coming to save his people. But not like we imagined it. The prophets foretold the way it would happen. “See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious; lowly and riding on a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). Joy coming in the strangest of ways; in forms we never expect. And not really coming from us at all.

The lopsided wreath and the leaning candle of joy have it right. I don’t need to fix them. I just need to open my hands and receive them. It is what this waiting teaches us and what the prophets tried to insist was true, “Not by power or by might but by my Spirit says The Lord Almighty” (Zechariah 4:6).

We can’t make the joy. It won’t work. Trust me on this. Manufactured joy never satisfies the way we think it will.

Joy is the Lord’s to give. And he freely lavishes it upon us. But we can miss it. We can blow right by it chasing our own good intentions to make all things merry and bright. What if complicated and dark are ok too? Advent reminds us that light shines best in the darkness anyway.

Come to the manger and see, the Lord invites us. Bring your broken candles, your broken hearts, your busted-up expectations of how this season is supposed to feel a certain way and simply come. Come and worship, Christ the Lord the newborn King. The joy of the Lord coming to save his people.

“For in him [Jesus] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19).

And may this week allow you a bit of space, wherever you are, to know his presence with you; his joy, his love, his peace and his hope walking with you through whatever these final days of Advent hold. May you rest in the knowledge that he loves you with an everlasting love now, and forever more. Merry Christmas.

Alleluia. Amen.