Tidings of Comfort and Joy, a devotional thought

You can't get very far into Luke's gospel without noticing how downright joyful everyone is, or becomes, as they prepare for the Messiah's arrival.  You've got thrilled Elizabeth, crying out in a loud voice (v. 41), Mary bursting out into spontaneous song (v. 46), and Zechariah, too (v. 67) overflowing with joy.  Even little fetal John the Baptist, as yet unborn, is leaps with delight in his mother's womb (v. 44).  Like a cheerful chime, the word "joy" it self rings out clearly and compellingly on nearly every page.

As someone who has had some very dark struggles in the past with joy's polar opposite, it occurs to me here that the arrival of Jesus on the scene--whatever the particular scene may be--is an occasion for, and a source of, deep down joy. Not frivolity, or flippancy, or humor even, but biblical joy: an overflowing contentment in him, that bubbles up in self-abandonment (v. 38), rich fellowship (v. 40), heart-songs (v. 46) and maybe even the odd dance or two (v. 41).

At the risk of sounding like Scrooge, let me point out the irony here, that so many of us experience the weeks leading up to Christmas as a series of frantic Black Fridays, one after the other.  Syrupy Christmas Muzak and Seasonal Sentimentality puts a ruthless finger on the raw nerve of what we don't have, who we're not with, our unfulfilled longings for the perfect Christmas that no one's ever had, and we find ourselves, if not joyless, certainly too exhausted to be joyful.

At the risk of sounding like a naive Tiny Tim, let me also offer a Christmas wish.  May this advent season be a Luke Chapter 1 kind of advent, where we experience a deeper filling with the Holy Spirit (there's a lot of that going on in Chapter 1, too-- v. 15, v. 35, v. 41, v. 67) and in Him, the contented Joy that is ever attendant on the coming of the Messiah.