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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 33:14-16

If someone set a piece of paper and some art supplies before you and asked you to draw a picture of an orange, or an apple or a bouquet of flowers, you might give it a try.

At the very least, you would have a mental image of an orange, or an apple or a bouquet of flowers.

But if you were given a piece of paper and some art supplies and asked to draw a picture of joy, what would you do?

Not a very easy assignment, is it?

Most of us would end up, sooner or later, drawing an image of a person — very likely, a person smiling or laughing.

It’s hard to come up with an abstract image of joy because our awareness of joy is very much tied up in human beings. We can’t very well depict joy without first creating the image of a human being experiencing the emotion of joy.

In a similar way, the human race was not able to discover true joy of the most lasting nature until Jesus came into the world. In the babe of Bethlehem — and, later, in the grown man who would die on the cross and rise again — our world sees joy as in no other place.

Joy is incarnational that way.

Prayer: O God, grant us the joy of this Advent season, not only to have for ourselves but to share with others. Amen.

—Carlos Wilton