Advent Thoughts…

One Week Till Christmas Day!🎄🎄🎄

I pray you are well, as I know lots who are sick or have been since Thanksgiving.

One bonus to sickness, it will stop you in your tracks, rearrange priorities, mandate rest, and sometimes narrow your world to four walls. It is never convenient, but it can make you focus on what is important, discarding the optional or perfection tendencies. I speak from experience this year. It’s no fun, but can bring some needed attitude and/or overdo mindset.

Our church is celebrating Advent this year. Which I love!

I’ve missed several services, because of illness, but an online option has kept me in tune. Plus, I have done my own readings and devotions centered on advent.

If your church does not include an Advent focus, I encourage you to do some research on it or involve yourself in an advent reading plan. The Bible App has several, there are also podcasts you can find for daily listening.

This week …

The Advent Wreath

A third candle—a pink one—is lit on the Advent Wreath for the third Sunday of Advent. This candle, often called the Shepherd’s Candle or the Joy Candle, represents joy, such as the joy the shepherds experienced when the angel told them that Christ was to be born. The Advent season is now half over, and Jesus’ coming—both his first coming, liturgically, and his second coming, historically—is nearer now than it was two weeks ago. (Christianity.com)

Focus on JOY!

Like the joy of the shepherds. This reading in Luke 2:1-20 has always evoked visual images in my mind. Shepards in the field, a sky filled with heavenly hosts/angels praising God and speaking! This is a movie scene! It plays out so dramatically: visually and in stereo. I can get very carried away with imaging the moment!

Having visited the “Shepherds Fields” outside of Bethlehem aid in bringing these words on paper to full 3-D life! I think I can sense some of the majesty and grandeur of this moment.

Honestly, it is filled with JOY and emotion. All the senses reeling from the heavenly, other-worldly display! I believe it was so much more than even I can imagine and that brings me joy too! As big and cinematic as my mind can conceive … it was likely so much more!!

Ahhhh, I wish I had been there! I wish I could watch someone’s ring camera capture. I wish it was caught on film for the ages!

But our only replay is allowing words on a page to become real to the extent of our imaginations. Even that brings me so much joy!

Can you even imagine the shepherd’s responses? Speechless, stunned, jaw dropped, knees dropped, arms lifted. Maybe even a few blinks to focus on the reality before them.

For the rest of their lives, it had to be the top story they recalled to anyone and everyone who would listen. Their grandchildren knew the account and probably even their eulogies, if they did such things then, held a reference. “He was in the shepherd’s field when the angels appeared!”

I would guess it fueled their soul for the rest of their lives: not only the appearing, but then the baby! Seeing baby Jesus!! Being the first ones notified! Having the honor and privilege of responding to God’s announcement!

Their hearts had to be filled with joy for a lifetime on this one unsuspected night!

Can you feel it?

Can you capture a piece of it in your own spirit?

Have you felt JOY this season?

I hope and pray it comes upon you on an ordinary night as suddenly as angels filling the heavens!

When it does, it will not disappear at sunrise!

He Is JOY,