This week's Advent devotional from Practicing the Way reflects on the joy we have been given in Jesus.

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Pastor Tracy

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Read Luke 1:26-38, 2:19

"I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way." Luke 7:27

"You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus." Luke 1:31

"But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." Luke 2:19

It’s not only for peace that the Spirit visits our listening, but for the promise. All this barrenness, anticipation, hope, and the word of peace in the story of Advent is drawing us toward one profound and cosmos-shaping revelation: Christ is arriving to us.

But it’s no small thing that he arrives himself as a seed, sown into the darkness of our lives, carried in the womb of humanity. God’s beatific vision is one that grows up in our midst, as ordinary and common as any of the rest of us. Christ is the same with you and I today.

We, too, are invited to hold Christ and his promises within us, gestating in the midst of our daily living as hidden miracles, anticipating their full birth in God’s timing. That’s the great beauty of Advent — God has come to us and is in our midst. Like Mary, we’re invited to “ponder these things in our hearts” as we carry the presence of Christ in each season and in every place of need. Because if we’re living listening lives, we’ll hear God saying to us in many little ways that we too will “conceive and give birth” (Luke 1v31). Through Scripture, a visit of God’s joy to the heart, a passing comment in a conversation with a friend, or through a line in a book or song, God speaks to our everyday needs and longings.

All these little messengers are meant to stir anticipation. To alert us and begin to open us up. Each one awakens us to a bigger picture, the expectation of change, the arriving presence within us of his love. And it’s through this practice of holding God’s promises within us, and living into them, that true spiritual joy springs up. Because joy is living in the delight of what God is going to do, as much as what he already is. It’s prophetic like that. That kind of joy, like God’s peace, is transcendent because it can live untouched by the taunts and terminalities of this world. It’s not based on what we experience today, but on who God is and what he has said he will do.

Be the biblical promises of Christ’s ultimate victory or his own personal word to us today, by calling them to memory and holding them within our hearts, we can more fully live in the joy that God is and will arrive to us. Yes, Christ is coming, but in Mary’s story we discover that he’s also already here. Sown in our midst, growing up within us, pouring out his peace and love.

Reflect

Reflecting on recent times, what little messengers has God sent to you that are a source of joy? Consider taking some time this week to ponder God’s promises, be they biblical or personal, and to “ponder them in your heart.” You might like to write them down, journal about them, or share them with a friend as a way of remembering.

You might like to sit with the scripture, “On that day you will realize ... I am in you” (John 14:20), and allow the joy of Christ’s presence in your very soul to fill your daily living.