Advent Reflections #7: The What of Advent, Joy

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How often does the Bible tell us to rejoice?  According to my eword software, 161 times the word appears in Scripture.  That’s pretty clear. 

Rejoice means to have a party in the right sense.  Now, party has taken on the wrong meaning nowadays.  It means excess, inebriation, drugs, you name it.  That is so sad, because the Bible has a lot of parties in it and the Jews were supposed to have lots of parties and feast days.  Perhaps because Christianity has historically been on the defensive as a religion (persecuted, out of the mainstream) we have been afraid to party, to celebrate, to rejoice.   Our Puritanical (or maybe Victorian, or fundamentalist) attitudes cast parties as suspect.  But they aren’t.

I know that there is a difference between joy and rejoice in our minds.  Joy is a stable attitude or condition of mind, but rejoice is an event, an action, an emotional response.  Baloney.  We can rejoice always, and again I say, rejoice, to quote Paul. 

Especially in Advent.  However, our rejoicing must demand a 180 turn in why we rejoice.  Rejoice in family (as opposed to groaning about seeing them). Rejoice in giving (rather than getting).  Rejoice in the weather (if nothing else, on December 21 we have the solstice and the days get longer!).  Rejoice in the music and the great artistic minds that created The Messiah and the hymns. 

Rejoice that a savior is born, maybe not really in December, but he is born.  Birth is always a time for rejoicing.

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