Celebrate the true JOY of Christmas
Like many other people, I find myself often doing a fair bit of shopping online.
One of the problems (as I see it) that comes with online shopping are the many, many emails that come pouring in once companies and traders have your email address.
The other morning I got one of those emails that made a rather bold claim.
They said THIS: “STOCKINGS + GIFTS = JOY!”
Stockings (and the gifts with which they are filled) certainly bring about squeals of delight on Christmas morning, but I think that I have a slightly different idea about what brings JOY at this time of year.
The Third Sunday in Advent, which was December 11 this year, is known as ‘joy Sunday’.
But that joy is not the kind that can be bought online, on the high street or anywhere else.
The joy of the Third Sunday in Advent comes from knowing how a season of anticipation and expectation will turn out. We live through Advent waiting and watching for the arrival of the Messiah, just as the Jewish nation had done for so long.
But by Joy Sunday, those of us who share in the Christian faith find that we are allowed to revel in the confidence we have in the birth of Jesus as the Christ-child.
Further than that, we live with faith in the life that he went on to live; the life of compassion and understanding he showed to the least and lost, and the death he endured so that our lives might offer something more.
I do like my Christmas stocking to be full of gifts, but what brings me JOY is the story of that first Christmas and of the gift God presents to us all in the child of Bethlehem and the man of Nazareth.
Reverend Joanne Hood of St John’s Church, Hamilton