Advent: Joy in Sorrow

Our family is celebrating the Advent tradition this year, following the guide provided by our church: CCCC Advent 20113.  We're also teaching the same lessons in Creek Kids.  I am loving it, but also struggling with it, since this season of my life is also a season of grief.

The first week of advent was Hope.  That was easy to grab onto in my grief, considering this feeling of grief and sadness is so overwhelming, that my Hope in the Savior is what keeps me afloat: Truth to Cling to When Life Gets Crappy.

The second week of advent was Love.  That was easy to grab onto, especially when I read this quote from Chip Ingram in The Genius of Generosity:

“Jesus gave His own life, but God gave His own precious Son.  Any good parent understands that it’s easier to sacrifice your own life than the life of one of our kids.  God had nothing more precious that He could offer than Jesus, His only Son.”

And let us not forget that God the Son also gave up, although temporarily, that perfect relationship with God the Father, when He allowed the Father's wrath to be poured out on Him.  Oh how He loves us.  The love I can grasp.

This third week of advent is the week of Joy.  This I am struggling with.  I am so sad.  Since Thanksgiving, when the relief of my dad's not suffering was finally surpassed by the grief that he is gone, I have been just so sad.  I have been forced to face that my world is broken.  Sure, the world around me has always been broken, but my world has always been safe.  Until now.  My world is broken and my heart is broken, and Joy is a strange word in these circumstances.  

I have been struggling with this.  Christmas is a source of Joy.  My faith is a source of Joy.  But how does one access such Joy in times of sorrow?  

Last night I attended Andrew Peterson's Behold The Lamb concert. This morning I downloaded the album.  The one thing that strikes me over and over in his songs, is the tone of melancholy.  Even with the words singing of peace, hope, love, and Joy, the tone is melancholy.  My heart is eating this up.  

The song that speaks to me the most this season is Labor of Love.  It tells a kind of different story of the Silent Night, Holy Night.  A story depicting the sorrow, pain, and sacrifice of Mary and Joseph to bring into the world this baby who promised hope, peace, and Joy.  As I listened to it over and over again this morning, contemplating sorrow and Joy all mixed into one, I realized two things:

1. The Joy is more beautiful for the sorrow.  They are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, the one enhances the other.  Jesus himself, who knows how this story ends, was known as a man of sorrows.  This life, this broken life, in this broken world, is sad, hard, full of sorrows.  And there is Joy.  The Joy we wait for is made more complete by the presence of this sorrow now.  This sorrow makes us hunger for the Joy, and when we receive it at world's end, our hearts will be the happier for having known the taste of sorrow and yet knowing we never have to taste it again.  At the same time, we are able to have a taste of that Joy right now.  I have always believed that true Joy, like true peace, is Joy in spite of circumstances.  Which leads me to the second realization:
2. The five gifts of Advent (Hope, Love, Joy, Peace, Christ) cannot be separated one from another.  How can I have Joy in the midst of my circumstances, in the midst of my sorrow?  Only by holding fiercely onto my Hope in the Love of God, who gave His Son, the Christ, so that I might have Peace and Joy in the midst of my sorrow.  To single out Joy, to try to capture or fabricate Joy apart from the Hope and Love of Christ, is not possible.  

Somehow this helps me embrace my sorrow and embrace my Joy all at the same time.  And maybe that's why the candles of advent are all connected in a wreath, an infinite circle connecting Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace, all circling around the answer to each one: Christ.  

Have an Advent filled with hope, love, Joy, and peace, my friends.