The Weight (and Wait) of Joy

Is Joy Heavy or Light?

It is snowy out but not icy, darkening but not yet dark, and still in a 45mph zone the car in front of me is holding steady at 15.

I have nothing to rush home to tonight, just some tea in a mug and some pages to turn in a book, yet as I accelerate and swoop ahead of this other driver I am starting to get a little huffy.

For several weeks now I have been waiting for something to happen. The specifics aren’t helpful to share; the point is that with all of my breath I have been waiting. Wishing. Wanting. Hoping. Praying that it would happen. And what I have been telling myself is that if this something were to come true it might possibly change my whole life for the better. The day would open up like a gift, and joy would arrive—enough to float on for a while.

So with every day that there’s no new news, I stomp a little harder on the gas pedal.

There is this crazy tendency I have—and maybe you have it too—to believe that joy is a single shining moment of happiness. That it’s the high peak on a line chart, the instant when everything comes together and adds up and is good. Something spectacular happens, and joy is the light, airy space afterward that fills up your lungs with dizziness and makes you grin like an idiot. So it is always the moment, or the next moment at least, that we are waiting for. Right?

But in stooping to peer under the rocky entrance of a Bethlehem stable, I find that my theory falls apart. Because here is Joy to the world: his skin red from birth, limbs flopped to his sides in newborn-sleep. Here is a mother—exhausted? A father—scared? Amid the chill of night, here is the stink of manure, the quiet chaos of new life. The unsettling hush of a place that is not home.

Here is Joy: an infant in a feed trough, low enough for the sheep to be curious and to knock him awake with their chins. Our Redeemer? At face value nothing aligns, and it doesn’t make a drop of sense.

Joy is not the froth and lightness we tend to long for and expect. Joy is an anchor; it is heavy. It falls into the coldest, deepest dark places, where the current and pressure are enough to crush bone, and it holds there. On the surface waves crash and roll, and we are not steady but we are held, and that is beautifully enough.

So when the soldier is not yet home, when the cure has not yet been found, when the loneliness hasn’t yet faded, there is Joy.

When the hurt hasn’t yet seen its end, there is Joy.

When we wait and wait and all for nothing because the happiness we’ve asked for doesn’t arrive, there is Joy. The Lord is come.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser… Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me… These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Jesus’ words in John 15

Note: No, it isn’t snowing in coastal Southern California. This piece is something I wrote a few years ago in collaboration with an Advent project at Mars Hill Bible Church.