VBC 2025 // Oh The Joy
When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great JOY — Matthew 2:10
In a book series focused on the church calendar (Fullness of Time), Tish Harrison Warren points out that, as other calendars are winding down, the start of Advent (the 4th Sunday before Christmas) is the church's New Year’s Day. The word Advent means “coming." It’s meant to be a period of yearning for God’s presence and activity in our midst. So as the church starts its year, it does so in a posture of expectant anticipation. Of waiting.
I have a friend who asks the best questions (shout out PDub). I mean, sometimes they get weird like “What color is your soul right now?” But for the most part, they’re wonderful. The guy makes you think. One of the things I’ve learned from his barrage of curiosity is that, if you don't think too hard — if you don't filter — you can learn something about yourself. So when he asked what I was waiting for this Advent, I blurted out — “Nothing. I’m just going to be JOYFUL.” His question was the second Christmas gift I received this year.
The first was a song.
When I came across Cageless Bird’s “Oh The JOY”, I wept. Its delicately threaded ensemble of voices and haunting chord progressions are a beautiful backdrop for its elegantly simple lyrics. Together they knit a tapestry of the first Christmas where, if we look closely, we spy heaven bending low as with a sacred secret; and we catch a glimpse of the first Yule Gift.
Oh the joy, the joy of a humble beginning, when there was no room for him, but his heart opened wide;
Oh the joy, the joy of shepherds and angels, singing in reverence, filling up the sky;
Oh the joy, the joy of a promised savior, piercing the darkness, lifting our eyes;
Oh the joy, the joy of a God that’s generous, giving extravagance, He’s my sunrise.
I wept because it's beautiful. I also wept because, as I listened to it, I felt close to a JOY that too often eludes me. I wait for it. But not expectantly.
The gift of the Advent inquiry was more than a question asked in love by a friend. I learned from my spontaneous response that while hopeful anticipation is a healthy posture before God, we’re not meant to wait for JOY. JOY is waiting for us right now. In like fashion, Cageless Bird’s gift to me was more than a song. It reminded me of a key for unlocking that JOY: Find something beautiful and meditate on it (Phil 4:8).
After all, "Any beauty in the world is, in some degree, a pointer to God. Beauty has this in common with goodness and truth” (C.S. Lewis). Those things worthy of our admiration somehow pluck a base string in our souls that reverberates upward to heaven and connects us, if only abstractly, to the Transcendent. To behold beauty is to see a shadow of the God of JOY — to feel Him resonate within us.
All of us have stepped into these awesome moments of JOY— had brief, shimmering glimpses of God. The problem is that each flash of His beauty awakens more longing. And longing brings us back to waiting.
What we wait for during Advent — almost unthinkably — works in reverse. If beauty is a ladder for peaking at heaven, the God of JOY isn’t waiting for us to scale the skyfold. Thankfully, mysteriously, the ladder works for descending too; and knowing we could never reach Him, He came down to get us. So on that first Christmas, heaven bent low enough to deliver its King — the Transcendent condescending to be one us. It must mean, among a myriad of wonderful mysteries, that in spite of our flaws, we are beautiful to God, too. That we are His JOY.
Now we find, as we behold the babe in the manger, we’re face to face with heaven’s Gift — Him who would trade his royal privilege and perch for our presence; Him in Whom our longing is fulfilled. When we expectantly wait for Him each year, the waiting itself becomes JOY; the eyes of our hearts are filled with wonder as we recognize the face of the true Beauty to which all beauty points. When we see His light piercing the darkness, we can’t help but join the angels, singing in reverence, “Oh the JOY!”; for He has found us.
So let's lift up our eyes and see Him this Advent; make room for Him in our hearts and meditations. He comes to bring JOY.
“Oh The Joy” may or may not impact you as it has me these past weeks, but I pray every year that in the humble collection of songs I curate, you would find something beautiful — something that brings you JOY and points you to the God who's coming, who has come and who is with us now. May you and your family receive His extravagant love this Christmas and look full in His wonderful face.
JOY to the world, the Lord has come.
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Playlist Archives
2024: Spotify
2023: Spotify
2022: Spotify. Apple.
2021: Spotify.
2020: Spotify. Apple.
2019: Spotify. Apple.
2018. Spotify. Apple.
2017. 2016. 2015. 2013.
2012. 2011. 2010. 2008.
2007. 2006. 2005. 2004.
2003. This Christmas Pageant is always worth watching.