Advent Joy



What is true joy? And where do we find it?
In reference to Luke 3: 7-18 Judith Jones notes that “John calls his hearers to let God burn up our selfish desire to hoard our food and clothes even when our neighbour is hungry and shivering with cold. All that gets in the way of love for God and neighbour must go. Then we can live as God’s own people, aflame with love and committed to justice.”[1] Is this joy? Is this what the Sufi mystic Rumi meant when he said, “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”[2]
http://nativitycatholicchurch.org/media/1/7/Tin%20Sheltered%20Gratitute%20msuarez.jpg
This photo of a family in the Dominican Republic is not the normal Christmas scene.
Take some time each day this week to pray and reflect with this photo.
How do our normal Christmas scenes help us into God’s joy?
How do they hinder us?
What new joy are you being invited to experience this year?
Rumi also said, “Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”[3]
[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/joy
[3] Ibid

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