From the Pastor - December 2006

Joy comes to us in many different ways. Sometimes we are joyful simply to be alive. At other times, joy comes to us unexpectedly. Joy may also come when a promise is fulfilled. Joy can also come in a time of great pain and suffering.

That’s the kind of joy that came that first Christmas. Those who lived in Israel at the time desperately needed some kind of message of Joy. Living under the oppression of the Roman empire, many believed that, somehow, God would intervene.

Joseph and Mary certainly understood what it meant to desperately need Joy. It could not have been easy for Mary, as young as she was, to be pregnant at time when being pregnant without being married could have led to her being abandoned by Joseph at best, and death by stoning at worst.

Just when it seemed like things were getting to be more normal for her; Joseph had agreed to stick around so that they could see this thing through together, word came that Rome had called for a census. Both Mary and Joseph well understood that making the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was dangerous, given Mary’s condition. But what could they do? They had to go.

Certainly life was anything but joyful for those shepherds watching over the sheep. Shepherding was not the bucolic career that we think it was. We know from histories of the time, and from archeological evidence that being a shepherd was something you did when you couldn’t do anything else. It was a job for “High school dropouts” (if they’d had high school in those days, which they didn’t). It was about as blue collar as you can get.

When is it that we most need to hear that message of Joy? Certainly during times of disappointment, failure and struggle; times when the future seems hopeless and dark; times of grief and loss.

For me, joy comes from once again hearing that familiar story of that very first Christmas, for it reminds me that we cannot manipulate when joy comes. Nor can we make ourselves feel joy. Instead joy is a gift, coming to us as it did to Mary, Joseph, and the Shepherds from God. May God give you the gift of joy this Christmas season.

Pastor Tony