Going Home Another Way
Week 3 – The Destination
Three Magi on the Way to Bethlehem, by Hans Thoma
Joy
“We come to realize more each year how great are our blessings, how beautiful is a life lived in concert with the Jesus who came to show us the way. We learn the joy of anticipation, the joy of delighting in a sense of the presence of God all around us, the joy of looking for the second coming of Christ, the joy of living in the surety of even more life in the future.”1
For Reflection
Have you been too distracted by activities and preparations to feel joy this Advent? Joy often has to be deliberately chosen. It’s easier to ping-pong between the daily frustrations of things not going according to our plan and the general busyness of checking everything off our to-do list(s). What do you need to feel joy this season?
Footnotes
- Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year, 66. ↩︎
Falling Up After 50 
I think it’s a constant struggle to choose joy over anxiety, to choose to be excited about something vs worrying that something will go wrong (or, in my mind, catastrophic). Let Go and Let God. All the time spent worrying rarely changes the outcome, although I do concede that contingency planning can certainly help alter a possible bad outcome and prevent it or lessen the harm. It’s a conscious effort to let go of fear and be free. And it’s also fleeting. The light switch doesn’t remain on. Need to check it constantly.
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I agree (and that’s why this is a recurring theme in my writing!). I only hope that by repeatedly choosing the joy over the fear, it slowly re-wires my brain and makes it easier to make that good choice.
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