Advent: Part 3 (joy)

“For the sake of my story and considering HIPAA,” one of my clients said during our meeting yesterday, “I’ll call the person I serve Joy.”

She talked about the difficulties of scheduling hours for her client’s in-home care and how her supervisor misunderstood her this week. I listened and responded accordingly, but the pseudonym she had picked lodged in my mind. Of all the names in all the world, she chose Joy. And I thought of my stillborn sister—a baby gone before she came—who entered the world on December 2, 1968. Her name was Joy too.

On my drive home, I clicked on the radio. The beloved Christmas song, in the middle of its second stanza, played:

While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains

Repeat the sounding joy,

Repeat the sounding joy,

Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

Returning to earth, I parked and strode into Target, skidding to a halt in the paper goods aisle. Shelved with other holiday supplies were plates marked with the word JOY. I popped them into my cart to remind me.

Last Sunday ignited the third light of Advent, the Candle of Joy, and I’ve thought about joy every day since then. The third candle is also called the shepherd’s candle for those humble overseers of the sheep who lived outside and eyed their charges with care—even in the darkness. And then one night it happened: the blinding light of heaven’s messengers shattered the sky, and fear leveled those field-dwellers. The news was not one of terror, though—despite its delivery—but of joy, announcing the birth of the great Shepherd of the sheep.

And off the herdsmen ran to tell anyone with ears to hear, repeating the joy of the best announcement ever.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found,

Far as the curse is found

Far as, far as, the curse is found.

Joy to the world!

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*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.