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    Dec 13, 2015

    Imagine Joy: God Keeps Promises!

    Imagine Joy: God Keeps Promises!

    Passage: Luke 1:46-48

    Speaker: Rev. Vivian McCarthy, Pastor

    Series: Imagine

    Category: Advent

    Keywords: advent, devotions, hope, joy, malaria, peace

    God keeps promises! And when we live in those promises, we can live with JOY.

    Both Mary and the Apostle Paul had a handle on the future – what they saw and what they hoped for.  They knew that God had hold of their lives and that one day life would be very different.  Mary sang of powerful, manipulative rulers being replaced, the lowly being lifted out of the mire, the hungry being filled, the fortunes of Israel being restore.  Paul was unshakable in his belief that the Lord is near.  Both of them believed in God’s promises as preached by the prophets such as Isaiah.  And because they believed God’s promises, they each had powerful words to say about rejoicing.

    Let’s begin with Paul.  What are some of the promises of God that you think Paul was celebrating in this passage?

    And what about Mary?  What do you think Mary is celebrating?

    Perhaps the greatest joy of all is knowing that God has promised a time when

    • every valley will be exalted and every mountain and hill be made low;
    • when the crooked places will be made straight;
    • where lions and lambs will dwell together in peace;
    • where all God’s children will live in unity and sing in harmony;
    • when wars will be a distant memory;
    • when hunger and thirst will be satisfied;
    • where not one person will be in pain or consumed with worry.

    Imagine the joy of the reign of God fully realized. 

    Just for a moment, consider a time when you didn’t have to imagine joy – but you felt it well up in you because something incredible had happened.  Would anyone like to share your joy?

    Christmas scriptures celebrate that kind of joy – the kind that comes from knowing (as said by Julian of Norwich) that all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.  She was the same saint who said, “The greatest honor we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.”  In the Advent and Christmas stories, we glimpse not only the gift of God in birth of the Holy Child but the fullness of the beauty that is promised when God will truly reign

    • in place of our petty wants and wishes,
    • in place of human grasping for power and control,
    • in place of shallow commitments and ill-considered paths. 

    We’ve given witness today to some of those personal joys – personal glimpses of God’s reign.  For just a moment, let’s celebrate more communal witness of God’s reign, of how God’s people have worked together toward a vision of joy and hope and peace.  For you see, we have been imagining no malaria now for 8 years as a denomination and in cooperation with other Christians.  We have been holding hands with God to care for some of God’s most vulnerable people – those in Africa where malaria is a killer.  When we started this journey in 2007, there were so many deaths every day just in Africa, that it was the equivalent of losing ever person on board a 747 airliner – yes, that was every day.  One in 5 children died before their 5th birthday. 

    Holding hands with God, we have made a huge difference.  But let’s let them tell us the story:

     View the video at this link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3yYhDnxiX8

     Beloved, this Advent, imagine Joy!