JOY WHEN GOD HAS DONE GREAT THINGS
Jesus’s birth was a reason for joy for people, and it remains one for us. When Mary knew that she was going to give birth to Jesus, she proclaimed, ‘My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’. Soon after, an angel was telling some Bethlehem shepherds that he was ‘bringing them news of great joy for all the people’. It’s hardly surprising that they ran to Bethlehem to see what had happened. Then the wise men, seeing that the star had stopped at Bethlehem, were ‘overwhelmed with joy’ [see Luke 1:47; 2:10; Matthew 2:10].
Jesus’s resurrection was reason for joy, too, and it still is. Jesus warned the disciples that they were going to weep and mourn, but he promised them that their sadness would turn into joy because they would see him again. They would forget their pain like a mother forgetting her pain when she experiences the joy of having brought her baby into the world. Their hearts would rejoice and no one would take their joy from them. In fact, they would have a bigger joy [see John 16:20-22].
It’s hardly surprising that the disciples as a group were full of joy when the resurrected Jesus appeared to them, though they were also disbelieving and dumbfounded [Luke 24:41]. It fits that when the two Marys had found an angel sitting triumphantly outside Jesus’s empty tomb, they felt fear as well as great joy [Matthew 28:8]. Their experience was shocking and overwhelming. It also fits that there is one scriptural passage that speaks of Jesus’s joy. ‘In view of the joy set before him, he endured a cross, disregarding shame, and sat at the right hand of God’s throne’ [Hebrews 12:2]. ‘Rejoice in hope’, Paul says [Romans 5:2]. It’s another paradoxical statement, and I imagine Jesus was rejoicing in hope, but for him, too, there was a different kind of rejoicing when hope became reality. ‘Regard it as all joy’, James urges, ‘when you face different kinds of trials.’ How can that make sense? Because ‘you know that the testing of your faith generates perseverance’, which takes you on the road towards maturity [James 1:2-3].
