Zephaniah 3:14-20 (NIV)

Our family lights candles each Sunday evening at the dinner table during Advent. So far we’ve lit one for hope, one for peace, and now one for Joy. But this is more than glee, good tidings or happiness. It's what comes in that breaking point when all hope seems lost…. But then out of darkness comes a glorious light.  Advent calls us to remember the moment when Joy ended Israel’s long night of waiting for the Messiah—the incarnation. And it calls us to anticipate when he will come again delivering new creation.

J.R.R. Tolkien tried to describe this kind of moment, he called it a eucatastrophe. He wrote: "I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives – if the story has literary 'truth' on the second plane (....) – that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. 'eucatastrophe' produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love."

----------REFLECT----------

1. What did you hear in the passage? Was there a word or phrase that stood out to you?

2. What areas of your life are in need of a eucatastrophe, that sudden happy turn that pierces with joy? Ask the Lord to help you see and experience Joy in these areas.

3. How might the LORD want to encourage you today? How might the Holy Spirit be prompting you to respond? Take a moment, if something comes to mind, write it down and process it alone and with someone you trust.

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