Magnified

After church dinner on Wednesday night I headed back home. As I was parking, I noticed that my neighbor on the corner was out on her porch having a cigarette. I met her while moving in this summer and have had the chance to speak with her a few times...but I’ve largely been out of touch. She had a tough summer tending to a dying father. Something inside me encouraged me to go and catch up. After mild pleasantries, I simply said, “You’ve had a rough year, how are you holding up?” Turns out, I really had no idea just how rough things had been.

She told me that her daughter and son-in-law’s house had just burnt down last week. Her daughter and grand-daughter were living with her while waiting on temporary housing, and son-in-law was with his parents. She told me of health issues she’s been struggling with. She told me she recently lost her job. And she told me of the struggles in grief she’s been through with losing her father. “Wow, that’s a lot. How have you managed through all that?”

“I try to keep things simple,” she told me, “and to be grateful for what I do have. It’s easy to focus on what I’ve lost or what I don’t have, but there’s always something to be grateful for...and I try to focus on that as much as I can.”

That really struck me as profound. By focusing her soul on that which was good, she was able to be grateful in the midst of grief. I find myself wrestling each year as I approach the sermon I write to preach by the light of the candle of Joy. How do I “focus” on joy while also respecting and acknowledging the hardships and pain on our prayer chain this year? We’ve experienced the death of loved ones, ongoing illness, pain and health issues, cancers and treatments, tragedies and conflicts, loss of jobs, struggles with depression.

What I found most profound about my neighbor’s words were in how they helped me connect with the opening line of Mary’s song in a new way. “My soul magnifies the Lord!” she sings. What is magnification but a way of bringing things into focus and clarity, a way of focusing on the little things, a way of finding power and beauty in the seemingly small and insignificant? “But wait,” you say, “God is doing something big, something tremendous!” Yes, but God is working with little things, seemingly insignificant things, and making something big out of that. If we’re not able to focus on the little things, we’re going to miss where God is at work in the world. Mary chooses to focus on the lowly little things God is working with, including the lowly little thing that is growing in her womb, and she breaks forth in a song of Joy!

Advent Joy, I’ve decided, is not forcing merry and bright upon ourselves, it’s not disguising our sore and suffering hearts with jingle bells and tinsel. Advent Joy is focusing on that lowly light of Christ that is growing in the womb of your soul, and magnifying that. Advent Joy comes from realizing that our Lord comes in the darkness of night, the darkness of the soul, to the lowliest of places, to a world full of conflict, pain, and tragedy...Advent Joy comes from magnifying how God descends to us, our Emmanuel.

My childhood pastor, now friend and mentor, Charles Grant, once made this distinction between joy and happiness. “Happiness,” he said, “is getting a new bike, but joy...joy is learning how to ride a bike.” Let’s think about this. Your bike can break, you can lose it, it can be stolen, or you can simply outgrow it...but your ability to ride a bike is something that can never be taken from you. The things that make us happy can break, be lost, stolen, or outgrown...but that which brings us joy can never be taken from us.

So what is it that brings us joy, what ought our souls be seeking to magnify? It occurs to me that our faith, in and of itself, is more like a bicycle. How many times over the course of your life have you lost your faith, or outgrown it, or had it stolen away by tragedy? It is not our faith which brings us joy, but rather the object of our faith. Our joy is in Christ. I find it much more comforting, empowering, and inspiring to think that when my faith is at its weakest and most depleted, broken, run-down, and lowly...that God is able to plant seeds of possibility, hope, and peace there. It’s not up to me and my faith to create joy, but it is God who constantly challenges my failing faith with the promise that joy is not lost to me.

19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon spoke these words: “Our life is found in ‘looking unto Jesus’ (Heb. 12:2), not in looking to our own faith. By faith all things become possible to us, yet the power is not in the faith but in the God in whom faith relies.” Jen Oshman expands on this in an article she wrote for The Gospel Coalition entitled “Jesus is Always Bigger Than Your Faith.” I’ll let her tell you the story:

Years ago, on a flight from Japan to Taiwan, I was in the bathroom with my 4-year-old daughter when turbulence hit. Without warning, we were knocked to the floor. We hit the locked door so hard it burst open. We heaved up and down for what felt like an eternity, helpless against the air currents outside.

At long last, the turbulence subsided, and we returned to our seats with my husband and other kids. Their smiles told me that the little ones thought the bumpy ride was a blast. I, on the other hand, hated flying more than ever before.

Though that flight was horrible, I’ve flown in dozens of planes in the decade since. Yet each time I battle doubts and have to fight to keep my imagination from wandering. When turbulence hits, I grab my husband’s hand, willing the plane afloat with white knuckles. My faith in the airplane is weak.

Meanwhile, my husband’s faith and my kids’ faith is strong. They don’t give the airplane’s condition or our safety any thought. When turbulence strikes, they all shout, “This is awwwesome!”

But here’s the thing: Even though my faith is weak and my family’s is strong, we all arrive at the same destination. Even though I wrestle with doubt and they don’t, we all get delivered to the same place.

The captain doesn’t come back to my seat and say, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but because you doubt the soundness of this aircraft and my flying capabilities, we’re going to make an early landing and let you off in another city. You don’t get to arrive at the destination, because your trust is weak.”

Just as it’s the power of the airplane, not the power of my faith, that delivers me, so the power for our salvation lies in the strength of our God, not in the strength of our faith. We must fix our eyes on Jesus, not ourselves (Heb. 12:2). His Word doesn’t instruct us to grow our faith by pulling ourselves up by our spiritual bootstraps. He doesn’t threaten to leave us if we can’t conjure up enough faith.

Jesus says, Look to me (John 3:14–15). Come to me. (Matt. 11:28). I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Jesus promises to work when our faith is as small as a mustard seed (Matt. 17:20), for it isn’t the size of our faith that finally matters, but he who is the object.

Even our faith itself is a gift of God, as Paul says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). Our entire life of trusting Christ is itself by Christ, through Christ, and for Christ (Col. 1:16). [1]

Joy is a flow’r growing out of the sand.

Joy is a spring welling up from dry land.

Joy is creation redeemed and restored,

All things united with love as their Lord.

So shine, light of joy, on the world as we wait.

Shine, light of joy, on us all.

May your soul magnify the Lord, and may the Lord magnify your joy! Amen.

[1] Oshman, Jen. “Jesus Is Always Bigger Than Your Faith.” from The Gospel Coalition. June 13, 2018.

<https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/jesus-always-bigger-faith/>. Accessed: December 15, 2019.