Do you ever find yourself flipping through old photos? Nowadays, AI generates collages from your timeline. For some reason the algorithm “thinks” I need to be reminded about some entrée I ate nine years ago. Or worse, photos we've taken of our dogs for the vet! “Gee thanks AI, I really wanted to see pics of my dog’s cancerous, infected toe. Poor little Rudy, he lived a ruff life.” But then there are photos of those we never want to forget. Photos from family gatherings. Photos from trips and vacations, spontaneous moments.
Holiday photos are in a category all their own. There are two types of people in the world. Those who want to squeeze everyone into a family photo and those who don't like to be squeezed! You can tell who the squeezers are by their big smiles. The only squeezers in our family are my mom and sister. The non-squeezers have hostile-resting face syndrome! Who are our squeezers? Who are our hostile resting faced, non-squeezers?
Can I confess something to you? I don't like it when AI pops up holiday photos. Of all the seasons of the year, JOY ought to be most abundant at Christmas. But in so many of the Morrissette holiday photos, everyone seems stone faced. You'd think things would change with time—but it’s the same with the younger generation. Everyone on their devices, nobody smiling, no eye contact, no conversation, so little joy.
Why is joy so elusive? I wonder, do you ever sense a deficit of joy in your life? In your family? In people around you? Did someone declare war on joy?
A Harvard study was recently conducted on Joy in the workplace. It concluded that if you are in a place of leadership, it’s your “duty" to bring the joy every single day. Your JOY is the epicenter from which waves of JOY ought to emanate. That study kind of freaks me out. I don't know about you, but I am far more joyful and content internally than my face ever conveys (Please don't take my photo!) But think about this. If you are a leader, a pastor, married, a parent… in your family are you bringing the joy?
This month we're going to explore what it means to “be” JOY FULL. Whenever someone whips out a camera, we pine for the camera and try to “look" joyful. When family comes at Christmas, we try to manufacture happy emotions. Such joy is short-lived. What would it look like to be captivated by joy in our soul?
This morning, I want to talk about JOY as ANTICIPATION. Joy isn't necessarily rooted in our present circumstances, or what we already have. In Scripture, Joy is overwhelmingly centered around what we most anticipate. And not just in Scripture, also in life. The essence of life is anticipation. In creation, joy must be cultivated in order to be reaped later. By way of illustration, in spring you prepare the soil, you plow. As summer begins you sow seeds, water, fertilize, de-weed, prune and cultivate. And it’s all so that by fall you can reap, and by winter have food to eat. Anticipation is built into the rhythms of life and creation. Relationships, marriages, families must be carefully cultivated. Inherent in the birth of every child, months and months of anticipation! The first Christmas—the birth of Jesus—followed after not just nine months of anticipation—but centuries!
Think about this. Joy isn't necessarily rooted in our present circumstances. I saw how Amazon is trying to jettison the USPS. They are building warehouses all over the country to enable same-day delivery. They have their own delivery trucks and systems. Even crazier… Amazon and Wal-Mart are in a technological race to build delivery drones. Soon every house will have a little helicopter pad. Our lives are built around instant-gratification. We think instant-gratification is the essence of joy—why wait on Santa? Why wrap the gifts and wait? Let’s just open them now.
[SLIDE] Psychologists have discovered that anticipation multiplies, extends, and can even produce a joy greater than the substance of the thing hoped for! I saw this interesting chart describes the ebb and flow of joy:
Before Anticipation, you're like 4.0 on the Joy Richter Scale. You may not be anticipating anything specific, but deep down there is a hunger, a thirst, an existential longing. The Bible says God has set eternity in the hearts of men. We have this existential angst, longing, need for God but maybe don't have words to express it, or a worldview adequate enough to capture it.
But then comes Anticipation. Something comes along that promises to satisfy our deepest desires and longings. At Christmas, we don't even know what gifts sit under the tree—with them just sitting there--we're like 6.0 to 7.0 on the Richter Scale of Joy. And the night before Christmas: 9.0! But notice when JOY and HAPPINESS peak it always peaks in anticipation… just before…never during, and never after!
I call this the Ecclesiastes Problem. If JOY is rooted in anything less than a Fear and Love of God Himself, we're always coming up short on happiness. Solomon acquired everything he desired: Wisdom, Knowledge, Wealth, Beautiful Women, Land, Servants. He wined and dined. He enjoyed the finest entertainment. He was on an insatiable quest to find joy. And when joy failed, he’d change the goal posts, and fixate on the next thing, and the next, and the next. And at each point he'd lament, “Meaningless, Meaningless, Meaningless. Everything is meaningful, void, vain…”
When you truly find Christ, your joy doesn't peak at 9.0. It grows exponentially. On the Richter Scale every level isn't just “+1” (addition) it’s “2 times more” (multiplication, compounding, exponential, every-increasing joy). This is one of the mysteries of Christ. There is a sense in which the Christian life is about perpetual, intensifying anticipation. For centuries they waited for Christ to come. In the fullness of time, Christ came. With Christ's first coming, came much joy and satisfaction. The forgiveness of our sin. The gift of the Holy Spirit poured upon us. New hearts. New minds. Godly desires, aspirations. Renewal. Restoration. New life. Profound deep sense of identity, security, meaning, purpose, significance…
But with Christ's first coming anticipation didn't fade, it only grew exponentially. Because now in Christ there is the hope of Bodily Resurrection. New Bodies! New heaven and earth! New city, new dwelling for man—which Christ has gone into heaven to prepare for us! Peace flowing like a river. Eternal comfort. No more sin, no more evil, no more injustice, no more tears, pain, sorrow, fear, bad memories, shame, disgrace, guilt….
Remember Isaiah 65:17-19? Joy Exponential Awaits Us! “For I will create new heavens and a new earth; the past events will not be remembered or come to mind. 18 Then be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I will create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight. 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people. The sound of weeping and crying will no longer be heard in her.”
I love something Paul writes in Philippians 3. Well, the most amazing thing is in chapter, where he says to live is Christ. But in Chapter 3 he elaborates. To live is to anticipate. To live is to want to know Christ more and more; exponentially more. To live is to yearn for resurrection. To live is to remember our citizenship is in heaven (even though we’ve yet to die and give the USPS official change of address.)
Philippians 3:18-21, “18 For I have often told you, and now say again with tears, that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame; and they are focused on earthly things. [That’s Ecclesiastes right?] 20 Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21 He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject everything to himself.”
Somebody defined Anticipation as “Experiencing Joy in Advance.” This is what everyone in the Christmas story, from Mary, to Elizabeth, to Zechariah, to Anna is doing. Experiencing Joy in Advance at the thought of this child 9 months then 6 months… and once born, yet to mature, and yet to die, buried, raised.
Great minds have linked Anticipation with Joy. Andy Warhol observed, “The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.” Author Gaynor Arnold, “anticipation of happiness can sometimes be as gratifying as its consummation!” Albert Camus observed how the sweet pain of anticipation reminds us that we are really alive. Author Julian Barnes writes how pleasure is found first in anticipation, and then also later, in memory!
May I recommend a spiritual discipline, a spiritual practice? How about the Spiritual Practice of Anticipation. Don't you find it amazing that the Christian hope isn't just a hope deferred. Anticipation brings the joy of future hope, future consummation into the present. Through Anticipation God allows us to enjoy a “foretaste” of all that will be ours in Christ. How can we build true anticipation into our Christmas season? Not a material, worldly, temporal, Solomon, Ecclesiastes, vain, hollow, empty, fleeting, passing jolt. But an eternal, everlasting, deep, abiding, satisfying, growing, multiplying JOY anchored in Christ?
That angry little hostile resting face in that holiday photo… that little boy was in the Ecclesiastes rut looking for joy in the all the wrong places… thinking the essence of joy was to be found in instant, worldly gratification. But that sad little boy, in time, learned true joy is to be found in Christ, and tasted and enjoyed through anticipation.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, “Anticipation and Hope are born twins.” Elizabeth Gaskell, “Anticipation is the soul of enjoyment.” If we don't embrace anticipation, not only will our Christmas not have soul, but worse, our Ecclesiastes exhausted souls won't know true joy.
Winnie the Pooh…. On eating honey. "Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called." ~ A. A. Milne
It’s called anticipation. It's called hope. It's one of many facets of joy.
Christians have a double joy is this… joy of the first coming, the past event, and we experience that joy by reliving, remembering, reenacting, savoring, worshiping Christ. But whereas we access the joy of first coming by memory, we access the joy of Christ's second coming through anticipation. We “eagerly expect and hope” as Paul says in Philippians!