Day 3: Joy with Ken Shigematsu

During World War II, a chaplain known as Chaplain Mac was taken prisoner into a POW camp. Unknown to the German guards, the Americans had built a small, homemade radio with which they could receive news from the outside world. And one day, the Americans received news on their radio that the German high command had surrendered and the war was over. People are shouting, they're dancing, they're laughing, and the guards have no idea what's going on.

A few nights later, news reaches the German guards. And so they flee into the night, leaving the gates of the prison camp unlocked. And so the very next morning, the Americans and the British walked out as free men.

But three days before, the soldiers were technically free. When they heard the news, the war was over. They knew that there was a turn in their story, and so they began to experience joy.

In what we now call the first century, a 14 or 15-year-old teen girl from the tiny town of Nazareth is approached by this large, luminous being. And the angel Gabriel says to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus."

Mary had many reasons to be anxious. She would become pregnant supernaturally through the Holy Spirit. And people would have assumed that she had sex outside of marriage. When her fiancé, Joseph, learns that she is pregnant, he knows he's not the biological father; he assumes she has cheated on him. And so he begins a process of breaking off the relationship.

Mary's story is not without pain and sorrow, but when she hears from the angel Gabriel that she is favored and loved by God and will give birth to a son whom they will name Jesus, which means Savior, she knows that her story has experienced a sudden, joyous turn and that she has cause for her heart to lift in joy.

And whether you know it or not, with Christ's coming to earth, like Mary, you too can experience the sudden, joyous turn.

Have you ever experienced in any part of your life or any season a sudden, joyous turn where somehow you knew that your future would be different and for the better?

Maybe you were admitted to a school that you really wanted to study at, and somehow you knew that your life would be tracking in a different direction. Or perhaps you made a sports team or a musical group that you really wanted to play for. Or perhaps you got an offer for a dream job.

So Mary experiences this sense of being favored and loved by God through the message of the angel Gabriel, and then knows this sudden joyous turn, but she also knows joy because the Holy Spirit will come into her.

Now, the Holy Spirit will not come upon us in exactly the same way so that we conceive and give birth to the Son of God. But if you come to God and receive the forgiveness of sins, which is on offer for you because Christ died for you, you will be filled with the Holy Spirit, and you will have reason for joy.

The great C.S. Lewis, in his classic Mere Christianity, wrote these words: "If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire. If you want to get wet, you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to or even into the thing that has them … If you want eternal life, that is the life of the most joyous being in the universe, get close to God, immerse yourself in the water of who God is, and you will grow in joy."

So Mary recognizes she's favored and loved by God and experiences the sudden joyous turn. And then she is filled with the Spirit, and her joy grows.

And the same can be true for us. When we recognize that we are loved by God, we will know this sudden joyous turn. When we are filled with the Spirit, our joy will grow.

That does not mean, however, as some of us know from experience, that our lives will be free of sorrow and pain. Mary, as I alluded to, had sorrow and pain in her story. When Joseph assumed she had cheated on him, he understandably broke up with her. And then Scripture tells us that when Jesus, her son, was in his early thirties, he was nailed to a cross to become an atoning sacrifice for our sins. The Bible tells us that it was like a sword was thrust through Mary's heart. She experienced so much pain.

A mentor of mine says that joy is like a tree. It won't always be in visible bloom, but even in the wintertime, we know the tree is still growing and that it will bloom. And knowing it will bloom is a reason for hope. And if we have a reason for hope, even during painful times, we can know a quiet undercurrent of joy.

So as we experience the sudden joyous turn, as we connect our life to Christ, or Christ connects his life to us, as we are filled with the life of God, joy grows in us. And then finally, as the life of God is birthed in us, but also through us to the world, we will know a unique joy.

Mary had the experience of not only being filled with the Spirit of God, but conceiving a real flesh and blood human being who was God as one of us. And that was just obviously a cause for monumental joy for Mary. It's also the cause of considerable grief as well, but a lot of joy. And when we have the privilege of not only being filled with the Spirit of God but becoming a channel of God's life to others, we will know a joy that we have not known before.

When you sense that you have been favored by God like Mary, you can see that your story is now on the arc of this sudden, joyous turn. And like the shepherds, when you understand that a Savior has been born for you, and that Savior begins to live in you by the Holy Spirit and then begins to manifest God's life through you to the world, you will experience the lifting of your heart to joy.

May that be so for you.

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Ken Shigematsu is the Senior Pastor at Tenth Church in Vancouver B.C., a Practicing the Way Teaching Fellow, and author of several amazing books, including God In My Everything and Now I Become Myself.