Contagious Joy: Elizabeth Affirmed Mary's Choice
Daily Scripture
Luke 1:43-45, 57-58
39 Mary got up and hurried to a city in the Judean highlands. 40 She entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 With a loud voice she blurted out, “God has blessed you above all women, and he has blessed the child you carry. 43 Why do I have this honor, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. 45 Happy is she who believed that the Lord would fulfill the promises he made to her.”
57 When the time came for Elizabeth to have her child, she gave birth to a boy. 58 Her neighbors and relatives celebrated with her because they had heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
In Mary’s story (cf. Luke 1:26-38), the angel’s message completely upended her life, yet Luke didn’t specifically mention joy. Mary needed support, and she found it in Elizabeth, who was also living with an unexpected pregnancy. Elizabeth’s faith-filled affirmation confirmed Mary’s choice: “Happy is she who believed that the Lord would fulfill the promises he made to her.” That contagious joy was what Mary needed. Months later, when Elizabeth gave birth, her neighbors and relatives celebrated with her.
- Even before Jesus was born, Elizabeth became the first person to call him “Lord”: ‘Why do I have this honor, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’ Women would later be the first to share news of Jesus’ resurrection, too. Do you call Jesus ‘Lord’? If so, how has Jesus’ lordship changed your life and brought a different kind of joy into it? If you’re still exploring faith, what questions do you have about what it means to call Jesus Lord?
- Pastor Ginger Gaines-Cirelli wrote that the courage and strength of Mary and Elizabeth “provide encouragement for all who are called to bear new life into the world, whether through childbirth, creative leadership, healing work, friendship or any other vocation.” * When you face a God-given task that seems impossible or overwhelming, how might Elizabeth’s joyous affirmation encourage you?
Prayer
A daily reminder from Pastor Hamilton: Our hope is that tonight or tomorrow morning, continuing through Christmas, each of you will, either in the morning or at night, take the time to write down three things you are thankful for. You might write these in the form of a thank you letter to God or simply write down a journal entry.
Prayer: Lord God, sometimes I think Advent joy means I can expect to receive some costly gift that will eventually wear out. This Advent, give me Elizabeth’s joy, looking ahead to the eternal gift of yourself in Jesus. Amen.
GPS Insights
Lauren Cook
Lauren Cook, who serves as Director of Online Engagement & Entry Points at Resurrection, wrote today’s Insight. She is a self-proclaimed foodie, a bookworm, and is always planning her next trip. She has the sweetest (and sassiest) daughter, Carolina Rae, a rockstar husband, Austin, and a cutie pup named Thunder. She loves connecting with others so let her know the best place you've ever eaten, best book you've ever read, or best place you've ever been!
If you’ve ever received an email from me, you know that my signature says, “Sending you joy, Lauren.”
If you’ve ever seen the Inside Out movies, you know the character Joy? I adore her.
If you’ve ever been inside my home, or my office, you know that the majority of the things I own are yellow (because you can’t look at the color yellow and not feel a smidgen of joy).
I don’t tell you these things because I’m the epitome of joy, or even that I’m joyful all the time. I actually tell you these things because for a very long time, joy was elusive.
Do you ever feel that way? Like you want to find joy, and you so hope and long to feel joy, and yet, it’s slippery and the moment you get close it seems to slide a bit further out of your grasp? Maybe you’ve been chasing joy in a new job or a new home, maybe a new relationship. Maybe you’ve seen joy right around the corner of fitting into a new outfit or running a 5K and officially becoming “a runner”. Or maybe, you’re a little like me, and you’ve stretched your very fingertips to grasp joy in anything new…
That’s so often the problem. Joy seems out of reach and like something we must attain versus simply hold space for. Joy is seemingly attached to something else versus landing gently upon us on its own. Joy has become only a noun when, according to Merriam-Webster, joy “can be used as an adjective in creative contexts.”
I’m here to say that our lives were designed by God to be creative contexts. We were meant to treat joy as an adjective that describes our very being as full of joy, despite our current reality.
Mary learned this lesson from Elizabeth, and I hope that we might learn from them today. Life is full of hard things, uncertainties, unexpected complications. And yet, we are filled with joy. Not fake joy, not toxic positivity that pastes a smile on our faces when we’re crumbling inside, but the quiet joy that lies in our heart and is the always-glowing reminder that we are beloved children of God.
So now, back to my yellow, Joy, email-filled world. I was the champion of looking for joy in all the wrong places or trying to manufacture joy with my own strength and willpower. Then I found that it had been inside me the entire time and all I sometimes needed was the reminder that it was there. Hence, incorporating ridiculous, silly, beautiful reminders all around me.
What tangible reminder can you put into place today that might whisper, daily, to you, “You are joy because you are loved”?
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, introductory note to Luke 1 in The CEB Women’s Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2016, p. 1286.
