We Are Filled With Joy

December 11, 2018

We Are Filled With Joy

Our mouths were filled with laughter,

our tongues with songs of joy.

Then it was said among the nations,

“The Lord has done great things for them.”

Psalm 126:2

For every family that gathers in joy, peace and love during the Advent and Christmas seasons, there are countless other families who don’t. Those families have been torn asunder by illness, or dysfunction, or despair, or any one of a myriad of ills that disrupt families in our culture. My prayer list of family and friends facing very trying circumstances is exceedingly long this Advent Season.

Sometimes people laugh in the midst of their despair. Abraham and Sarah had long given up on God’s promise of a child. In her advanced years, when Sarah was told she soon would be pregnant, she laughed in disbelief, the laugh of despair. But God had the last laugh, and when she gave birth to a son she named him Isaac, which means laughter. Isaac became a living testimony of our Heavenly Father’s laughter of love.

Our Heavenly Father laughed again, His laughter of love, when His angel told a virgin, “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus” (Luke 1:31). Matthew’s Gospel quotes the OT Prophet Isaiah, and tells us, “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”)” (Matthew 1:23).

My Takeaway: Jesus is God with us! There is plenty in this world to cause despair to rain down into our lives. However, when our lives are hidden with Christ in God, we can rest in God’s smile of affection for us. Our Heavenly Father’s laughter of love can sustain us as we wait in hope for that day when justice rolls “down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).

Sē’lah

Alex

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.