Read: Psalm 30
. . . but joy comes with the morning. (v. 5)
Advent is a season of waiting. Waiting can be difficult, but it can also be infused with joy. Memories of Christmases past inform the anticipation of the Christmas that is coming. Even though Christmas Day isn’t here, thinking about the joy it will bring gives joy right now. No matter how challenging Advent is, we can carry a little bit of joy knowing what’s coming. At times, the more difficult the time of waiting, the more powerful the joy that follows.
This is the paradox of joy. Unlike happiness (an emotion produced by pleasant circumstances), a person can have joy in bad times as well as good. It all depends on whether one is confident that better times are coming. Psalm 30 is a joy-generating prayer. It’s a psalm that acknowledges some of life’s greatest challenges, and identifies two ways a person could respond: despair (v. 7) or prayer (v. 8). Even in the most desperate times, prayer expresses trust in God’s ability to make things better.
If you believe in the one true God, then you know that your best times came from him. You also trust that better times are always coming—if not in this life, then in the next. Our God will turn our mourning into dancing. His plan for all his people is ultimate and immeasurable joy. God is with you in your trouble and already has a plan to deliver you from it. He will turn your mourning into dancing, your sorrow into joy.
As you pray, remember past joy and anticipate future joy.
Ben Van Arragon is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America. After twenty years of congregational ministry, he now serves his denomination as a pastor wellbeing consultant in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
