Excerpted from 2025 Advent Guide: Lighting the Way Forward, an Advent Guide for Lectionary Year A from the North Carolina Council of Churches.
Isaiah 35:1-10
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly
and rejoice with joy and shouting.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
the majesty of our God.
Strengthen the weak hands
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
“Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
He will come and save you.”
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf shall be opened;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp;
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.
A highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,
but it shall be for God’s people;
no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.
No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there.
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Psalm 146:5-10
Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the strangers;
he upholds the orphan and the widow,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
The Lord will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!
To fathom the theme of joy for this third week of Advent feels disillusioning and paradoxical to the present realities in which we live. Perhaps joy is impossible to comprehend.
We are painfully aware of the chaos and sorrow that surround us. The weight of the world presses hard upon our hearts and it’s exhausting to hold so much ache within us. It can feel like we are standing in the middle of Isaiah’s wilderness — dry, cracked ground under our feet, longing for streams of justice to flow again. In a world groaning under the weight of pain and division, we long for God’s joy to break in.
And yet, into this very landscape, the prophet dares to speak of blossoms. “The desert shall rejoice and bloom.” Joy appears here not as denial, but as defiance — the wild and holy insistence that God is making all things new.
Mary knew that same kind of joy. Her song, the Magnificat, doesn’t come from comfort or ease — it rises from courage and conviction. She sings of a God who scatters the proud, fills the hungry, and lifts up the lowly. Her joy is a form of resistance, proclaiming that even amid empire and uncertainty, God’s justice is already breaking in.
This is the invitation of Advent joy: to cultivate a joy that can live alongside lament. A joy that joins in God’s dream for a world made whole. A joy that blooms even when the soil of our souls feels tired.
So, we continue lighting candles. We show up. We tend our communities offering healing and justice. We trust that joy is not a shallow emotion, but is the deep current of God’s presence moving through us — now and forever more.
