Advent Week 3: Joy

Welcome to our Advent 2025 Visio Divina Series, a visual meditation practice we are using as an entryway into Advent. You can read more about this practice in our first installment of this series. This week, join us as we cultivate joy.

Week 3: Leap Frog

Leap Frog by Dominic Benhura(Photo credit: Karen Hice Guzmán)

This sculpture is part of Zimbabwe: A Tradition in Stone — a permanent exhibit at the Jackson-Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta.

Questions for visio divina

1. As you begin, take a few deep breaths. While we know God is always with us, invite the Holy Spirit to be present and to speak to you afresh in these moments. Spend some time looking at the image. What do you see? Similar to doing Bible study, make as many observations as you can. What do you like or dislike? Why? What questions do you have?

2. How does the artist use color, light, style, composition, and material? What do you think the artist wanted to communicate? What stands out to you? Why do you think this is so?

3. Read Isaiah 35:1-10 (below). How does this add to what you are seeing? Is there other Scripture that comes to mind?

4. Spend some time reflecting on the Scripture passage and looking again at today’s image. What is God’s invitation to you? What might you need to see, understand, or believe? How does your current life experience intersect with what you are seeing and reflecting on? How might this image help you pray today? What do you want to say to God? Ask from him?

Scripture passage

Isaiah 35:1 - 10

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,the desert shall rejoice and blossom;like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly,and rejoice with joy and singing.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.

3 Strengthen the weak hands,and make firm the feeble knees.4 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.’

5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,and the ears of the deaf unstopped;6 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;7 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.

8 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 traveller, not even fools, shall go astray.9 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.10 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.

Reflection

In week three of Advent, we focus on the theme of joy. In an Advent wreath the candle is a different color — pink, the liturgical color for joy. In the midst of our awareness of all that is not right in the world and our longing for Jesus’s final and full renewal of all things, we are invited to rejoice.

If you have ever flown in or out of Atlanta, you might remember the underground train system that carries travelers to their gates. What you may not know is that you can also walk to your gate and doing so takes you through some interesting exhibits, one of which features sculptures from various Zimbabwean artists. Leap Frog is carved out of springstone, an exceptionally hard, dark stone found in Zimbabwe. It’s known for its luster which you can see in the figures’ legs, arms, and faces. Artist Dominic Benhura (b. 1968) took inspiration from his three daughters for his rendering of children enjoying a game of leap frog. The juxtaposition of playful and fun movement in the figures — one girl captured mid-air leaping over another with a bit of help from the one behind her — with the solidity of the stone is fascinating. One can almost hear them laughing as they play together. And is there anything quite as infectious as the laughter of a child? Uninhibited joy. Even though not my own, I find myself smiling when I hear children giggling in the store or at a restaurant.

The Isaiah 35 text reminds us that what awaits God’s people — what we find ourselves longing for during Advent — is unending joy. Can you imagine it? No lack (Isaiah 35.1, 2, 5-7). Nothing to fear (Isaiah 35.3, 4, 9). No sorrow (Isaiah 35.10). Just the glory and majesty of God and eternal rejoicing.

Even though I cannot wrap my head around this, I have no difficulty believing that it is indeed what awaits us. This will be our reality when Jesus returns and sets all things right. What I have more difficulty with, however, is what to do in this “now, but not yet” time in which we live. Jesus speaks in John 15 of his joy being in us — now. Paul tells us that joy is a fruit of the Spirit — evidence of God’s work in our lives — now. But all around me (and even within me, if I am honest) is brokenness, injustice, disappointment, loss. How do we live with full awareness of our own stuff and that of the world around us and still know joy?

I have been profoundly helped in wrestling with this by Eugene Peterson in his chapter on joy in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

“One of the most interesting and remarkable things that Christians learn is that laughter does not exclude weeping. Christian joy is not an escape from sorrow. Pain and hardship still come, but they are unable to drive out the happiness of the redeemed.” (pg. 96)

Peterson goes on to say, “The joy that develops in the Christian way of discipleship is an overflow of spirits that comes from feeling good not about yourself, but about God.”

This is why joy and sorrow can actually co-exist. The opposite of joy in not sorrow. It is despair. Despair is sorrow with no hope. Sorrow with hope (the kind reinforced by passages like Isaiah 35) makes room for even a small glimmer of joy. We can live in or know joy today in light of the joy that will be ours in the future. The work the Spirit wants to do in us is more than make us nice or put us in a good mood. He wants to work this kind of deep solid joy into the fiber of our beings.

Peterson finishes the chapter this way:

This psalm [126] does not give us this joy as a package or a formula, but there are some things it does do. It shows up the tinniness of the world’s joy and affirms the solidity of God’s joy. It reminds us of the accelerating costs and diminishing returns of those who pursue pleasure as a path toward joy. It introduces us to the way of discipleship which has consequences in joy. It encourages us in the way of faith to both experience and share joy. It tells the story of God’s acts which put laughter into peoples’ mouths and shouts on their tongues. It repeats the promises of a God who accompanies his wandering, weeping children until they arrive home exuberant, “bringing in the sheaves.” It announces the existence of a people who assemble to worship God and disperse to live to God’s glory, whose lives are bordered on one side by a memory of God’s acts and the other by hope in God’s promises, and who along with whatever else is happening are able to say at the center, “We are glad!” (pgs. 97-98)

Prayer

Thank you, Jesus, that you offer us your joy. Now. In whatever circumstances we find ourselves. Teach us how to hold both sorrow and joy. Thank you that you hear and welcome our cries of lament as well as our shouts of gratitude and praise. By your Spirit, work in us the fruit of joy preparing us for that day when we will know it fully and forever.

O come, Divine Messiah, the world in silence waits the day When hope shall sing its triumph and sadness flee away

Amen.