It was near Christmas, but it didn’t feel like it. In Cambodia there are two seasons. Hot and hotter. Christmas is just hot. I had led a study tour with fifteen over privileged Hong Kong students to a orphanage called Wat Opot, run by an American expat in his 60’s. It is difficult enough grasping the breadth of struggle these children had undergone simply because they had no one to care for them, and no shelter, or food, or means of making it before they came here. Although they were blessed to have shelter, it certainly wasn’t glamourous. They had no shoes, they had maybe two sets of clothes and piece, and they slept on straw mats on a large hard tile floor. But add onto all of that that each one of these children, had aids, simply because they were born that way. Each morning they would line up outside the clinic to get their shot, if there was enough for that day. Sometimes there wasn’t. But perhaps the greatest reminder of the context of their situation was the large building on campus that held the Wat’s own personal Crematorium. It shakes you. These beautiful children. Living under the fatality of looming death. They are just children, but each of them will within a year, at least once, maybe more, walk to that crematorium in a silent procession carrying one of their playmates, friends, family…to complete a ritual which they have seen a dozen times. An odd place to find pure Joy. But I promise you, you’ve never seen so much Joy.
In our scripture, we find another odd place for Joy. Heaven has burst open because it cannot contain itself and urgently declared to a group of lowly shepherds that the Messiah has been born. “And the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town od David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. A manger? A place where animals eat their food? A Barn? A Stall? A king? There? And they hurried to the place where they found just that… a stall full of joy.
Such an odd place for Joy. How is it possible? Actually, when you look closer at this story…it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense when you ask yourself what Joy is and what takes joy away.
Joy is something more than happiness. Joy is rooted in an internal state that transforms the way we see things. Happiness is often temporary and circumstantial, but Joy, at least in context of the scripture, is tied to a deep internal sense of peace, purpose, and belonging. It is referenced heavily in regards to salvation, and God’s regard for us. Essentially Joy is not circumstantial. I can be in a difficult place in my life and be struggling, and still hold Joy. Joy is the peace we wake up with every morning that there is purpose and grace and hope even in the hard things. Even in the less than ideal places to birth the infant king of the world. Even in those dark stalls.
But identifying joy is not the only thing we must do. We must also identify the thief of Joy, and therefor lend more clarity to the possible reason Christ choose to come in the way He did.
The greatest thief of joy is comparison…who is the mother of discontent. Emmie my daughter is thrilled with a piece of candy, until she looks over at her sisters and discovers its bigger. Then there is great distress in regards to the unfairness of life where two seconds before life was a beautiful gift. Comparison and discontent shift our focus…and robs our joy. And it isn’t just in children. Someone once wrote, Self-pity is a limiting indulgence. We only know if we are struggling in comparison to another. To pity oneself is to shut out the world that has gone before…to silence the gas cambers of Aushwitz, or mute the killing fields, or turn your eyes from the empty arms of a childless mother to your own tiny pain.
We compare our faces, our body, our cars, our status, our houses, our personalities, our privileges, our characters, our way with people, our way with words, our talents, our image…we are in constant comparison and very little Joy. One of the greatest gifts that life has to give us. Is the gift of pain and struggle. In which we are forcibly stripped of all we put stock in and left with the essentials of what really matters. The people who have experienced great loss, great struggle, and risen above bitterness to betterment are the people who undoubtedly hold the most Joy.
And I suppose, that is just why Jesus came as he did. In struggle. In the inadequate confines of a manger bed and stall. Wrapped in burial clothes that his illegitimate father carried on the journey enforced on him by a domineering government for taxation. The bible says he wasn’t even physically beautiful. He had no standing, no title, shaded by the rumors of the unbelievable story of a teen mother. He did not come to outdo or compare, he came to focus on what really matters. The value in each one of you, that is tied directly to how he made you and remade you. He came to challenge our focus on what we do have instead of what we don’t have. He came to give us good news of great Joy, because he WANTED us.
I wish I had a way to show you the faces of those 20+ children at Wat Opot…if you are my friend on facebook go to my photo albums and look up the one entitled Wat Opot. Their Joy cannot even be masked, it radiates out of their face and in their eyes.
Our academy in Hong Kong, was an elite school. It was English based and kids who wanted to carry on their studies in America or Europe would go there. Hong Kongs cost of living is off the charts…and the parents of our student’s income was also off the charts. Once I had to do a drug search of a dorm room and I started to strip the bed…the girl gasped and said…no no! don’t do that!! rising with suspicion I looked at her intently and asked her why…she answered, I don’t know how to remake it, my maid came this morning already. Privileged, to say the least.
We had brought with us three soccer balls with pumps for the kids at Wat Opot. When we brought them out of the bag you would have thought we had brought them three solid gold bars, there was such Joy. They quickly gathered and made a plan to use just one ball between them and save the other two for later use. They spent the rest of the day in a massive game of kickball all over the compound in complete unbridled glee. Those first few days I’d occasionally find my students sitting in silence. Heavy in thought…processing through their paradigm in contrast to these children’s paradigm in which they faced their own fragile mortality under the shadow of a crematorium that they understood the purpose of very well.
I asked my student Zach if he was ok once, because he sat motionless for an hour…and he looked at me with confused disbelief and said, they have nothing…but they have so much Joy. I sat with him for a minute as we watched them climbing trees with ragged clothes and massive smiles and I said, yes, but today…they have life.
And I bring you good tidings of great joy…unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. Today, you have life.
