I’ve long had an uneasy relationship with joy. For years, I called myself melancholy— until depression gave that feeling a clinical name. Whatever I called it, joy always seemed to demand energy I didn’t have and enthusiasm I couldn’t muster. Joy sounded exhausting.
We’re supposed to light the candle of joy this week, yet I can’t tell whether my sadness comes from my own depression, the state of public education, or our national unraveling. And it all makes Advent feel bleaker this year. The wilderness keeps expanding.
Somewhere in that desert, I began a small practice: each day, I record one second of video. Just one moment worth noticing. Some days it’s my nieces and nephews—their unfiltered delight at simply being alive. Other days it’s subtler: our cat Carl stretched across the couch, steam rising from a bowl of soup Joel made, the cone flowers blooming, my favorite coffee mug at work (it’s a scene from the 1973 Disney Robin Hood movie in case you were wondering), or just the walk from school to my car.
I think of John the Baptist, locked in Herod’s prison, asking Jesus, “Are you the one?” How do you hold onto hope when the walls close in and the world feels wrong? Jesus points to what’s already happening: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the dead are raised, and the poor receive good news.” Look, he says. The signs are here.
And I am seeing them. The rallies where the beloved community shows up. The unexpected kindness between strangers. People choosing to take care of each other when systems fail us. A student’s sincere gratitude. The improbable color of November leaves. The magic found in shared couch therapy and rising sourdough, and a good cup of coffee. These aren’t escapes from the hard things—they’re signs of life persisting in the midst of them. Small springs breaking forth, moments that train our eyes to see.
I used to think joy was something I had to produce—a response of stubborn cheerfulness I could never quite summon. But joy is a discipline. It takes practice to teach my brain and my heart and my soul to see the tiny signs of Kingdom and resurrection that pop up like weeds. Choosing again and again to search for one second to celebrate. A way of turning our eyes toward life, even as we name the death around us and work towards a better tomorrow. These glimpses of joy don’t distract us from the work—they sustain us for it. And somehow, the more I practice looking, the more seconds reveal themselves.
Maybe this is what joy looks like in the wilderness: not a constant state of enthusiasm, but a practice of noticing. The third candle of Advent is joy, and I light it not because everything is fine, but because I’m learning that joy isn’t something I generate alone. It’s something we glimpse together, one second at a time, in a world where God and God’s people are already at work making deserts bloom.
Loving God, when joy feels impossible and the wilderness expands around us, help us practice noticing the tiny resurrections you scatter through our days. May these glimpses sustain us and train our hearts to see your love at work in the world.
This reflection was written by Lani Allenbaugh.