Jesus is our Joy

And so we come to the end of our advent journey, the joy of christmas beckons. thanks to everyone who blogged. I hope you enjoyed the experience. Hopefully anyone who read them found they helpful. I leave you with some thoughts from david ford's little book the shape of living. I've found this a book I keep coming back to, full of some great stuff. Here he writes about joy:

The heart of the good news is Jesus is our joy. He can be rejoiced in without reservation ...

God does not coerce into joy, but there is always more on offer than we can take. There are as many ways into Christian joy as there are people, and the variety of testimonies is endless. Some begin in a burst of joy; others are far more hesitant, and only very slowly wake up to the intense joy at the core of faith. There are also different qualities of joy through life, culminating in the matured peacefulness of those who have been through great suffering, and have had their capacity for joy expanded and deepened in the process ...

We are created for joy, and salvation is inseparable from it ...

Celebration and praise of the God of joy becomes the shape of our lives, as we rejoice in other people, rejoice in truth and goodness, rejoice in creation, and in all sorts of creativity, play and work.