What Can't Wait | Delight (Joy) Can't Wait

In Isaiah 35:1-10, creation sings with abundant joy, blooming open like a crocus. What does it look like to delight in God’s goodness? How do we respond to God’s work in the world with joy? How can we be singers of joy? This passage in Isaiah paints a vision of hope to those held captive in exile. This particular image of the desert blooming is not only hopeful, but also abundant and joyful. How does joy sustain those who are broken and trapped in fear?

Do you believe that?
That's the real question of Advent for us, friends. Are we waiting because we believe that there's something right around the corner?
Or have we just simply given up and we're just here?
This is the two choices, the two paths that are presented to us in Advent.
We can wait because we've given up or we can wait with expectation.
And my hope is that you will choose the path of expectation.
that you will choose the path of saying there is something right around the bend. That night is not the end but there is joy that comes in the morning.

Do you believe in joy?
Do you believe in delight?
Do you believe in real happiness?

If you're like me, you've read a lot of self-help books in your life because some of us need a little bit more help than others, right? And some of us are just interested in that stuff.
And some of us just endlessly go, you know what? My happiness is at the end of this book somewhere, right? And sometimes I just buy a bunch of those and put them on my shelf and act like I've read them. Anyone do that? never, right?

Because somewhere in there there's this expectation, there's this waiting of going maybe, just maybe.
But the problem is, in fact, the problem far too often is those books actually collect dust on our shelves and they collect dust in our hearts.
because we don't actually believe that joy is possible.

Now, we live in a society that in one sense is obsessed with happiness, right? I mean, that's why that self-help section exists, right?
We are obsessed with finding a deep sense of success, right, through our consumeristic ways, right? That will satiate us and make us feel like we are good, right?
And in fact, I mean, let's be honest, we all want that, right? Like, of course, I want to wake up and go, I have nothing to worry about in the world. It's all been taken care of. I've got all the money that I need. I've got all the friends that I need. My family is wonderful and great and there's nothing to worry about there.
My health—doctors just speak about how I'm a specimen of health, right?
And my neighbors are great and they all vote the same way I did, right?
And when I turn on the news, whether it's on my device or on a larger screen, they just talk about all the great things in the world, right?
That's what we have this kind of fairy tale in our head of what happiness looks like, right? Oh, and I forgot I'm laying back in a chair with an umbrella drink in hand, right? Uh-huh.

And we vacation that way, too, don't we? Right. We trick ourselves into believing that if we can get three days or five days or seven days of that, then somehow we've arrived, right?
But then we get back in the car, take the plane ride or whatever it is back to reality, right? And discover that the umbrella drink didn't quite have all that it needed inside of it, right?
Yeah.

And so you and I are left in this spot of going, how do I find happiness?
And occasionally we even go a little further. How can I find joy? How can I find delight in the midst of this world and this life?

And if you have not figured it out by now, friends, the world is not just going to hand you delight on a stick, right?
It's not just going to hand you happiness.
And in fact, life's going to be filled with a lot of grief, a lot of stress, a lot of despair.
And you and I have the choice to make of saying, I'm going to find the light and joy in the midst of it.

When we come to this text in Isaiah, like so many other texts so far in Advent, things weren't going well.
In fact, most of the time when you open the Bible, the reason why anyone has written anything about that time at all is because things were not going well.
In fact, people don't really write things that last across the generations when things are easy peasy, right?
That's not what endures among humanity. And it's not what endures in the divine.
What endures is those things that speak to our hardest, most difficult moments in life.

And so when this is taking place, King Hezekiah is trying to figure out what to do with his nation as the Assyrians are barking down his door.
As the Assyrians are right outside and just to make things even better and worse and more complicated all at the same time, the Egyptians are willing to make a deal with you. We'll keep you protected from those big bad Assyrians if you give us everything that you have.
And that's typically how that works in the world, right?

I'm sure lots of nations around the world feel like they're stuck between a rock and a hard place today in those ways, right?
And they feel that push and pull and that tension.
And if you ever thought scripture wasn't political, then you didn't read the word king in front of half the names in the Bible.

Isaiah 35 is one of those texts.
It's written in the midst of real life historic situations of grief and difficulty and all the complexities. The economics and politics and religion add to that.

And we come to chapter 35 verse one.
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad.
Shall be glad. The wilderness and the desert shall be glad.

I don't know about you, but if you've ever walked out into some real wilderness, right, and particularly desertlike wilderness, and you're looking around for what might be shelter or water or food, you don't look up and go, I'm delighted to be here, right?
You don't look out and go, "I'm so glad that I'm stuck in this place."
No, you are scared. You're terrified. You're at this point of going, I don't think I will live.

And in the midst of that despair, in the midst of that barrenness, in the midst of that desert, you and I are tempted like all other human beings to think this is all there is.
But Isaiah gives us a different image.

I love the name of this flower, the crocus.
Now, how many of you are familiar with the crocus? Okay, good. Okay, I was not.
And so I had to look this flower up again.
And guess what? It's that kind of flower that pushes through and says, "You're going to notice me. I'm going to come up in the midst of whatever the land throws at me."
I'm going to create beauty and delight and joy and gladness even when everything else seems absolutely parched.

The crocus pops out of the ground.

And I want you to say something to yourself this morning because I want you to take it into your week.
I am going to be a crocus this week.

This is what our world needs.
People who are willing to choose the way of delight and joy and gladness no matter what is happening in life.

Isaiah 35 gives us real ground to root this joy, this delight in.
God is up to something.

So strengthen the weak hands. Make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have a fearful heart, "Be strong. Do not fear. Here is your God."

God will come and save you.

And when we believe that there's a God like that, guess what?
I can put a smile on my face, not because I'm forcing it, but because I know how the story ends.

My question, friends, is will you be a crocus?

Let's be crocuses this morning.