I recently heard a story on NPR about how Google is going to launch a book-selling web site to compete with Amazon.com. It seems the internet giant is looking to the future and foreseeing a rapidly changing picture. Their old ways of doing things, ways that have brought them enormous success, power and wealth, will only work for a short while longer. If they don’t change in some innovative ways, and change soon, experts predict that they will fade into the background while newer companies step up to the plate. Google, the envy of the internet world, will become a dinosaur.
Google’s experience could be a metaphor for our contemporary lives. No sooner do we chalk up one success that we have to start looking for ways either to protect it, or to top it with an even greater success. If you snooze, the saying goes, you lose. Life is one big competition and only those who win will be able to live life to the fullest.
That may be the way of contemporary life, but it’s not the way of the Gospel. Jesus came to give us a gift He called joy, and the place we find it isn’t on the top of the heap, but somewhere else entirely. This Sunday we will be looking at someone who found the surprising secret of where true joy is to be found.
As you prepare for worship on Sunday, please read Luke 1:39-45 and John 3:22-30, 35 and ponder the following questions.
How would you define “joy”?
Where have you experienced joy in your life? On what does it depend?
How might Jesus be asking you to become less so He can become greater?
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