Advent Week Three: Joy

As we light the third of the four outer candles on our Advent wreath, we are reminded that Christmas is drawing nearer. The light of this third candle comes even closer to completely driving the darkness away.

This third candle represents ‘joy’.

The wreath we’re using for this advent series is a great picture to print out and colour with your family. If you do choose to colour it, you should colour the first two candles purple, a colour of lament representing that everything isn’t right with the world. The third candle you should colour pink, representing the blending of the purple candles of lament with the pure white of the Christ candle. ‘Joy’ week is meant to be a time when we come up for air, take a breather as we lead into the home stretch, taking in the moments of joy that we see surround us during this season.

And there is indeed many things to be joyful about.

• We experience joy witnessing lives changing through our shelter work.
• We experience joy from seeing our Causeway initiative work. We matched three former shelter residents in November and three more in December.
• We experience joy watching people take steps toward leaving behind their addictions.
• We experience joy by seeing people enter our shelters with no hope, leaving with hope.

I am continually thankful and feel very blessed to have the privilege of working alongside so many wonderful people in our shelters. And that is what brings me great joy this Advent season.