For many these weeks of preparing for family Christmas celebrations are filled with great joy and cheer. Presents are bought with anticipation, special Christmas cookies are baked with love, treasured decorations are put up, the trees are trimmed, and scattered family members plan the long trip home to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It’s is truly a time of great joy and good cheer.

But for some, the Christmas holidays are anything but joyful. We know of those dealing with the death of a loved one, facing life after divorce or separation, coping with the loss of a job, living with cancer or some other disease that puts a question mark over the future. For people who are facing Christmas holidays for the first time without a beloved husband, wife, child or friend the parties, the familiar Christmas carols, and the cheerfulness of the season are too hard to bear.

Joy and tears…such was the situation God’s people experienced as they returned from exile. For many who made the long trip back from Babylon to find the temple and city in ruin, it was a time to rebuild and start again. The future was bright and filled with great joy. You could hear it in their voices as they sang at the Temple’s rededication:  “For God is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.”

But for a few old-timers, it was a time of loss as they remembered the magnificent splendor of Solomon’s Temple, and now looked at the puny foundation laid for the new one. All they could do was weep as joyful songs and hymns were sung around them. The words of Ezra describe this difficult moment so poignantly: “the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away.”

So is our Wait of Winter Advent journey. It is a time of both joy and sorrow, a time of hope and distress as we realize the joy of God’s living Presence of Jesus, and yet still see the pain and suffering of so many in our world. But the joyful songs of God’s people renew and encourage us. Join us this weekend as we sing with them: “For God is good and his steadfast love endures forever.”

As you prepare for worship, please read the following: Ezra 1:1-4, 3:1-4, 10-13) God’s people return from exile and rebuild the temple. Luke 2:27-32 –Simeon is guided into the Temple just as the infant Jesus is brought in by his parents.