Be Amazed: Joy in the Desert
Third Sunday of Advent – December 14, 2025
The Infamous Double-Beep
Have you ever had that moment while you’re out Christmas shopping and you suddenly can’t remember how much money is left on your debit card? That flash of uncertainty points to something deeper: we all know what it feels like to run out of money, energy, hope, strength, or joy.
When I was in Bible college, a few of us drove to 7/11 for Slurpees during an early heat wave. The store was packed, and the line wound through the aisles. When my roommate reached the till, he tapped his debit card and instead of the usual “beeeep” of an approved transaction, he heard “be-beep.” Declined. The clerk leaned forward and announced, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Ewwww… the infamous double-beep. That means there is no money in your account.” My roommate froze in embarrassment until the RA paid the measly $1.50 for the Slurpee our friend couldn’t afford. If you’ve ever had a “double-beep” moment—not just with your debit card, but in the depths of your soul—when you’ve felt like you’re out of resources, then you’re ready to hear the promise of Joy in the Desert.
God’s Invitation to Come
Isaiah 55 opens with a cascade of imperatives inviting God’s people to “Come… come… come… buy… eat” (Isaiah 55:1, NIV). This repetition emphasizes the urgency with which God is calling His weary people who are running on fumes: don’t walk past this; don’t keep going the same way; come—come now. And notice how the commands work together.
First, “come” is an invitation to come as you are—not to “fix yourself” or “try harder,” but simply to come. Second, “buy and eat” is a marketplace image with flipped rules. Isaiah speaks in marketplace language because hunger is what exile feels like: depleted, empty, fragile. But the paradox is this: “You who have no money, come, buy and eat… without money and without cost” (Isaiah 55:1, NIV). That’s the whole point. This isn’t a transaction; it’s a gift. God is offering replenishment to those who cannot pay. Those who receive it are the ones honest enough to admit they’re broke—spiritually, emotionally, relationally. Third, Isaiah tightens the argument: “Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:2, NIV). This is crucial: the deepest nourishment is not found by sprinting harder through the aisles of life; it is found by listening. In other words, your joy won’t be restored by grabbing more substitutes—it will be restored by returning to the voice of God.
Fourth, “Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live” (Isaiah 55:3, NIV). God is not selling a product; He is offering Himself. The endgame isn’t merely that your schedule improves or your mood lifts. The endgame is that your soul lives, re-centred on the God who restores joy in deserts.
Isaiah isn’t speaking to people who overspent at Christmas. He’s speaking to a people depleted by catastrophe: after the fall of Judah, Jerusalem was devastated, the temple was destroyed, and families were displaced and sent into exile. Long seasons of strain can drain joy out of you. Into that exhaustion, God offers imperatives that don’t crush you—they carry you: come, receive, listen, live.
Why Spend on What Doesn’t Satisfy?
Do you remember the ’90s TV show Supermarket Sweep with contestants sprinting down grocery aisles, filling carts as fast as possible, and winning a cash prize equal to what they had piled into their carts? Many of us live like that: racing through life, hoping the next thing will finally satisfy us. But Isaiah stops us mid-sprint and asks: “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy?” (Isaiah 55:2, NIV). Isaiah isn’t scolding hungry people; he’s exposing how we exhaust ourselves on things that cannot nourish the soul. We spend our lives on what doesn’t last, and then wonder why we’re left unsatisfied.
Jesus Offers Us Himself
In John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well. The conversation reveals a life marked by instability: “You have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (John 4:18, NIV). Read through a modern lens, people often assume the issue Jesus is addressing is the woman’s promiscuity. Yet in the ancient world, divorce was ordinarily initiated by the husband, which means her story more likely reflects vulnerability—having been widowed or abandoned. Then Jesus names the cycle Isaiah exposed: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again” (John 4:13, NIV). Substitute wells can’t hold. Comfort, control, approval, distraction, busyness, and consumption can feel like relief for a moment, but they cannot satisfy. They train you to keep coming back for more. But Jesus doesn’t only diagnose the problem—He offers Himself as the solution: “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst… it will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14, NIV). Christ is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s invitation. This is grace you can’t earn and can’t purchase.
Joy in the Desert: Sehnsucht as a Signpost
In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis describes Joy not as happiness, but as a sudden, piercing longing—an ache for something good and beautiful, yet beyond reach. He called it the German word Sehnsucht. Lewis noticed this longing often arrived uninvited through ordinary beauty—a scene, a line of poetry, an old story, a moment in nature. Earlier in his life, he tried to chase it, but it always slipped away—until he realized the longing wasn’t the destination. It was a signpost, pointing beyond created things to the Creator. So when you feel that ache—when joy feels distant, and you sense you were made for more—don’t ignore it and don’t numb it. Receive it as a signal. Let it turn you toward Jesus. Pray honestly: “Lord, I’m thirsty. Give me your living water” (John 4:14, NIV).
Application: Come, Listen, Return
So how will you respond to Christ’s invitation?
- Stop pretending you’re not thirsty. Name the places you’re emotionally or spiritually dry.
- Be honest about the substitutes. Where have you been sprinting through the aisles of life, filling your cart, trying to quiet the ache?
- Come to Christ—especially while He is near. Isaiah later says, “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6, NIV).
If you’ve never trusted Jesus, this is your invitation to receive Him. If you have trusted Jesus, but you’re in a season of spiritual dehydration, this is your invitation to return to him to be refreshed and be a blessing to others. Small acts offered in Jesus’ name become signposts pointing others to the living Christ.
Prayer of Response
Lord Jesus, we confess our thirst and the ways we have spent ourselves on what does not satisfy.” Teach us to slow down and listen, to stop sprinting through life grasping at substitutes, and to receive what only You can give. Give us Your living water. Make Your life in us a spring that wells up to eternal life, and make us a people who overflow with love and faithful presence in Your name.
Amen.
Be Amazed: Peace in the Valley of Dry Bones
Second Sunday of Advent – December 7, 2025
Introduction: Making a Statement
Do you remember your first day at a new job and the mandatory “orientation and training”? Or maybe you remember those early days of retirement, when you thought, “This is amazing, I finally have some free time,” so you signed up to volunteer somewhere—only to discover that volunteering also came with orientation and training.
I had one of those “orientation-and-training” experiences some years ago. During orientation week, our Executive Director looked at our incoming group of idealistic young leaders and said with a grin, “My goal is for each of you to get through your term of office without getting arrested!” Arrested—what did he mean? Each year, we would send student executives to Parliament Hill to meet with MPs and engage in advocacy, and he warned us to be careful because some organizations actively recruit idealistic young people to their cause. That year, a colleague attended an event the night before a planned march where they received “protestor training.” A dozen people walking peacefully with cardboard signs is not particularly newsworthy. But if a group intentionally breaches the barricade that marks the boundary where protesting is permitted, people get arrested. Now there’s a headline and a photo op. Our ED didn’t want his young leaders to become pawns in political theatre.
And that brings us to Ezekiel. People will sometimes do dramatic things for attention. But in Scripture, God’s prophets sometimes did dramatic things for a different reason: not to manufacture drama, but to tell the truth and wake people up to a reality they had become numb to.
Ezekiel: Enacted Metaphors and Prophetic Parables
Ezekiel is one of the major prophets in the Old Testament, meaning his book is longer than those of the minor prophets like Habakkuk from last week. Yet for many of us, Ezekiel is oddly less familiar. Many still hear Ezekiel’s name and think, “Wait… who was that guy again?” Ezekiel lived at one of the most devastating moments in Israel’s history: the fall of Judah and the Babylonian exile. Babylon invaded, Jerusalem was crushed, the temple was destroyed, and God’s people were forcibly relocated to a foreign land. It wasn’t only a political crisis; it was a spiritual crisis—like the bottom dropped out of their lives and community. Ezekiel didn’t begin as a “full-time prophet.” He was originally a priest (Ezekiel 1:3), teaching God’s law and helping the people live as a worshiping community. But in exile, with the temple gone and the people scattered, God called him into a prophetic role: a messenger who spoke God’s word into a specific moment—exposing sin, interpreting crisis, and holding out hope.
What makes Ezekiel stand out is how God often asked him to communicate. God told him to embody the message through enacted metaphors—building a model of Jerusalem under siege, lying on his side for weeks as an embodied sermon, eating rationed food cooked over animal dung as a sign of desperation and defilement, and even, when Ezekiel’s wife dies, not mourning publicly (Ezekiel 4; 24). Not because grief doesn’t matter, but because a great catastrophe was coming, and God wanted the people to see the truth before it was too late. Ezekiel is a priest in exile turned prophet, called to help a traumatized people face reality, and to believe that even there, God is still speaking and still able to bring life.
The Valley of Dry Bones
Ezekiel 37 opens with a vision: God leads Ezekiel into a valley littered with bones, representing the people of Israel in the wake of exile and ruin. Then the Lord asks: “Son of man, can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3, NIV). Ezekiel answers with honest humility: “Sovereign LORD, you alone know” (v.3). He doesn’t offer false optimism or surrender to despair; he places the question back into God’s hands.
Then God commands him: “Prophesy to these bones” (v.4). Speak God’s word into what looks irreversible. God promises re-creation: “I will make breath enter you… I will attach tendons… make flesh… cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life” (vv.5–6, NIV). That mention of tendons reminds me of a second-year medical student I know, Cait. She tore her ACL playing women’s tackle football, and five surgeries later, doctors are still trying to get those ligaments and tendons functioning properly again. Modern medicine is remarkable, but it also exposes the limits of human repair. Ezekiel’s vision is the opposite: God’s word doing what we cannot.
So Ezekiel obeys: “I prophesied as I was commanded” (v.7). The valley starts to sound like creation: “there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together” (v.7). Tendons and flesh appear. Skin covers them. But then a crucial line: “there was no breath in them” (v.8). Form without life—structure without the animating Spirit. God then commands Ezekiel to prophesy again—this time to the breath: “Prophesy to the breath” (v.9). Ezekiel obeys, “and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army” (v.10). Not an army of conquest, but a people restored—alive, standing, ready to be God’s people again. Then God explains: “These bones are the people of Israel” (v.11)—exiles who say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone” (v.11). The valley is their external ruin and their internal despair. And the climax is the deepest promise: “I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live” (v.14). The ultimate gift is not merely life restored; it is God’s own life within them—the Spirit as the breath of God.
Application
In Advent, we learn to wait and hope for Jesus, the God who comes near. Advent tells the truth about our need, and it tells the truth about God’s nearness—Ezekiel 37 gives language for seasons when life feels dry and beyond repair, and it gives a promise: God breathes life into what looks dead.
I thought back to my installation service here at First Mennonite Church, when I said that “our church has some good bones.” Ezekiel helps me say it more clearly now: a church can have good bones—history, traditions, committees, faithful habits—and still need breath: the Spirit of God. And what I have learned since arriving is that we have more than good bones. We have good people—faithful people, praying people, people who have served and kept showing up. Which is why my prayer as we step toward a new year is simple: Lord, breathe on us again. Put your Spirit in us, and help us live.
And this turns us decisively toward Jesus. Ezekiel promised that God would breathe life into what was dead. Jesus shows us what that promise looks like when God steps into our world in flesh. Standing in front of Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life… Do you believe this?” (John 11:25–26, NIV). That question is not only for Martha. Do you believe in Jesus’ resurrecting power today?
Closing Prayer
Sovereign LORD, you alone know.
You see the places in us that feel dry, scattered, and beyond repair.
Speak your word into our valley, and breathe on us again.
Put your Spirit in us, and help us live.
Jesus, you are the resurrection and the life—teach us to believe you, trust you, and follow you.
Make us a people who stand up again, not by our strength, but by your breath within us.
Amen.
Be Amazed: Hope in the Furnace
First Sunday of Advent – November 30, 2025
Names and Identity
During COVID, I found myself in a tiny exam room meeting a new doctor for the first time. The door swung open, and in he walked—scrubs, white coat, stethoscope over his shoulder. Because it was still the height of COVID protocols, he wore a mask and a face shield, so I couldn’t read his expression, but we made eye contact. Later, he would tell me he was from the Congo. He looked down at my chart, read my name aloud, and paused. “Calvary deJong,” he said slowly. Then he looked up again and added, “That is not a very common name.” He was right. People mix it up with cavalry or Calgary all the time. But he recognized right away that it had a religious meaning.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, “I blame my parents!” It reminded me of a shirt I had as a teenager that said, in big bold letters: MY PARENTS MADE ME WHAT I AM TODAY, and in smaller print underneath in parentheses: (I’m thinking of suing!) My new doctor friend didn’t laugh. He corrected me, almost like he wanted to protect something sacred: “No. Your name is a great honour.”
You see, in many African cultures, names are not just meant to sound nice; they are meant to be meaningful. Names like Happy, Blessed, Destiny, or God’s Will are very common. A name tells a story. A name provides an identity. And that takes us right into the heart of today’s Scriptures: When the world tries to rename you—when it tells you who you are—will you bow to that story? Or will you stand in the name God gives?
Habakkuk: Honest Faith, Defiant Hope
Habakkuk is a short book and one of the minor prophets, and rather than starting with a prophetic message from God to his people, it begins with a complaint from Habakkuk to God. Habakkuk looks at the nation of Judah and sees violence, injustice, and what is right being twisted, and he cries out, “How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen?” (Habakkuk 1:2, NIV). He is not just whining; he is pleading for God to act.
God answers, but not the way Habakkuk expects. “Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed” (Habakkuk 1:5, NIV). Yet the “amaze” here is not a pleasant surprise. Instead, God says judgment is coming, and Babylon will be the instrument of Judah’s discipline.
Habakkuk protests again: how can a holy God use a nation even more wicked than Judah? God does not give Habakkuk a simple explanation, but He does give him a place to stand: live by faith, and remember that Babylon is not a god on a throne, but a tool in God’s hand. And, a warning that the Babylonians’ day of justice is coming too.
By the end, Habakkuk’s complaint has become worship. He imagines the worst that could happen—no fruit, no grain, no sheep, no cattle—and then he makes a stunning choice: “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD… The Sovereign LORD is my strength” (Habakkuk 3:18–19, NIV). That is defiant hope: joy anchored to God’s character, not to easy circumstances.
Daniel 3: When the Fire Gets Personal
Most people familiar with children’s Bible stories know Daniel’s three friends by their Babylonian names—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—but those weren’t their given names. Their Hebrew names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, and each one is a little confession of faith:
- Hananiah means “Yahweh is gracious.”
- Mishael means “Who is like God?”
- Azariah means “Yahweh has helped.”
These names are a daily reminder: we belong to the LORD. But Babylon renames them, because empires always do. An empire doesn’t just conquer land; it conquers imagination. It takes the best and brightest and attempts to assimilate them and “re-story” them: new language, new customs, new gods, new names. The goal is not simply to relocate you—it’s to redefine you. And the Babylonian names are not neutral. Their new names are designed to contradict the old ones:
- Shadrach is “command of Aku,” referencing Aku, a Mesopotamian moon-god.
- Meshach means “Who is like Aku?”—a rival confession meant to compete directly with “Who is like God?”
- Abednego means “servant of Nego/Nebo” a Babylonian deity associated with wisdom and writing
Do you see what Babylon is doing? Quietly replacing the identity of these young men. Then in Daniel 3, the empire stops making suggestions and starts making demands. A massive image is set up. Music plays. Everyone is commanded to bow. It’s a public loyalty test—an outward act meant to reveal inward allegiance.
But when the crowd bends its knee, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah stay standing. In effect, they are saying: You can place me in your system, and you can change what you call me, but you will not claim my highest allegiance. You can rename me—but you can’t own me. I will not bow.
Application: Bring Your Labels to Jesus
So here is the invitation for week one of Advent: bring to Jesus the labels people have placed on you—the ones you’ve worn so long they feel like your name. Failure. Disappointment. Not good enough. Overlooked. A burden. The Black Sheep.
Bring Jesus the labels others gave you and the ones you gave yourself: Divorced, Addicted, Anxious. Bring Him the labels the world uses to shrink you: too young, too old, irrelevant. And instead of bowing to those voices, bow to Jesus alone, and let Him speak the truest name over you: you are beloved children of God.
As a church, we choose the same path. We will not let the world rename us as too small to matter. Immanuel is with us. So we will make room for children and seniors, newcomers and long-timers—not as spectators, but as disciples with a place and a purpose. And when someone is in the furnace—whether that is a hospital room, long-term care, grief, loneliness—we will show up with the presence of Jesus.
Conclusion
Habakkuk teaches us to be honest about pain without quitting on God. Daniel’s friends teach us to stand when the world demands we bow. Advent tells us why we can do both: because God has come near. We are not alone in the fire, and we won’t bow. We will be amazed—because the Sovereign LORD is our strength, and Immanuel is with us.
Prayer of Response
Lord Jesus, when fear tries to rename us, help us to stand in Your grace. Teach us to rejoice in You when life is hard. Speak Your true name over us—beloved—and make us a people who carry Your presence into the furnace with those who suffer. Amen.
