There are moments when God does something so good, so unexpected, and so redemptive that it feels like your heart skips ahead of your words. Did you know there's a bidi bidi bom bom moment in the Bible?
Selena fans know what that means. It's the sound your heart makes when you're in love. As the prophet Isaiah saw it, it's what your heart does when you're in awe.
In Isaiah 60, God's people heard the promise that God's light would shine on them. It would shine so much upon them that nations would come to honor God. They would bring their wealth with them, and the people would see it as a sign of God's blessing. No more would they see exile or know desolation. The Lord would bring prosperity to them.
As a result, the prophet says their heart "shall thrill and rejoice." That's not a generic sense of happiness. It is a deep joy that moves your whole being. There's a sense that their heart would swell with joy. It's meaningful because this joy would rise within a people who had learned to expect loss more than abundance. It's also important, I think, to recognize that the promise of this heart-shaking joy came before the people actually experienced it. It was something they could expect to come in time. 
When we sing "Joy to the world," that's what I hope we are experiencing. Christ has come as our light. Through the person of Jesus, God has brought to us immeasurable blessings. We may not experience, understand, or appreciate them all at once. But when we learn to pay attention to how God has provided for us, that's when we learn the joy that comes from knowing God.
In Christ, your circumstances don't dictate your joy. When you're in awe of God, joy teaches you how to trust, to hope, and to praise again. So, pay attention to the moments your heart responds before your words do.
Stay blessed...john | 
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