Editor’s Note: This article was co-authored by Elijah & Verna Lloyd.

Verna: It was a dreary October day and I was cleaning up the food scattered all around our toddler’s chair. My thoughts matched the weather as it dwelt on things that were less than wholesome and true. Thoughts about how it seems like maybe God forgot to remember about us and questions about why I feel so discouraged and cynical with life. Out of the blue, I knew God had spoken to me, saying that I needed to start thanking him for his goodness and that I’d forgotten how to praise. I turned on some music and thanked God for ways that he had already shown up in our life. It was a few minutes later that we received a text from a dear friend which completely changed the dynamics of one of the difficult situations we found ourselves in. In that moment I knew God sees us and remembers and we are, in fact, not alone. 

That same week I was reading a book a friend had gifted me and I’d been slowly and intentionally enjoying over a few months: Beautiful Resistance by Jon Tyson. The chapter I happened to be reading was titled, “Celebration Must Resist Cynicism.” My life over the last few months suddenly came into clearer focus and I saw cynicism written across so many of its moments. These had been difficult months. One thing had led to another and it seemed like a never-ending slog of hard, tiring monotony had taken over and come to stay. Slowly I had allowed the difficulties to become larger in my mind than the goodness of God. 

So Elijah and I invited friends over till our living room was filled with people celebrating God’s goodness. It was one of those days where you look back later and realize it was a turning point, a moment in time when a battle was won. And it was beautiful. We told stories of God seeing us and caring for us and we declared God’s goodness to each other over plates piled high with delicious food. We ended the evening with cups raised high in a toast to “the King and the Kingdom,” which we borrowed from a story in Beautiful Resistance. It sounded so lovely and defiant and strong. Celebrating instead of giving into cynicism is an act of war that can lead to thought patterns that are full of hope, goodness and praise to our King.  

Jon writes:

The local church communities we are a part of need to put the good news of Jesus at the center of our lives. We must learn to choose this way of thinking and living. We need to be known for more than creedal adherence, service of the poor, and convictions about biblical ethics. We need to be known as those who know how to celebrate and party. Those with instincts of joy who seize the moment and mark redemption. Who order desserts, raise glasses high, create space for sharing the work of God, and root it all in his goodness.

Elijah: Roughly around our 6-month mark of living in Germany, a brutal time of emotional upheaval hit us where we found ourselves questioning our ability to do the work we were sent to do, doubting our language and social skills, and questioning God’s plan and care. As often happens in down-times, we found it harder to feel happy about our life which led to more tension in our marriage as normal stresses of parenting and balancing schedules became harder to manage. We were in the middle of a particularly discouraging week when Verna got a strong conviction that we need to purposefully celebrate the goodness of God’s world and of our own story. When she told me what she felt, it immediately caught on for me as well. We decided to plan a purposeful celebration for that Sunday afternoon. It was an important stake in the ground for us, to choose to celebrate in the middle of uncertainty, angst and discomfort.

Since that moment, thoughts of thanksgiving, celebration, and intentional joy have surfaced often for us. Paul’s words in Romans 12:12 sound out often in my mind: “Rejoice in hope.” “Hope,” for the motley group of Gentile Christians to whom Paul originally wrote, did not mean that things might get better next year or that possibly luck would strike and life could improve. Rather that the old-creation reality of death, suffering, and persecution at the hands of God’s enemies was only temporary and would soon resolve, at Jesus’ reappearing, into a renewed creation and a peaceful world governed in justice by the Lord.

Intentionally dwelling on this coming reality makes celebration possible even in the darkest situations that Verna and I can only imagine, but it also deeply informs the way we walk through the normal hardships that often come with life, such as loneliness, stress, or disappointments. The current order of things is only a valley of suffering through which Christians endure so the gospel can go out and God’s underground Kingdom can begin to convulse the foundations of the old reality. Intentionally celebrating in light of this reality, choosing to rejoice in hope, makes endurance possible.

But what exactly is the relationship between the perhaps pious-sounding concept of “rejoicing” and having a light-hearted party in our living room? This is the fault line on which our rejoicing often ceases, since we have an endless tendency to separate spiritual realities from daily life. This is even evident in our word choices, as we might “rejoice” in spiritual events but we’re “happy” at birthdays and graduation parties. But of course, rejoicing means precisely to choose happiness through actually doing and living joyful, fun activities, whether that be in sitting down with family to a loaded Christmas feast or drinking an eggnog or hot chocolate with friends. It means intentional reflection on the goodness of God in the context of celebratory activities.

Take a moment to soak in the fact that God divinely prescribed seven times, yearly, where the nation of Israel was to corporately stop all work and just eat good food and act out varied fascinating theater pieces like camping in tents, reenacting the wilderness journey and eating specific foods that commemorated what God had done. Can you imagine the fun that Jewish children had every year, helping their parents set up their version of tree houses, joining their neighborhood to play together in the streets, dancing, and eating their favorite foods? Or have you thought about the fact that the sabbath was a weekly time where masters were unable to force their household slaves to do any work, but where literal physical rest and simple foods could be enjoyed?

What if we would learn to bring some of the wisdom of this practice of joy into our celebrations, particularly as we prepare for Christmas and the new year? Many of us already have beautiful traditions of celebration combining the physical rejoicing of a rich array of food and chill games with the reflection on the reality of the kingdom of Christ which has come in Jesus. Lean into the celebration, recognizing the power of happiness, when it is grounded in hope. Many may feel that a holiday like Christmas has only been a selfish or purposeless materialistic time, devoid of the reality of Christ. 

Therefore, our celebration must always be grounded in hope. Hope leads to service, because those with eternal plans can sacrifice their time and money in the present to give to others. Jesus’ model of celebration starts with inviting the homeless, immigrants, and the societally-rejected to our parties. A truly Christian ethic of celebration, then, is most fully joyful. It starts with hope in the goodness of God’s plan for the universe, leads us to offer our families, friends and the strangers around us the space to celebrate with us, and ends in thanksgiving.

Verna: Although holidays are wonderful times to intentionally celebrate God with us or the hope of Christianity, we don’t have to limit our celebrating to these days. Celebrating can be as simple as brewing a cup of tea, lighting a candle, or making your favorite food and inviting another person in and taking the moment to intentionally stop and enjoy the goodness of God. I challenge you to make celebrations a normal part of your life. 

It’s easy to get stuck in knowing how to celebrate well because we tend to think of it in selfish ways—thinking only about what I enjoy or reducing it to doing something special for oneself. But I’d like to suggest that celebrations are done best shared. Giving of our resources in moments of difficulty is one of the most fantastic ways to live in light of Jesus’ Kingdom. 

Finally, some of our favorite ways to celebrate:

• Chaotic week? Wrap up the week by quickly tidying the house, setting the table with pretty dishes, lighting a few candles, and serving the family a special meal (can be really simple, like soup and bread, in pretty dishes). Bonus points if there’s a neighbor you can invite over!
• Start your day with listing five things you’re especially grateful for. 
• At the end of every week we take time (usually, Saturdays while Theo is napping) to remember things that went well, celebrate the successes, and invite God to guide us in the coming week. We pair this key planning/celebration time with eating or drinking something special together (last month we had a ‘coffee-less’ month and only drank coffee during these times).
• Write a letter to someone living far from you and tell them about ways you see God working, or prayers getting answered.
• Throw a party. Ask everyone invited to bring a dish of their favorite party food, and a story to share of a recent answered prayer.