The Joy of Advent
The Joy of Advent
“Joy to the World, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King.” These familiar words, sung across cultures and continents, echo the longing of every global worker: that mankind would receive their King, that the nations would know His joy, that weary hearts in dark places would discover the Light that has come.
Joy can feel like both a promise and a paradox. You’ve said yes to Christ’s call, yet you labor in places marked by spiritual resistance, cultural tension, loneliness, or limited fruit. The work is both beautiful and heavy. And yet the carol does not command us to create joy, but to receive it. “Let every heart prepare Him room” is an invitation before it is a mission. Before we help others welcome Christ, we must cultivate space for Him in our own souls.
Preparing Him room often looks like choosing wonder again. It looks like stopping long enough to notice how Christ has “come” not only to the world, but to you—into your rhythms, your disappointments, your team dynamics, your prayers that feel unanswered, your small victories that no one else sees. Mission life can slowly fill every room of your heart with urgency, responsibility, and depletion. Advent calls you back to joyful expectancy: He enters what we open.
Another line sings, “He rules the world with truth and grace.” Truth and grace—that unlikely pairing—defines the heart of Jesus and the heart of mission. He rules not with force, but with a love that frees. Not with pressure, but with presence. When your own expectations or burdens begin to rule you, the King gently reorders your spirit: His truth steadies; His grace softens. You don’t bear the mission; the King does.
And then, “Let every heart prepare Him room” becomes not just an invitation to Christ, but your prayer for the nations. As you sow seeds, host conversations, disciple believers, and love your neighbors, you do so in partnership with a King who has already come—into villages, cities, campuses, cafés, refugee camps, and living rooms. You are not introducing a stranger; you are pointing to a person already at work—Jesus!
Let the familiar carol be your prayer in this season, adding “Lord, fill my heart with Your joy again. Rule my world with truth and grace. Let my heart prepare You room.”
-The MissioCare Collective Team