December 22, 2025
There's a particular kind of tired that shows up in December.
Not the good kind — not the cozy, candles-and-cocoa tired. The other kind. The kind that comes from months of managing everything: the calendar, the inbox, the household, the expectations. The kind where you're surrounded by tinsel and Mariah Carey and people posting their Christmas card photos, and you feel — quietly, almost guiltily — completely hollow.
If that's where you are right now, this isn't going to tell you to count your blessings or make a gratitude list. It's not going to hand you a five-step plan for finding your Christmas spirit. It's going to sit with you for a minute in the hollow. And then, slowly, it's going to offer something that might actually help — not a feeling to chase, but a choice you can make.
Most of us treat joy the way we treat good weather. We wait for it. We hope it shows up. We feel vaguely cheated when it doesn't.
But there's an older idea — one that shows up in the middle of one of the most unexpected stories ever told — that joy is something you do, not just something you feel.
In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, there's a young woman named Mary. She's a teenager, unbetrothed-but-not-yet-married, living in an occupied country, with essentially no social standing and no agency over her own life. An angel appears and tells her she's going to carry a child who will change the world — and that she had no say in the matter.
That's not a good situation. By any reasonable measure, that is terrifying.
And yet, when she goes to visit her older relative Elizabeth shortly after, Mary doesn't spiral. She doesn't fall apart. What she does instead is remarkable: she sings.
Her response has been preserved for two thousand years and is known as the Magnificat — from the Latin word for magnify, because her first words are "My soul glorifies the Lord." Not will glorify, when things calm down. Not used to glorify, back before all this. Right now, in the middle of the impossible, her response is active. Present tense. She glorifies. She rejoices.
That's not cheerfulness. That's not denial. That's something far harder and far more real: choosing joy.
"My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior" (Luke 1:46–47, NIV). Active verbs. Mary isn't waiting to feel better before she praises. She's choosing to anchor herself in something larger than her circumstances. And that distinction — between waiting to feel happy and choosing to rejoice — might be the most important one this season.
If you want to learn more about what Terraforma Church actually believes, explore it here.
Because life is actually hard. And anyone who skips past that too quickly to get to the hope is either not paying attention or trying to sell you something.
The Loudoun County life — the long commute home on Route 7, the mortgage that stretches to the edge, the pressure to perform at work and at home and somehow still be present — it is genuinely exhausting. You don't need someone to tell you that your life is full of blessings. You know that. The blessings are also part of the weight.
And so when someone says "choose joy," the instinct is to roll your eyes. Sure. I'll get right on that after I respond to fourteen emails and figure out dinner.
But what Mary's story suggests — and what's worth sitting with — is that choosing joy doesn't mean pretending the hard things aren't hard. She knew exactly what she was walking into. An unplanned pregnancy in a culture that could have had her killed for it. A life that would never look the way she'd imagined. She doesn't pretend any of that away.
What she does instead is what a friend once described this way: she had two piles. The pile of what was broken and scary and uncertain. And the pile of what was good and true and faithful. And she chose, daily — sometimes in the middle of confusion and fear — to anchor herself in the second pile. Not to ignore the first. Just to refuse to let it be the final word.
That's what joy as resistance looks like. Not toxic positivity. Not a forced smile at Christmas dinner. Joy that says: this is real, and God is also real, and I am not going to let the darkness have the last word.
The name Emmanuel — which Matthew's gospel translates as "God with us" — is one of those phrases that can feel like a bumper sticker if you've heard it enough times. It's on ornaments. It's in carol lyrics. It's easy to say and easy to ignore.
But underneath the familiarity, there's something staggering about it.
If God entered human life — not as a king with an entourage, not with fanfare and facilities, but as a baby born in a borrowed stable to a teenager with no power and no plan — then the message is unmistakable: no circumstance is too ordinary, too broken, or too far outside the story for God to show up in it.
The angels didn't appear to the rulers. They appeared to the shepherds — young, low-status boys working the night shift. Joy showed up in the last place anyone would have expected. Mary's Magnificat doubles down on this: she praises a God who "has lifted up the humble" and "filled the hungry with good things" (Luke 1:52–53, NIV). This is not a God for people who have it together. This is a God for people exactly like you on your worst Tuesday.
That's the ground under the joy. It's not "things will get better." It's "you are not alone in this, and you never have been." Joy is what happens — sometimes slowly, sometimes just barely — when you start to actually believe that.
You do not have to figure this out alone — there is a community in Ashburn that is asking the same questions. Plan your visit here.
This is where it gets practical — but not in a tidy, laminated-planner kind of way.
Mary's joy showed up differently at different moments. When the angel appeared, it looked like obedience through confusion. When she met Elizabeth, it looked like singing. After Jesus was born, Luke tells us she "treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19, NIV). Quiet, private reflection. Joy isn't always loud. It's not always certain. But it's always a choice.
Here are a few small, real things that might be worth trying — not as a program, just as a starting point:
If you're in Ashburn, Sterling, Leesburg, or anywhere along the Loudoun County corridor, and something in this has felt uncomfortably familiar — the hollow feeling, the weight, the quiet wondering whether there's more to hang on to — you don't have to sit with that alone.
Terraforma Church exists for people who are still figuring it out. Not people who have arrived. People who are being formed. There's no dress code, no expectation that you'll have the right answers, and no performance required. Just a community of ordinary people trying to live with a little more honesty, a little more grace, and a little more joy — even in December.
You are welcome to reach out the website if you'd rather start there. Connect here and we will take it from there.
Q: What does the Bible say about choosing joy during hard times?
A: The Bible consistently presents joy not as a feeling that arrives when circumstances improve, but as something that can be actively chosen. Mary's response in Luke 1 — singing praise while facing a deeply uncertain and frightening situation — is one of the most powerful examples of this. Paul writes from prison, "Rejoice in the Lord always" (Philippians 4:4). The pattern throughout Scripture is joy rooted not in circumstances, but in confidence in God's presence and faithfulness.
Q: What is the meaning of Mary's Magnificat?
A: The Magnificat is the prayer-song Mary sings in Luke 1:46–55 after learning she will carry Jesus. The name comes from the Latin word for "magnify" — her first words are "My soul glorifies (magnifies) the Lord." It's a declaration of praise that also carries a revolutionary edge: Mary describes a God who lifts the humble and scatters the proud, fills the hungry and sends the rich away empty. It has been called a model of praise and, at certain times in history, has actually been banned for its radical claims about justice.
Q: What does Emmanuel — "God with us" — mean for everyday life?
A: Emmanuel is the name given to Jesus in Matthew's gospel, meaning "God with us." The significance isn't just theological — it's deeply personal. If God chose to enter human life through a powerless teenager in a borrowed stable, it signals that no circumstance is too ordinary or too broken for God to be present in. "God with us" means you are not navigating your life alone, and that assurance is the ground underneath joy.
Q: How can joy be an act of resistance?
A: Joy as resistance means refusing to let darkness, fear, or despair have the final word — not by denying they exist, but by choosing to anchor yourself in something larger. Mary knew the risks she was facing, but she still sang. The shepherds were terrified when the angels appeared, but they still ran toward the manger. Joy doesn't require certainty or comfortable circumstances. It requires choosing, even imperfectly, to hold on to hope.
Q: How do I find joy when I don't feel it?
A: Start smaller than you think you need to. Mary's joy in the Magnificat came partly from rehearsing what was already true — the faithfulness of God in the past — rather than trying to generate a new feeling in the present. A practical starting point: trace back through your own story and look for moments when you were held, protected, or surprised by something good. Notice one beautiful thing today. Don't wait to feel joy before you reach for it — reach for it, and let the feeling follow when it's ready.
