YEAH!

The Greek word agalliasis means joy. But not just plain joy; it means exuberant joy, jubilation. It's the kind where you're sitting in your home stadium and your team does something great, and the entire crowd jumps to its feet and screams "YEAH!" The way everyone in America must have felt on VJ Day in 1945. That kind of joy.

Joy is all over the Bible, but this particular, explosive word for joy only appears twice in the New Testament. The first time concerns Mary (who was pregnant with Jesus) and her relative, Elizabeth (who was pregnant the John the Baptist):

Now at this time Mary arose and went with haste to the hill country, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. And it came about that when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting. the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she cried out with a loud voice, and said, "Blessed among women are you, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy." (Luke 1:39-44)

John the Baptist felt that kind of joy while still in the womb. I guess he was a prophet even at that age!

But "agalliasis" joy becomes more personal for us in the second and only other place it's found in the New Testament. I just love this. The song "I Can Only Imagine" wonders what we'll feel when we're saved and stand clean and forgiven before Him. Will we dance? Be still? Fall on our knees? Sing? We don't have to imagine. Jude's benediction at the end of his book gives us a great picture of what we'll feel:

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy.... (Jude 24)