Joy, Joy, Joy!

And Another Thing . . . Joy!

“Joy to the world, the Lord is come.” Those words have become so familiar that they may have lost much of their impact—becoming just a song we sing each year in between holiday shopping trips and putting up our Christmas decorations. But those words represent much more than just something nice to sing. Joy came to earth. Jesus’ entry into the human story was an unimaginable turn of events.

As the story is told, God, in Jesus, leaves wherever it is that he was and comes to hang out with us. The painter steps into the picture to shape the image from the inside. John says, “the Word became flesh.” The artist became paint. Improbable and impossible and way beyond reasonable expectation, yet this is the story of Christmas. Jesus comes to break death’s power over us, and he begins his impossible task by participating in the miracle of incarnation. The creator becomes a created thing. The eternal God becomes clothed in finite flesh. No wonder people doubt the Bible. If you don’t doubt it at least the first few times you hear what it says, you are probably not paying attention. It sounds like a fairy tale, but as Fredrick Beuchner writes, it is “a tale that is too good not to be true.”

Jesus leaves heaven and comes to earth and brings with him the nature and character of God. The story of his life reveals what these attributes look like when they are played out in the theater of human events. Jesus expresses the character of God through his love. He “so loves” that he winds up laying down his life to give us hope. His hope leads to joy, and his “perfect love casts out fear.”(1 John 4:18) The opposite of joy is not sadness, but fear. Nehemiah 8:10 says, “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Joy’s strength overwhelms the strongholds of fear the enemy has erected on earth. Joy laughs at fear. Joy allows us to move with confidence in the callings we are compelled to establish. Joy is present regardless of the circumstance. Jesus says in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

Joy to the world, the Lord is come.  Experience joy, because the Lord IS come.

Joy to the world! The Lord is come; 

Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world! the Saviour reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

                                             Isaac Watts, 1719

And that’s all I have to say about that . . . for now!