“Let … Let … Let … Let …” (“Joy to the World”)

What is our hope as followers of Jesus?  I don’t mean what is my hope for my life, for my future.  That’s an important question, just not the one asked here.  As Christ-followers, as we look upon the entire burdened world and its long and wearying history, what are we hoping for?  

We hope, we look forward to, we anticipate, we await God’s full and complete answer to the prayer Jesus taught us: “Our Father in heaven … let your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.”

Heaven and earth have been “divorced”; we await their “remarriage.”  The good purposes of heaven have been opposed by the sin of the earth; we look forward to the erasure of sin’s penalties and powers and the reconciliation of earth to heaven.  Life on earth is shadowed by a curse we can’t even fully see, understand or explain; we look forward to there being no longer any curse, to the end of grief-stricken weeping, mourning, pain and suffering.  Heaven is the realm of eternal, abundant life, but everything of earth that we love must die; we look forward to the final death of Death itself.

What are we to do as we wait?  We are to bear witness to the only future the world has ever had, the future that looks like God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven.  How can I, how might we, bear this witness?  This week’s carol, “Joy to the World!” offers us guidance.  Listen to these four lines:

Let every heart prepare him room: we bear witness as we allow Christ to be revealed to us, formed in us and expressed through us.  Each Christmas we marvel that the infinite God “reduced” himself to fit into a manger.  How could the manger that is our heart make more room for Jesus?  We could start by asking God to help us see where we’ve drawn boundary lines, where we have “boarded up” some section of our hearts: “Lord, you may have access to my heart here, but not there.  Lord, I give you this part of my heart, but not that.  Lord, I would like you to touch these areas of my heart, but keep your hands away from those.”

No more let sin or sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground: we bear witness to God’s kingdom and Creation’s future as we do the work of weeding.  How has God positioned and equipped us to bear God’s comfort to those around us who sorrow—and to play the parts God has for us in addressing the source of those sorrows?  How would God help us to notice the sin-weeds and life-choking thorns sooner, and cultivate the ground around them so that something different, something better, might grow?

Let earth receive her king: we bear witness to the reality of God’s Kingdom by living “kingdom lives” together here and now.  We receive Jesus, not only as Savior, Comforter and Friend, but also as our Lord and King.  We go where our King goes, we say what he says, we work alongside him, doing his work in his way.  We attend and respond to him, we allow his heart to renovate our hearts; we allow his mind, the way he thinks about things, to transform our minds; we welcome his will conforming our wills to his.

Let men (that is, all of humanity) their songs employ: we bear witness to the world’s best and only hope by singing about it, songs old and new.  We paint, write poetry, craft, bake, build, fashion, shape, an explosion of God’s creative goodness expressed through people like us and a church like ours.  We sing the world’s sorrows, weeping with those who weep; we sing the world’s joys, celebrating the goodness of God in the land of the living.  Our lives point beyond themselves, beyond our genetics, ethnicity, nationality, politics, systems, cultural modes and mores and preferred ways of doing things, to the King who is himself the Kingdom and the Way.

What would a roomier-heart-for-Jesus look like in your life?

Which sins, sorrows or thorns is Jesus calling you to address?

What are there places in our lives where the values of his kingdom are in conflict with our values?

If your life could “sing” one Christmas carol in particular, which one would it be?