Let There Be Joy
I love it all!
I love everything about this miraculous, melodic, much-anticipated season of the year.
I love the cards that daily flood my mailbox with heartfelt greetings from long-ago friends and far-away family members.
I love the calorie-laden goodies and the family recipes passed down from generation to generation.
I love holding the same recipe card in my hands that my grandmother held over 50 years ago as she prepared the fresh cranberry salad for Christmas dinner.
I love the smell of Christmas!
My heart swells at the fragrance of the evergreen, peppermint, and cinnamon that fill my home from just a few days before Thanksgiving all the way to New Year’s Day.
For eleven months of the calendar year, I, as a woman of the twenty-first century, believe shopping to be a total waste of time … who has time to walk up and down the aisles of a store designed to swallow up my hard-earned money?!
However, when Christmas rolls around, I can’t wait to spend time at the mall buying just the perfect gift for those I know the best and love the most.
There is nothing quite like hearing the delight in my children’s and grandchildren’s voices on Christmas morning exclaiming over the ideal gift.
I love the childlike wonder that wraps itself even around the cynical world of entertainment.
Christmas movies, holiday classics, and specials decked with the songs of the season fill the primetime schedule on most everyone’s TV.
Even the entertainment industry pauses to celebrate the most amazing event in the history of mankind. Oh … I will admit they don’t know how to celebrate … and they don’t understand what they are celebrating … but what they do realize is that there is something wonderful happening and they want to be “in” on it.
I love the music ... Oh! How I love the music of Christmas!
Even now, as I write these words, I could just weep thinking about the lyrics of the songs that are particular only to Christmas.
“Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little Baby, you kissed the face of God!”
“Immanuel! God is with us! And if God is with us, who could stand against us?!
Our God is with us, Immanuel!”
“I will hold you in the beginning, You will hold me in the end, every moment in the middle,
make my heart Your Bethlehem, be born in me!”
“Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing, O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!”
“Joy to the world! The Lord has come!”
But what I love the most about Christmas is the story itself.
I am breathless and humbled with the realization that, like Mary, I have been chosen to carry the Christ-child to my lonely world.
I am filled with the awe and wonder of the shepherds, that the joy of heaven would explode into the darkness of planet Earth.
I humbly join in worship with the Magi as I, too, am invited to bow before the Infant King and give Him the gift of my heart.
The first recorded words of God in the Bible are revealed in the first chapter of Genesis.
“Let there be light!” was the declaration of our Creator as He obliterated the darkness and void of the world pre-creation.
His vibrant and powerful words washed away the dominion of darkness, and He became the eternal Light of the world!
Thousands of years later, when Jesus came to restore what sin had stolen from creation, the angels made a declaration on behalf of the King of heaven.
Into the darkness of sin and shame, an angelic chorus heralded the news that delivered Jesus to earth,
“Behold, I bring you good news of great JOY which shall be to all the people;
for unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
Luke 2:10
When heaven announced the presence of Jesus into the battle-scarred world over Bethlehem, they sang, “Let there be JOY!”
And when you received the Christ child into your heart and life, the declaration of heaven was the same … “Let there be JOY!”
My prayer for you this Christmas season is that you would rediscover the joy that belongs uniquely to Christmas.
I pray you will hear the song of the angels in your dark world and that you would join in the triumphant chorus all of humanity has sung for centuries, “Joy to the world! The Lord has come!”
I pray you will never be distracted by the trappings of Christmas but that the song of your heart will be dynamic and sincere.
A Savior has come - and He has brought with him heaven’s joy!
Thanks for listening to my heart this week. As you know by now, my heart is truly not a perfect heart but it is a heart that is filled to overflowing with gratitude for the life I have been given and for the people who walk with me. And, it continues to be a heart that is relentlessly chasing after God and all that He is!
