Today’s song is a very familiar and much-loved carol: ‘Joy To The World’. This is a typically Rend Collective quirky video, with Christmas jumpers and props galore! The truth, however, that Jesus is our joy is one we need to keep with us at all times. So many people feel that Christmas ‘is the season to be jolly‘, without necessarily having any reason to be jolly! For them, the pressure to be happy at a particular time of year is stressful. The joy that God gives us is not at all the same as artificial manufactured jollity, nor is it the same as transient happiness.
Christian joy is rooted in who God is and in what He has done: ‘Joy to the world, the Lord is come!’ Our joy remembers the historical facts of our faith and looks forward to the fulfilment God has promised, secure in the fact that God does not change and therefore ‘if the joy-producing acts of God are characteristic of our past as God’s people , they will also be characteristic of our future as His people.’ (Eugene Peterson, ‘The Journey’, P 85) Joy can co-exist even with hardship, troubles, heartache and difficulties. Many people find Christmas difficult because the commercialised happiness promoted as the expected norm at this time of year is so alien to their everyday experiences. For God’s people, however, Christmas fills us with joy because we remember that we who had no hope of ever making it to God have been handed a lifeline, the arrival of God Himself into our world. Laughter and hope become our experience as we realise we’re not on our own. Our God rules the world with truth and grace; He is still firmly in control. He is our joy!
