The First Day: And Heaven and Nature Sing!

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 Savior 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)

The day has dawned!  Sometime in the night, God tiptoed into the world and made a home.  And the world will never be the same again.  Most of us barely noticed.  Most of the world wakes this morning and goes on with their lives.  That's OK.  If God had wanted fanfare, then I supposed God would have come with a bit more flourish and drama.  But instead, God enters as one of us, quietly slipping the Divine into our midst with as little noise as possible.  (Although I suppose it's hard to enter quietly with a multitude of angels in tow!)

When Isaac Watts first wrote the familiar Christmas carol "Joy to the World", he didn't mean for it to be a carol at all.  The words were originally written to celebrate the triumphant second coming of Christ rather than the birth that we celebrate this morning.  I think that's the reason it works, though.  God's coming into the world is not merely something that happened more than 2,000 years ago.  Today is not the celebration of the anniversary of Jesus' birth as if it is some sort of historic relic that we hold; rather, today--THIS day--IS the coming of God into our midst, the realization that even now, Heaven is spilling into our lives, making a home, and Heaven and Nature are singing together.

God comes quietly, tiptoeing into our lives each and every day of our existence.  A new Light has dawned and every day is Christmas!  So when the Holy and Sacred dawn in our life, are we called to join in loud acclaim, or are we called to silently open our our lives and let the Divine spill in?  With all respect to Mr. Watts, I'm not a big watcher of the "Second Coming" of Christ.  I don't know what that looks like and the Scriptures are not that specific about it.  I think the point of Christmas is that the Lord is come!  God came quietly into our world as the Christ child more than 2,000 years ago.  It was the First Day of the new dawn.  And the Light has been rising each every day since.  And for every heart that quietly opens and makes room for God to tiptoe in and make a home, the Light becomes brighter.  Rather than waiting for God's coming, let us see that God is here.  Let us see that every day is Christmas.  (And, along the same lines, perhaps every day is the triumphant coming for which we are looking until God's Kingdom and the recreation of all is complete!)  Joy to the World!  The Lord is come!

The Lord is come!  Let us now go and see this thing that has taken place!


On this First Day of Christmas, open the gift of the Holy and the Sacred, the gift of the Christchild and then open your heart that you might prepare room for God to come each and every day!

Merry Christmas!

Shelli