Merry Christmas from Me to You

Joy to the World! Christmas is such a magical and charming time of  year. It warms our hearts, reminds us of peace and hope. 

The other day as I was playing a Christmas Carol, “Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee,” on the piano, I started thinking about the great carols we sing. After a bit of research and I found that most of the Christmas Hymns we love were penned in the 1700 and 1800s. 

Handel’s Messiah and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy are the melodies behind Joy to the World and Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.  

As I meditated on the great composers of the 18th and 19th Century, and the lyrics and melodies of Christmas songs composed at the same time, songs we still sing today, I started to smile. 

The Lord released sounds and songs from heaven to earth that would be sung  and played a hundred and fifty years, a hundred years, fifty years before the break of humanism, communism, Darwinism and Freudism (my term) onto the world’s stage. 

A good portion of the earth still sings “Joyful, joyful we adore thee.” Or, “The Lord God omnipotent reigneth! Hallelujah, hallelujah!” once a year. The brilliance of Handel and Beethoven is indisputable. 

Every December choirs and choral groups, Muzaks play the hymns of the sovereign Lord’s return and reign. 

God is always about the business of glorifying His Son. What sounds, songs, melodies and words is He releasing from Heaven in this hour in history that will resonate through time until His return? 

Every Sunday morning as we pray over our worship set, we ask the Lord for sounds from Heaven. We want to partner with Him to accomplish His purpose in us, through us unto the earth. 

I may not be a Handel up there leading worship. I many not be a C.S. Lewis writing novels that will endure the decades, but I am the Lord’s willing and available vessel. My words and songs do affect the heavens. Forever. 

I love this passage out of Malachi 3. It’s not your typical Christmas verse, but it speaks to what I’m trying to say: 

Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.

“They will be mine,” says the Lord Almighty, “in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him. 

And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.

God listens in on the conversations of those who fear him. He writes them down. He’s recording our writings, our stories, and singing!

Make a new melody in your heart to the Lord this Christmas. Believe that it will resound through the ages to come.

I’ve made up a lot of songs on the piano just me… and myself. But I have a feeling God’s going to play them back to me some day with the full force of heaven. Hey, maybe he’ll ask Beethoven to pretty up my chords and turn it into his first symphony in the new era.

Who knows? But let’s not limit our thinking to earth. Let’s be heavenly minded. What is God sending to your hearts this season? Let the Holy Spirit breathe in and through you.

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Rachel