An Advent Playlist: Hymn-Based DevotionsSample

Joy to the World

Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room and heaven and nature sing.

Nobody would have expected the great King of all to arrive like that. All the royalty in Grimm’s Fairy Tales arrive in carriages drawn by a team of white horses. Can you believe that your Lord and Master arrived on earth through the birth process? And had nothing to wear but strips of cloth? And was laid in a manger (i.e., an animal’s feed trough)?

Does the humility of the divine entrance disappoint you? discourage you? offend you? Were you expecting trumpets? armies? silks, ermine, golden mace, jewel-studded crowns? If you were near that cattle pen that night, would you have bowed down in worship?

Yes, we would! If God helped frantic parents and shocked shepherds and wealthy Magi from the East to see their Messiah in the Baby, he would have found a way to turn on the lights in our brains as well. People of earth, receive your King! Each Christmas is practice for the moment of Christ’s second coming, when every knee will bend, either in worship or terror.

Prepare a place for Christ in your heart. Sing! Let everyone in your world know that you are happy that Jesus came all that way to claim you.

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14).