Day 5

Author:
November 09, 2018

When I was five years old, I sang Joy to the World at the top of my lungs. Not the one we sing at Christmas with the high notes we can’t quite hit, but the hit song of the 70’s recorded by Three Dog Night.

I sang my guts out into a black-bristled hairbrush, with all the sincerity a little girl in pigtails can muster, because I’ve always believed in joy. But then, because I was five, I also wondered how on earth you would play together if your good friend Jeremiah was a bullfrog.  

Joy is a part of every good friendship. Friends are the people we run to share our stories, celebrate victories, or cry about the disappointments. As young girls, it was our good friends who got us through the tough stuff. The life-shattering, unbearable things like locker combinations and algebraic math problems. They got us through break-ups and big 80’s hair, pimples and over-parental parents.

Good friends were the safety net we fell into when childhood took a turn toward adolescence and beyond. Some of us ran from the Word to the world in hopes of finding a different kind of joy. The exciting kind that was glamorized on beer commercials. The kind of joy less regulated by archaic rules, restrictions, and thou-shall-nots.  

We grew older in years but not wisdom. For me anyway, in all that newfound freedom, I soon forgot the lyrics and the lesson from the song, Jesus Loves Me.

Instead, I grew up to become a woman who only wondered why He would.  

And that simple, sweet, child-like joy was gone. It had to be manufactured in other ways. For some of us, the loving Savior who held our hearts as little girls stopped being the hand we wanted to hold. There were too many other things fighting for our attention.

On the way to becoming everything the world said I could be, I forgot who Jesus said that I am.

I am forgiven and redeemed.

I am chosen and beloved.

I am the righteousness of Christ.

I am joined to the Lord and am One spirit with Him.

I am a friend of Jesus.

I think it was Wikipedia, or some other super reliable source, that said the writer of Joy to the World originally wrote “Jeremiah was a prophet.” I guess bullfrog was catchier.

But Jeremiah, who was a prophet, saw joy for the people, and joy for you and me. In Jeremiah 31, many promises are made. The Lord says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. I will build you up again, and you will be rebuilt.” In a later verse, He asks us to “hear the word of the Lord; I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.”

When we choose Jesus, we get Joy. We get a deep-down, real relationship with a risen savior who is also a really good friend. Even when our circumstances change, his faithfulness does not. A good friend is always one who shares equal amounts of truth and grace.

It took me a long time to believe that rules and restrictions were not barriers to fun, but borders of protection that are placed around you and me, in love.

  Joy to the world, and to all the boys and girls now.

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