Far as the Curse is Found

      "Joy to the World" is such a traditional part of the holiday season that most people do not stop to contemplate what it really says. This song is a comfortable, regular part of our society, and yet it is counter-cultural: Isaac Watt's carol does not tell us to be good people and show love and warmth at Christmastime in order to feel happy and significant, but proclaims that the whole world ought to rejoice because our Savior has come.

      "Joy to the world; the Savior reigns! Let men their songs employ while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy."

      These words speak of an often neglected aspect of theology: God's redemption is for the physical world, too. Creation groans as it waits for renewal (Romans 8:22) in the new heaven and new earth. The promised coming of Christ was a great, overwhelming crescendo in the story of God making everything right again, and creation rejoices. The physical world matters. We often hear that "salvation is not a get-out-of-hell-free card," but nor is it an escape from the concerns and significance of our earthly lives. God did not send Jesus so that we could just "go to heaven" as souls escaping the prison of earth, but intends to redeem and restore creation. The Bible is clear that in eternity, we will have physical bodies and be in a physical place; we will not float off into blissful nothingness, free at last from our physicality, because the fleshly and earthly creation was proclaimed good. It was God's intent, and the whole of nature cries out His praise.

      "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."
 
      The Christmas season can seem unrealistic and naïve, with all this talk of hope, goodness, and giving in a world that can be so dark. Why, when earth is full of wars, hatred, racism, division, suspicion, and bitterness, and our families are so often broken and full of pain, do we stop in the middle of winter to sing about joy to the world? Some think it's just a commercial ploy. Others see it as whistling in the dark. But we celebrate, we stop and show love, because something extraordinary did happen: the maker of the world took on human flesh, bore our sorrows, and defeated death and hell, offering us the solution to our greatest need. Christmas can only exist in a world that knows goodness and light. We love because love is real, and because there is a God whose character and nature are imprinted on us. All that is good in Christmas, we have because of God.

      We live like we can find happiness and true fulfillment apart from Him, and that is why our world is such a mess. In our efforts to satisfy and fill ourselves, we warped and perverted God's good design and creation, but the pain and brokenness we see are not the beginning or end of the story. The Christmas season is profoundly painful for those with broken families, lost loved ones, disappointed hopes, loneliness, and fear, but it offers us our one real hope, because Christmas is not ultimately about gathering with friends and loved ones or feeling cheery and bright. The baby in the manger entered a messed-up world. He personally was rejected, betrayed, tortured, and killed. People don't display the dirtiness, pain, and agony of this on their Christmas cards, but that is the real story, and instead of discouraging us, it should give us hope.

      If you look at tidy little Nativity scenes and think they are utterly disconnected from your reality, know that the real thing was quite different. The God of the universe entered this world as an infant born to poor people in a backwater town, and grew up to be hated and killed by the powerful of His day, who saw Him as a threat. It's not a happy, pretty story, but that is where our hope lies, because through the death of the Messiah, our sins are paid for, we are made right with God, and we have the hope of promised full-scale redemption. God will make all things new. He will redeem the pain and struggles of our world, and return creation to full order and beauty.

      We celebrate Christmas because Christ rose from the dead. If His death were the end of the story, there would be no hope, no point, and no meaning to our lives beyond what we could make of them. Christmas would be whistling in the dark, pretending that there's hope and clinging to whatever shred of joy we can find amidst frustration, pain, and the knowledge that it's all going to pass away. The cynical are half-right about Christmas, but they lack the end of the story. I know that blessings will flow far as the curse is found, and that creation will be redeemed. My life is all the more meaningful now because it's not all there is; I don't have to fight for meaning and legacy before my death, obsessing over every opportunity and chance at joy, and because I know that my life has a deeper significance than comfort and pleasure or even love towards others, I don't have to stress about having a perfect Christmas or perfect relationships. I can delight in what I do have and rest in the hope that everything beautiful, and everything good, will one day be completely purified and flawless in eternity. The curse of sin warps the world, but there is not a single stain of sin which the grace and redemption of God will not utterly overwhelm.