Carnett: God can take us from distress to joy

Joy.

It’s the English-language word most frequently associated with Christmas. My dictionary defines it as: “Feelings of great happiness … especially of a spiritual kind.”

But the vast majority of us, no matter our age, rank or social status, feel anything but joy. Even now, as the Christmas season reaches its crescendo, it’s difficult for many to feel any measure of joy at all.

More likely we’re in denial. Or pain, depression or distress.

But what we should be is in love with God, the one who — long before our journey down the birth canal — knew us and loved us. We are his joy. He fashioned us from the basest of elements, and he revels in us.

Christmas is about God, who spoke the cosmos into being from outside the realm of time and space, and who then stepped into our universe of matter and energy and launched a rescue mission for humanity. His actions were unprecedented, akin to Rembrandt stepping physically into his masterpiece, “Night Watch,” to alter its state of affairs.

“The idea that the God of the universe,” writes Eric Metaxas in his new bestseller, “Miracles,” “would humble himself to touch the lives of any of us is, in the end, beyond our full comprehension.”

But he did.

We’re told in Luke’s Gospel that angels sought out the shepherds in the fields surrounding Bethlehem on the night of Jesus’ birth. They were bearers of “good news of great joy.” There’s that word again.

Joy.

Composer Ludwig van Beethoven asks listeners the ancient question in his 9th Symphony, “Ode to Joy.”

“Do you bow down before him, you millions?” the choir queries in the stirring final movement of Beethoven’s only vocal symphony.

Actually, German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller wrote those words for his poem “Ode to Joy” in 1785. Beethoven appropriated them for his magnum opus 40 years later.

Though the 9th isn’t Beethoven’s homage to Christianity as, for instance, is Handel’s “Messiah,” it asks the central question of Christmas: Do we bow before the babe in the manger?

The shepherds became the first of our race to do so. In a shelter for livestock, a common setting for people of the 1st century, the scruffy herdsmen come face to face with the maker of spiral galaxies.

The infant did not long remain in the rough-hewn manger. It was his mission to dwell among, instruct and redeem fallen humankind. He was God, adorned in flesh, entrusted by his father in heaven to suffer the horror and humiliation of crucifixion on a Roman cross.

I have an Israeli friend who speaks English with a heavy accent. He pronounces crucify “crossify.” He has captured the meaning exactly!

Jesus was raised from the grave three days later and now reigns triumphant.

“Seek him above the canopy of the stars,” Beethoven and Schiller urge. “He must dwell beyond the stars.”

He does, a billion light-years beyond the most distant quasar, but only a whispered prayer away. And it was the Christmas miracle that physically brought him to us.

Isaac Watts wrote perhaps the most popular hymn of Christmas –- “Joy to the World” — in 1719. We sing it with gusto. Watts penned the carol not to commemorate the coming of the Christ child to Bethlehem, but to glorify the risen savior’s glorious second coming at the end of time.

He will return, just as he promised.

Christmas is an appropriate time, however, to sing Watts’ hymn. At his first appearance, the lowly Christ child arrived in poverty and weakness. At the second, he’ll be clothed in majesty.

In the second verse Watts proclaims: “Joy to the earth, the savior reigns / Let all their songs employ / While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains / Repeat the sounding joy / Repeat the sounding joy.”

There’s that word again.

Joy.

Nature cannot contain it. In Watts’ hymn, joy is felt so powerfully that cascading waterfalls, crashing waves and exultant eddies manifest it. Even the rocks cry out!

Such joy is immeasurable.

It’s the quintessence of Christmas.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.