What's a Frog Doing in a Christmas Story?

[1]

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together;
    the leopard will lie down with the baby goat.
The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion,
    and a little child will lead them all.  Isaiah 11:6^(NLT)

Just getting over my throat difficulties, I am not yet able to preach and lead worship.  So the lay leaders at both of our churches are using some creativity to do some different kinds of worship without a preacher.  They’re pretty good at it!  This past Sunday we had a singing service with favorite hymns suggested by the congregation.

After the service I stood with a group of 40-somethings as we reminisced about why this or that hymn was a favorite.  Jamie shared his memory about Joy to the World, Isaac Watts’ well-known hymn, most often sung during Advent and Christmas.  It seems when this group’s age was still in single digits a visiting musician with a guitar was performing locally.  He was taking requests and one lady, an aunt of Jamie and Jeff’s, requested Joy to the World.  So, the musician immediately defaulted to the only version he knew; he started belting-out Three-Dog Night’s 1970 rock ‘n roll hit:

Jeremiah was a bullfrog; was a good friend of mine.

Never understood a single word he said, but I helped him a-drink his wine;

and he always had some mighty fine wine!

Singin’ Joy to the world, all the boys and girls now,

Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me[2]

Well, the song was named Joy to the World, but it wasn’t the one Isaac Watts wrote, and it wasn’t anywhere near the one Jeff knew; he immediately shouted out to the musician and most of Randolph County, Hey…that ain’t the way it goes!

Leave it to a child to lead them.

Thinking more deeply throughout Sunday afternoon about this story, and where we are in the world these days in the human relations department, reaffirmed to me the conclusion that we need a lot more children raised on Isaac Watts’ kind of take about the way the lyrics are supposed to go. 

Here’s what I mean:

·       Joy to the world will not come with blazing guns, bigger walls, bigger budgets, or more creative personal digital devices. 

·       Joy to the world will not arrive on Capitol Hill, Pennsylvania Avenue, or Wall Street.

·       Joy to the world won’t be found in a new scheme of world governments pressuring each other into written agreements that have no chance of changing the human heart.

Here, Jeff, the little child of 30+ years ago, reminded a 70’s something throwback crowd, that the lion, lamb, goat and leopard will only lie down together in peace when they take a deep breath and listen to the heartbeat of their Creator.

Isaac Watts put it thus:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!  Let earth receive her King;

To receive a king is to obey the king, adopt the king’s way of life, and ultimately see the king honored in everything we do.

That, as Jeff reminded the guitar picker, is how there is real joy to the world.

For You Today

There’s no getting around it – if you want peace you’ve got to let go of the war in your heart!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

---

[1] Title Image: Courtesy:  Pixabay.com

[2] Joy to the World, Sung by Three Dog Night, words & music: Peters, Fox & Walsh, Universal Music Group, released 1970