Scriptures and Hymns to Grow Your Joy This ChristmasSample

Day 3: Receive the Son’s reconciliation

READ: Colossians 1:15-20

LISTEN: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”

REFLECT:

“Peace on earth and mercy mild/ God and sinners reconciled.” These gloriously simple words from “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” sum up the joy of the incarnation and the foundation of our Christmas celebrations. In some of its earliest known uses, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “reconcile” was used reflexively, “to restore oneself to friendly relations with another.” Yet it’s the central truth of our faith that we can’t achieve the reconciliation we need most: between ourselves and God. And that’s why Paul’s praise song to Jesus in Colossians 1 culminates in the glorious proclamation that “God was pleased … through [Jesus] to reconcile to himself all things” (vv. 19–20). Restored relationship with our Creator doesn’t depend on our efforts — praise God!

When we consider the depths that separated us from God in our sinful nature, we sing “Glory to the newborn King!” at Jesus’ birth. This gift of reconciliation prompts the response of joy in us — joy that’s based on a right understanding of our fundamental need for restoration with the One who is “the firstborn over all creation” (v. 15). If God required us to raise ourselves up from our sin, we’d be doomed. But from first to last — from birth to death to victorious resurrection — it’s Jesus’ work that gifts us our “friendly relations,” our rightness, with God. As the hymn says, His birth brings “light and life to all” and, when His life culminates in resurrection, we receive “healing in his wings.” So we celebrate with the angels that “Christ is born in Bethlehem” and find joy in our reconciling Son of Righteousness.

Colossians 1:16 says all things were created for Jesus. How does His work of reconciliation change how you see your life, your relationships, or your struggles?

“Joy is not the same as happiness. We can be unhappy about many things, but joy can still be there because it comes from the knowledge of God’s love for us. … Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”—Henri Nouwen