Is there a more poignant and powerful carol than: ‘Joy to the World’ ? Well actually, I love them all, all the carols.

But this Advent Season theme of ‘Joy’ ought to arrest us anew, as we await the Birthday of our King in 2016

. . . . the Lord is come / let earth receive her King.  Let every heart prepare Him room -and heaven and nature sing.

The coming of the Presence of God in human form is one of the great mysteries of the Gospel – but it is that: Gospel – Good News! The Christian Story claim that God does not remain – as He does for so many, a ‘not-there’ entity, or a far-removed blob of ethereal Energy, a mere or major Force, a distant surge of Whatever (or Whomever) that wound up the clock of the universe and let’er go – or Someone or Something that somehow started a Big Bang from all the gathered stuff from wherever.

No, in Christ, God shows God’s Self to be personal, a loving Parent, in fact a Lover, though holy, just and true. And that we are, at best, and all that we can do, at best, is a reflection of our Creator. We were made 'in God's Image.'

In Jesus, says the carol - 'God comes . . . … to make His blessings known Far as the curse is found.' . . . -- the curse, which of course is everywhere and in everyone, more or less (and too often, more). It brings Joy – the knowledge that a broken world and broken lives are not the way forward, not a continuing inevitability, for the Creation that God intended.

And neither will a fractured world and ruined lives continue to bear witness for ever to the huge, moral fault-line that slithered like a singing crack on a frozen pond from ‘here’ to ‘there’ - marring the original pristine Creation (though all within the confines of God’s purposes). Joy to the world! - to all creation and to all of us.

The Lord is come.  - Here now, waiting for and working with those who believe it and live and work (and rejoice) accordingly.

Ah, to resonate with the Good News and share its truth and tune in word and deed.