Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee
God of glory, Lord of love
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee
Opening to the sun above
Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee
Carrie Underwood
Don’t you love it when a certain song comes to mind, you search it up, and it not only turns out to be the song you had going in your mind, but it’s better?!
This happened to me recently.
This past year, on Christmas Eve Day I woke up to a song lyric, a melody, really, put on my heart that cried out, “Joyful, joyful we adore you.” So, I put this line into Google and up popped this song. A very real song. I was thrilled. I chose the one by Carrie Underwood because, well, she has a killer voice. My heart felt deeply satisfied as I listened to this old hymn.
Even more poignant is the season that surrounds this alluring song, and the message it brings forth. I mean, doesn’t hearing the words, “Joyful, joyful we adore you,” cause your heart to quicken a couple of beats?
Anyway, the season I am talking about is Christmas. The unending, build-up towards this magical and holy time of the year; namely, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Those special days – the 24th and 25th of the final month of the year – are forever etched on everyone’s internal calendar. It’s because they are one of the few times of the year (other than Easter, and summer vacation) where we can just be still and relaxed.
We can be who we actually are: our real selves. The real me, and the real you. This is what we all innately desire. That’s what we’ve been searching for all our lives – to live at peace first within ourselves and then before others. It seems for those of us on this expansive and elusive search, these times come around only a handful of times throughout the calendar year where we actually allow for and give permission for ourselves to, well, be ourselves.
Amidst the utter and sheer upheaval and craziness that this overly-commercialized holiday unrelentingly hurls at us, the timing starts early. It actually begins in the weeks before Black Friday, here in Canada. I mean, it is psychotic in nature. If it feels unnatural and inhumane, that’s because it is. But, it wasn’t always this way.
I once heard it said from a pastor that there are only two things that can heal us: Pictures and music. For pictures, think of all the pictures on your devices, iPhone or otherwise, or the pictures in your memory-mind of those well-spent days and weeks of utter bliss and unending happiness you got to experience. From a holiday, a wedding (your own, perhaps), a dream fulfilled, a longing satisfied, a goal you set out to achieve and actually accomplished, or any of the special backdrops you spent with family, friends, or loved ones and the Eden-like experiences each of those brought you.
And music, well, that’s what I’m really talking about here. Just think of any of the times you heard your favourite song or artist on the radio, in a movie you were watching, or on the playlist on your phone’s preferred streaming platform. These songs come to us in a hundred different ways. And they are all calling out to us, saying something important to us whether we are perceptive of its meaning or not.
One of the things I appreciate most about this song is that it puts into words the very thoughts I have been thinking and emotions I have been feeling. Of course it does. Music has a way of calling this out from the deepest centre inside each of us. One example is the line:
Drive the dark of doubt away
Giver of immortal gladness
Fill us with the light of day
My mind, or my heart, really, at times seem to be clouded over by doubt, as if the big decisions in my life can be likened to me trying to walk atop a fence line in a straight line. I mean, I can feel the doubt creeping in which makes me feel as surefooted as walking in a London fog.
Moreover, this song is a call that reminds us that it is God, in his triune being, that is the ultimate Giver of Life. Only he can produce in us the enduring gladness, or happiness, and the light we need as we travel along our own life’s path.
This song was originally written as a poem, entitled “The Hymn of Joy,” in 1907 by Henry van Dyke. The inspiration for writing it came from the Berkshire Mountains while he was staying as a guest preacher at the home of Harry Augustus Garfield (son of US President James Garfield), who was the President at the time of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
van Dyke said this about his poem:
“These verses are simple expressions of common Christian feelings and desires in this present time—hymns of today that may be sung together by people who know the thought of the age, and are not afraid that any truth of science will destroy religion, or any revolution on earth overthrow the kingdom of heaven. Therefore this is a hymn of trust and joy and hope.”
I really appreciate his comment about hope. The song and its message are eternally hopeful. For me, it gives me hope in the forward movements of life.
Singing with the voice of an angel (as do all our favourite artists), Carrie Underwood delivers an exceptional performance in delivering this multi-meaning hymn-turned-song, for our times.
