Dear Spiritual Family,
How’s your “Joy Quotient” around this time? Good, we hope. Off the chart, we hope. Maybe lagging, a bit? You’re not alone. With this being the final Sunday before Christmas we focus on the theme of “Joy” – not joy at a surface level but a deeper experience of joy is what we’re after.
In the classic Christmas song, “Joy to the World,” written by Issac Watts, we are offered an insight. Of course, the song is about the birth of Jesus – “Let earth receive her King, let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing.”
The first part is Jesus, the powerful and life-changing Gift. And then the second part is the receiver of the Gift in our very hearts. And so, what might the writer mean in the words, “prepare him room?”
Let’s look at that for a moment. We might ask ourselves the question, “If I am to receive this Gift more completely—that allows my heart to ‘prepare him room’—then what am I to do?” Is there something I might release that allows me to realize this joy?
To this end, we may find it helpful to go deeper into the concept of “Saviour.” That word carries a charge for many in New Thought. It is almost always associated with the fundamentalist belief: “If you want to go to Heaven (and not Hell) you must accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour.”
Here’s my (Rev. Steve’s) take on the idea of Jesus as Saviour. It was his voice I heard almost 40 years ago when I was, to put it mildly, standing in the need of prayer. “It’s time to study A Course in Miracles.” Thankfully, I heeded his voice and in a very short time, my life was totally transformed, saved by the grace of God!
In Part III of Chapter 15 in A Course in Miracles, Jesus teaches:
“In this season (Christmas) which celebrates the birth of holiness into this world, join with me who decided for holiness for you….Learn that you must be worthy of the Prince of Peace, born in you, in honor of Him Whose host you are.”
We invite you to ponder these thoughts in your very heart as Christmas comes and goes this year. Jesus the Christ is unconcerned with the language we use or don’t use yet he makes his role perfectly clear in the language of A Course, “My Kingdom is not of this world because it is in you. And you are of your Father. Let us join in honoring you, who must remain forever beyond littleness.”
He came to reveal our true Identity and is with us still, to guide us to Oneness through forgiveness. We can empty our hearts of what is unlike us – the anger and upset, the untruths we hold against ourselves and others. Then there is all the “room” that is needed to truly receive the Gift of Jesus and thereby know the Gift that we are as well.
Merry Christmas,
Rev. Steve and Mary
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