Penguins and Joy To The World

Something bugged me more than usual this past Christmas season. It had to do with the North Pole. It wasn’t just that the North Pole gets incorporated into Christmas as part of the whole Santa-supplants-Christ in the secularizing and commercializing of Christmas stratagem. It’s the penguins. Increasingly at Christmas time penguins are an added feature to the whole North Pole scene in displays, movies, songs, and games. Penguins at The Pole seemed more ubiquitous than ever this past Christmas. There’s only one problem with penguins at Christmas, and it’s not just that none were at the original Nativity. It is that there are no penguins at the North Pole. Never have been--except for a displaced few in an unsuccessful attempt to transplant them. Natively, there are no penguins in the Arctic. Cold water penguins basically live in the southern hemisphere, at the South Pole, thousands of miles from Santa’s workshop at the North Pole. (There are also no polar bears at the South Pole where one will find penguins. Evidently, for obvious reasons, polar bears and penguins don’t mix well.). So, there you have it. Despite their constant appearances this past holiday season, penguins have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas. Neither does one of the most popular Christmas carols. It’s true: One of the most popular, frequently sung Christmas carols, one I enjoy singing more than all the rest in Christmas worship, isn’t a Christmas carol. That would be Joy To The World. Its author Isaac Watts was preaching a series from the psalms in the early 1700’s. He wrote Joy To The World after reflecting on Psalms 98. Psalm 98 is a song to be sung after the final redemption of God’s people. Joy To The World is about when that final redemption takes place—at Jesus’ SECOND coming. Then, Jesus will rule the nations and will remove the curse from all nature. “Joy to the World…let earth receive her King.” Not as the Babe in the manger, but the Holy King with flashing eyes of fire and a rod of iron. As penguins belong to the South Pole and not the North, Joy To The World belongs to Christ’s Second Coming and not His first. Technically, we don’t have to pack up Joy To The World with the rest of our Christmas music and holiday decorations to await Christmas 2020. We can keep singing it. Jesus is coming again. Coming as King!. He will rule this world. From pole to pole and everywhere in between. Christmas is over. But, let’s sing it one more time: Joy To The World.

Penguins and Joy To The World

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