Christmas is a time to remember the gift of God's giving nature in every area of life. He gave us earth to live on, fellow humans to love, work and share with, and a great meaning in life - to serve our fellow man. The gift of God's Son Jesus gives us peace to enjoy all these other gifts as His family on earth - and to live in eternal joy. Merry Christmas to us who have received all God's gifts. Joy to the World!
...Joy to the World. That puts me in mind of one of our treasured Christmas songs. Much like "Holy Night, Silent Night", "Joy to the World" too has a story I wish to share with you now.
Of the statues in Westminister Abbey, one is of Isaac Watts, the frail, sickly, gentle-mannered literary genius of the early eighteenth century. Another of the statues is of George Frederick handel, the massive, robust, and hot-tempered genius of the keyboard and opera. Both men lived in London. Each knew the other. But neither suspected that their talents might someday be combined to produce one of the world's greatest Christmas carols.
It was in 1719 that Isaac Watts sat under a favorite tree on the Abney estate near London and wrote a hymn-poem based on Psalm 98. He was forty-five years old. In addition to a dozen books on various subjects, Dr. Watts, pastor of London's Mark Lane Church, had written and published six hundred notable hymns, among them being such immortals as "Come, We That Love the Lord," "When I Survey the Wonderous Cross," and "Alas! and Did My Saviour Bleed." But due to the dwarfed bachelor's infirmities, London's Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Abney, took him into his home in 1712. There he remained for the rest of his life.
Twenty-two years after Isaac Watts wrote his hymn-poem on Psalm 98 and published it in his Psalms of David Imitated, a big, fat theatrical producer knelt in prayer in another part of London. He was George Frederick Handel, composer of some of the world's greatest operas.
As a boy in Germany, Handel had persuaded his father to allow him to pursue the study of music instead of law. Soon thereafter he was playing for churches in England.
A devout religious man, George Handel prayed and worked continuously for twenty-three days and nights in 1741 to compose his immortal oratorio "The Messiah." It is such a superb masterpiece that for two centuries it has been drawn upon as the basis for scores of other compositions.
After extending his visit of a week to thirty-six years, Isaac Watts died on the Abney estate in 1748. He was buried at Bunhill Fields, but a statue of him was placed in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. There also stands a statue to the memory of a theatrical genius who never forgot God.
Almost a century later, in 1836, Boston's choir director-composer Lowell Mason drew upon Handel's "The Messiah" for the music appropriate to the hymn-poem Isaac Watts had written in 1719.
And so, while the big statue and the little statue stand today in mute tribute to two geniuses of two centuries ago, tribute also is paid them every Christmas to the resounding echos of:
Joy to the World! The Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heaven and nature sing.
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