Rejoice !!!!

Wednesday night at our Christmas Carolling service I was telling the folks of a story involving the great hymn “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”. The writer, Charles Wesley (a writer of over 600 hymns), insisted music to his lyrics be only slow and solemn while the eventual music put to his words was from a Jewish man, Felix Mendelssohn, who only wished his music be used for secular purposes !  Mendelssohn’s music was put with the words of this beloved carol around a century after Wesley created it, and long after Mendelssohn’s death. An organist named William Cummings united the music and lyrics for what we still sing to this day !

Sometimes we have our ideas of how things should be and one day we will realize in glory how off base we were ! But funny, isn’t it, how God can use what we do in spite of us?! There are tons of examples of this in Scripture. Peter often spoke out of turn and let the Lord down at a critical time of His need, not once or twice but thrice yet God used him still, Samson had a great temper and unruly passions yet was used to deliver Israel from the Philistines, and on and on the list goes.  Now I’m not saying, go ahead and do whatever you want, God can still bless your mess ! But I am saying when you do mess up, don’t  stay down or think that if you fail God that He  is finished with you. Or feel that you so blew it, how can anyone respect or love you?

The Lord specializes in taking a real foul up and transforming it into something that can be a huge blessing.  How about what happened in a lush and virtually ideal environment in Eden then at a lowly and dingy manger scene in Bethlehem?!!  So this Christmas, you have great cause to celebrate even if you have blown it recently, God has given you the greatest of all gifts in spite of us, rejoice, REJOICE !!!