Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room, A Christmas Meditation

Eloise's Christmas pajamas announce gleefully*, "Joy to the World!" and I hum the rest of the song to myself...

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her king!
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing!

I love this Christmas carol. I love how bombastic it is, how the melody bounces around like a child full of too many Christmas cookies. It's a bit ancient, and proper, and involves smushing the word "heaven" into one syllable. I find it delightful.

This year, we began advent mid-move, and one particular line of this song stood out to me. Let every heart prepare him room.

Amid the chaos of being in and out of boxes, some of our usual Christmas traditions were derailed. While I sorted and cleaned and organized things from room to room, I kept thinking about how preparing rooms of a home compares to preparing room in my heart for the person of Jesus, the Son of God, whose birth we celebrate today.

When I was young, the act of becoming a Christian was explained to me using the language of "asking Jesus to live in my heart." (If someone knows the history of how this phrase became part of our nomenclature, I would love to know it. Google was no help.) While I am more inclined to frame for my children what it means to be a follower of Jesus, I do see some usefulness of this analogy. It makes for a good youth group skit, replete with drinking reference and mimed, dramatic nailing of Jesus to a cross, and it helps a small child understand the complex theology of how we are indwelled with the Holy Spirit. 

As an adult, this catch phrase means something a little different. Having children—and having them grow older—has added to my responsibilities in a unique way. Gone are the days of hosting friends for dinner nearly every night (which is a good thing now that traffic prevents them during the week anyway). Come are the days of homework and yard work and finding new routines. There was a season in my life when I had all the space in the world for new relationships, but now I guard my time a little more strategically. There is only so much room in my heart.

The last thing that the book of John records before Jesus betrayal and death is a prayer from Son to Father that ends like this:

I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.

Whatever your preparations have looked like this year, I invite you to ponder a moment on what it means to make room in your heart for the only one who can fill it to overflowing. And not just, "Oh here's a nice corner over there, Jesus, for your to curl up with a book." Jesus wants to invade your heart like your firstborn's baby gear. But when Jesus takes up residence in our life, he brings fullness—love received that we cannot help but share. 

Merry Christmas from the Storrs family!

*The pajamas are gleeful, even if Eloïse herself was not gleeful about my request that they pose for a picture.