Nor Thorns Infest the Ground

-A familiar line in an old Christmas carol. Recently, I had my Sunday School class of Jr. High and Highschoolers read through the Hymn, "Joy to the World". It's a pretty straight forward song, nothing too deep or spiritual. At least that is how I thought it would go in class -that the students would say for every line, "It means what it says".

Never underestimate the wisdom of teenagers. Sure, their ability to rationalize a situation is somewhat underdeveloped and they don't seem to consider the consequences to any of their actions and they lack basic control of their emotions, but deep down they are smart, deep thinkers. Here's why:

My Sunday School class took a basic hymn that they have probably sung their entire lives and broke it down line for line replacing the words with important gospel truths. I don't have room to write down everything they said but would like to look at one line: "nor thorns infest the ground".

When I was reading this hymn by myself before class, I took that line with a grain of salt. Because the line before it says not to let sins or sorrows grow I concluded that not to let thorns infest the ground basically meant to not let bad things grow where good things should be growing. That probably would have been a great answer had I been teaching the 1st through 6th grade class.

My teens took that one simple line and ran with it quoting a passage in Matthew.

Then He told them many things in parables, saying: "Consider the sower who went out to sow. As he was sowing, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on rocky ground, where there wasn't much soil, and they sprang up quickly since the soil wasn't deep. But when the sun came up they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered. Others fell among thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them. Still others fell on good ground, and produced a crop: some 100, some 60, and some 30 times. Matt. 13:3-8

Perhaps "Joy to the World" is not just about spreading joy and happiness but about your part in spreading the gospel. Christians often forget that before we "plant a seed" of the message of Jesus, we need to make sure the ground is soft and ready. I am not going to write any further about this for fear of sounding too "preachy" because that is not the purpose of this blog entry. The point is: I didn't come up with this analogy between the song line and spreading the gospel -my youth did. I plan to look at song lyrics in a different light from now on. Merry Christmas!