'O Holy Child of Bethlehem...' - Advent Day 20

            O Holy Child of Bethlehem

            Descend to us, we pray;

            Cast out our sin and enter in,

            Be born in us today.

Nostalgia is, to its core, bittersweet. A longing for something that was, but is not any more. “Do you remember when…”; “What would it have been like to be there when …?” A present detachment from the event is a requisite for true nostalgia. Indeed, we need not have ever experienced that which we long for in order to know nostalgia for it.

The first Christmas seems a prime candidate for such emotions, separated as we are by two millennia from those glorious events. And yet, it cannot be! There are two reasons for this – firstly, the promises of Christ heralded by the first Christmas are still here to be taken today. Secondly, the hope of Bethlehem is still to be perfectly fulfilled in an age to come. Therefore, we are not detached from the first Christmas, nor is it ‘not any more’.

The final verse from ‘O little town of Bethlehem’ recognises our present connection to the first Christmas through earnestly pleading for Jesus to ‘be born is us today’. We need Jesus to cast out our sin, to be present with us and to be preparing us for His final advent. There could not be a better prayer to pray this Christmas time!

O Little Town of Bethlehem - words by Phillips Brooks

'Born to set us free' - Advent Day 19

Soon it will be Christmas morning,
Cards and gifts around the tree;
But will you treasure, will you worship
Jesus born to set us free?

I am a big fan of the giving and receiving of presents. It is an opportunity to give those you love something they like. It is a way of saying to someone ‘I appreciate you’. Our family Christmas day is a great and multi-dimensional day, but the centrepiece for me is undoubtedly the present giving ceremony (yes, even ahead of dinner!)

Yet in buying our gifts, we can easily get weighed down under a sense of burden and duty. And in receiving, more of our emotion can settle on what the gift is rather than the fact someone having given it to us. The corporeal outweighs the symbolic; the actualised trumps the theoretical.

This song reminds us that cherishing material things is not the right path to walk at Christmas. And good as it is to cherish the heart of the giving exchange, the writer exhorts to go further than this still, and adore the One whose birth we give these gifts in remembrance of. And when we remember that Jesus was indeed ‘born to set us free’, why would we not treasure Him above all things this Christmas time?

On a Dark Night (link to lyrics only, sorry no YouTube available) - by Paul Oakley.

'Fear not, he said...': Advent Day 18

"Fear not," he said, for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled minds.

Who are they? And why would they fear? For those not familiar with the story of this carol, it is the account in the Bible of shepherds encountering an angel of God, announcing the birth of the Saviour in Bethlehem to them. At this point in the carol, the angel had just appeared to them, ‘and glory shone around’. So what to be afraid of? Aren’t angels, sort of, nice?

No. ‘Nice’ is not the right word to describe angels. They are good. They are pure. They are helpers of men. But they are also powerful and mighty, agents and messengers of God Himself. They are supernatural beings involved in all of history, including today, and they make appearances as and when necessary. So the fear of the shepherds was not misplaced, yet the angel was quick to reassure them, and to herald the Christmas news.

I don’t know how comfortable you are considering the supernatural, but Christmas is all about, as my pastor put it, ‘God breaking in’ to our world. These things demand deep wrestling, but ultimately the choice is clear cut – we can embrace the supernatural, or we can dismiss it as a trifle. But if we do the latter, we throw away the wonderful hope that the angels, the incarnation and the virgin birth tell of; to trade in Christmas is far too higher price to pay.

While Shepherd's Watched Their Flocks

'Let Nothing You Dismay' - Advent Day 17

God rest you merry, gentlemen,

Let nothing you dismay,

For Jesus Christ our Saviour

Was born upon this day

Peace and joy. Two words ubiquitous at Christmas time, yet two words I suspect we do not feel as frequently as we hear them, even during a festive season. Yet that is exactly what the (somewhat archaic) first line of this carol bids us to feel – peace and joy from God. And it doesn’t stop there, with freedom from all fear being thrown in also. The reason? The Saviour has been born!

So why the variance in our emotions when this saving birth has most certainly taken place? The fundamental reason is that we are imperfect beings whose emotions are affected by curse just as the rest of our constitution is. Yet we can misuse this sober assessment as an excuse for apathy, fatalism, self-pity or whichever brand of gloom we are most comfortable with. The right course is to take hold of these wonderful truths – to meditate on them, to sing them, to embrace them in our hearts.

God would not have us wallow in despair, and nor will this carol. Its tone is thoroughly pro-active: Seek peace! Rejoice! Do not be afraid! There is indeed great emotional resource to be found in the Christmas message, and it is up to us take hold of it.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - English Traditional.

'A city with no room for its King...': Advent Day 16

Oh Bethlehem, what you have missed while you were sleeping-
For God became a man and stepped into your world today.
Oh Bethlehem, you will go down in history
As a city with no room for its King;

While you were sleeping.

Missing out always hurts. How much it hurts depends on the severity of the lack. A missed bus will produce mild annoyance whereas a missed loved one causes great heart ache. But these two extremes share the once essence – grief caused by loss. This is the theme of this Casting Crown’s song, and the subject is the most terrible loss there can be – missing out on God’s amazing unfurling of redemption in Jesus Christ through human history.

The song begins with a consideration of Bethlehem’s obliviousness to the Saviour’s birth, banishing Jesus to a filthy stable. It moves to Jerusalem’s blindness to Jesus’ true identity as they crucify Him at Golgotha. The final verse is contemporary, decrying the western world’s stubborn apathy to His coming return (although be cautious of the anti-environmental and pre-millennial sentiments).

It is a song of deep mourning and grief, undergirded with a plea – wake up! Don’t miss out. Don’t make the mistake of Bethlehem or Jerusalem or secularism.  Don’t be asleep to Jesus this Christmas time.

While you were sleeping - by Casting Crowns.

'Sing through all Jerusalem...': Advent Day 15

                        Hail, thou ever blessed morn!

                        Hail, redemption’s happy dawn!

                        Sing through all Jerusalem:

                        ‘Christ is born in Bethlehem.’

Sometimes we get news so good we can’t keep it to ourselves. Nor should we – joyful things are meant to be heralded. Yet rarely do we get the same frantic stir to share the victories of history; much as we admire and are thankful for VE-day or the defeat of the Armada, we do not run downstairs and shout to our loved ones of their triumph.

The chorus to this carol demands that we make one exception to this rule – and that is the birth of Jesus Christ. The morn is ever blessed, for redemption has dawned! The birth of Christ must be proclaimed through all Jerusalem, and then to the ends of all the Earth. The news of Jesus’ birth is always as fresh as that first Bethlehem morning, for the hope and offer of redemption in Him has not ceased.

This is what Christmas is all about – proclaiming the great news of Jesus’ birth! Let us join the song.

See, amid the winter's snow - words by Edward Caswall

'We shall see Him; but in heaven' - Advent Day 14

Not in that poor lowly stable,
With the oxen standing by,
We shall see Him; but in Heaven,
Set at God’s right hand on high;

We can be surprised, even shocked, to see someone out of context. The boss at a garden centre; an old teacher on a night out.  We often spend time in such encounters establishing just how the other had got to the unexpected place, or why they are there (if not obvious).

The classic carol ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ tells the story of Christ in three very different places – the stable of His birth, His wondrously patterned childhood and then His appearing at the end of this era of history. So let me ask you a question – are you more shocked that Jesus was once a baby in Bethlehem or that He will appear again in the future as the glorious Lord? I suspect that most of us, if we are being honest, are more comfortable with the former than the latter.

Yet if allow ourselves some sober meditation, is it not more incredible that Jesus (a person of the eternal God) would come to Earth as a baby to rescue us than that He would appear visibly as the Lord He rightfully is? Jesus’ first advent is the real shock; his second advent is entirely fitting. It would thus do us well to remain in wonder at Jesus’ birth and to prepare ourselves for His return.

Once in Royal David's City - words by Mrs. C.F. Alexander