Emmanuel (God Has Come to Us): Advent Music

I keep going back to this beautiful song on the Biola Advent Project. You can hear it at this link. It's written and performed by an Anglican worship pastor, Marty Reardon. 

Come shepherds, come wise-men,
Both rich and poor alike,
Come Hebrews, come Gentiles,
Come every race and tribe,
For Christ is born the Savior's come to us!

Come children, come elders,
Come women and come men,
Come families, come orphans,
Come strangers and close friends,
For Christ is born the Savior's come to us!

Come wretched, come holy,
Both strong and weak in faith,
Come healed and come broken,
Come sinners and come saints,
For Christ is born the Savior's come to us!
Emmanuel, God has come to us!

*****

I think what I love most about this song is the wonderful realization that Emmanuel has come to be with us -- ALL of us. There is no one who is not included in his love. He has come to be with us all, to love us all, to reconcile us all to the Father. He wants to welcome us all into his everlasting kingdom, the kingdom that will never be destroyed.  I am feeling unutterably grateful for the good news of the gospel.

Consider Him...(Pondering Hebrews 12:3)

Except for a lovely worship service and church school class this morning, followed by a great lunch at church, I have been working all day. This is not my usual kind of Sunday, but this particular semester, I've discovered that I often have to work on Sundays because of my class schedule and my deadline schedule with Spirit & Truth. Reminder to self: must find some sabbath time to take the place of what I'm not able to have on Sundays!

Because I've been working for several hours....work of the really needing to concentrate and think and write creatively type...I'm too tired to write the post I've been planning in the back of my head since this morning. That would be a post on John Newton, author of Amazing Grace. (I mention it here in hopes that it will spur me to actually come back sometime this week and write it...we shall see.)

For now, I just had to share this verse, which has also been running around in my mind and heart much of the day (it's been a crammed full to bursting mind and heart day)....

"Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted." (Hebrews 12:3)

This is a bit of Scripture that's been engrained in me for so long it nearly took my breath this morning in worship when I felt like I heard it "anew." I think I heard it back to front -- the words "weary" and "fainthearted" smacked me in between the eyes, because I must confess I've been feeling a lot of both lately. Then I backed up to the beginning of the verse, and the remedy for weariness and faintheartedness: "Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself..." jumped up for my attention. The enduring of hostility, going all the way to the cross, to restore us in love while we were yet sinners (yes, Romans 5 still singing through my head...thank you, Paul) -- what an amazing God we have.

But it was the "CONSIDER HIM" that really lodged in my heart today. It's an active verb. It's something we are to *do* so that will not grow weary or fainthearted....which suggests that the writer of Hebrews knows all to well how easy it is for us to become those things in this world.

Consider him...or as some other translations have it....
"just think of him"
"keep your mind on him"
"go over that story again"
"think constantly of him"
"think of what he went through"

Sounds like an important spiritual discipline, not just for Lent, but for any season!

Praying that I will find real and loving ways to consider him this week. 
 

Thankful Day

After the exhausting week and the icky Saturday (which probably came through loud and clear in my curmudgeonly post yesterday) I just have to say how thankful I am for this Sunday. The temperatures moderated into the low 30s, which did wonders for my morale.

Morning worship was lovely, infused with a lot of music that paid tribute to the late Andrae Crouch (an amazing gospel singer and musician who passed away last week). D and I both dearly love Andrae's music, and our family has been praying for him for quite some time in his recent months of illness. I loved the fact that our congregation is Anglo-Baptist (grin) enough that today we got to celebrate Andre's legacy, especially with the final rollicking strains of his "Soon and Very Soon, We are Goin' to See the King."

Sunday School and missions committee meeting were both full of challenges, but today challenges felt good, as did loving and serving as wholeheartedly as I could. Despite my inadequacies everywhere, God's love sure does make up for all I'm not.

A walk home in those more moderate temperatures, fifteen minutes of pure quiet to enjoy before the rest of the fam got home from grocery shopping, and a lunch made of fresh strawberries, Robert Frost poetry, and time with my 12 year old -- thankfully in much better space herself today! -- were also blessings. D. had to go back to work (it is, after all, still January) but S. and I proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon baking bread after she built a quick snowman on our sidewalk, courtesy of the slight melt that had come to the snow mountains.I snuck in a little bit more reading on Charles Marsh's new biography of Bonhoeffer, and even managed the first chapter of my new P.D. James.

I know I may rue the fact that I didn't work on deadlines today, but sometimes rest, in all sorts of forms, is even more important. Very thankful for this day!

For All the Saints, Who From Their Labor Rest

I so love this hymn.

You can hear it here, with a full choir and organ.

The text is by William How, the glorious music by Ralph Vaughn Williams (whose music I've listened to for much of this day). God's gift of music through Ralph Vaughn Williams is yet one more reason I am thankful for the Anglican tradition.

O blest communion, fellowship divine!/We feebly struggle/they in glory shine/all are one in Thee/for all are Thine./Alleluia! Alleluia!


A blessed All Saints Day to you!

And A Whole World Opens Up

It's been amazing recently to see how the whole world is opening up for the sweet girl as she gains reading confidence. Suddenly she is seeing words everywhere. Not just random collections of letters, but words. And she reads them, or tries to, wanting to know what everything means and why certain words are found in certain places (on book covers, cash registers, and bathtub faucets, just to name a few).

But yesterday at church was one of the most powerful moments for me, one of those "a-ha" moments that come from time to time. It's one thing to know with my mind that new horizons are opening up for her as she begins to unlock the mysteries of written language. It's another thing entirely to begin to see that bear fruit.

It happened during a time of praise and worship. The congregation was singing. We were singing the ballad "Here I am to worship/Here I am to bow down/Here I am to say that you're my God/You're altogether lovely/altogether worthy/altogether wonderful to me..." It's a lovely song we've sung a few times in church in the past year, but not often or repeatedly, either in church or at home.

I was singing, and suddenly I was arrested by the look on the sweet girl's face. Her Daddy was holding her. First of all, I noted that her lips were moving...she was actually singing (not something she does all that often, joining in and singing with a group). Then I noticed the deep listening look she had on her face, as though she was really listening to the music. And then I noticed her eyes. They were riveted to the overhead screen where the lyrics were posted, and her eyes were following along. When I write this, it sounds as though I consciously noticed these things step by step but really it all broke over me at once. I watched her for a few more seconds and realized, with awe, that she was following along with the written words and singing as she read them.

And I just wanted to jump for joy. Sometimes when you're caught up in the mechanics of teaching reading (sojourning long in the land of "Hop on Pop") you can lose sight of the ultimate goal. You teach someone to read, not just so they can decode those little marks on the page, but so whole words of story, song, and Scripture can be opened up to them, to their hearts, minds and imaginations. Just as we prayed and worked in order to help our late-talking daughter obtain speech, reminding ourselves that speech would help her to communicate and to praise, so we teach her to read knowing that reading provides a key that unlocks so much that is beautiful, meaningful and rich.

Thank you, Lord!

Listening...

My beloved husband brought a gift home from the New Wineskins conference he attended last week, a CD by the wonderful Wellspring, an interdenominational worship group based in the north of England. They have led worship at Wineskins for a long time -- we heard them there when we attended the conference as seminarians seven years ago. This is only the second CD of their's that we have, and if possible, I love listening to it even more than the first.

There is so much richness on this recording, including a heart-rending version of the "Theme from Schindler's List" with Clare McFarlane on violin. And the piece my heart keeps going back to during this week in which we've been confronted head-on by the pain and brokenness of our beautiful world: Mozart's "Laudate Dominum" arranged for harps, string and viola. I have fallen head over heels for this melody, which seems to hold within it so much tenderness and gentility, as though the musicians are stepping through a fragile garden of notes and reminding us all to dance with our arms raised in praise even as we long for wholeness and restoration.

If you're interested, you can learn more about Wellspring at their website here. All of their music is beautifully rendered and played with joy and reverence, honoring God.

All Glory, Laud and Honor

Refrain:
All glory, laud, and honor
to thee, Redeemer, King!
to whom the lips of children
made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou art the King of Israel,
thou David's royal Son,
who in the Lord's Name comest,
the King and Blessed One. Refrain

The company of angels
are praising thee on high;
and mortal men and all things
created make reply. Refrain

The people of the Hebrews
with palms before thee went;
our praise and prayer and anthems
before thee we present. Refrain

To thee before thy passion
they sang their hymns of praise;
to thee, now high exalted,
our melody we raise. Refrain

Thou didst accept their praises;
accept the prayers we bring,
who in all good delightest,
thou good and gracious King. Refrain

---

Words: Theodulph of Orleans (ca. 750-821), ca. 820
Trans. John Mason Neale (1818-1866), 1854,
as altered in Hymns Ancient and Modern


I love Palm Sunday. When I was growing up, the various churches we attended did not always celebrate with actual palms. In fact, I have no concrete memory of ever being in a Palm Sunday processional until I was a married adult and had begun going to the Episcopal Church. Every year since, I've been so thankful to be in churches (all Episcopal/Anglican) that invite us into Holy Week with a narrative reading of the passion reading and a processional with palms.

This year I felt especially moved by the processional. It was pouring rain, so we couldn't start outside like usual. We ended up processing upstairs to our unfinished/unrenovated third floor, and walking around that large space, then going back down the stairs on the other side of the church building and processing back into our basement "sanctuary." I loved watching the Sweet Girl toil up the stairs, waving her palm, and then skip beside me, her eyes wide as she noticed the palm branches waving in the hands of our fellow congregants.

Maybe because I'm the parish administrator, thus the person who maintains the parish prayer lists, I felt much more "in tune" this year with the lives and needs of the people processing around the room. I felt acutely aware of the fact that each person walking around waving the sign of Jesus' victory was a loved and precious son or daughter of God. Each of them is living an ordinary life, and trying to live it to God's glory. The four month old babe in arms will be baptized next week; that grandmother who came in early with her five year old granddaughter so they could set the communion table together has been rejoicing in new found health after recently losing thirty pounds; the tall, very pale man with the somber eyes was recently diagnosed with cancer and just started chemo last week.

Times change, the details of life circumstances change, but people really don't -- not their needs, their bodies, minds and spirits, their hearts. Just as the first people to laud and honor Jesus with palm branches desperately and achingly needed his loving kingship, so too those of us who walked in their footsteps today. The biggest difference is that we're on the other side of his cross and resurrection, so we know more of the story of which we're a part. I wonder how many of the people who lined the road to Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday became a part of the first community of the Way, and remembered the triumphal entry as Jesus' first step toward Golgotha.