From the Pastor's Pen, July, 2005:

From the Pastor's Pen, December 2007:

“They’re Playing Our Song!”

“My life flows on in endless song
above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the real, though far-off, hymn
that hails a new creation.

“No storm can shake my inmost calm
while to that rock I’m clinging.
It sounds an echo in my soul,
how can I keep from singing?”

This favorite hymn of mine (I know, I know, one of the 200!) tells, or sings, of a great truth—that even in the midst of all the hectic turns of life, “earth’s lamentation,” there is a greater reality: God’s song of new life sounding an echo in us. There’s a wonder to that idea; that if we just listen, pay attention, “tune in,” we might notice that God is calling us to join in that song. Can you hear it?

Any time we pay attention to Christ’s call, any opportunity we have to look at the ways of God instead of the ways of the world, I think we’re hearing a measure or two of that heavenly song, even if it seems far away. Any time we choose to live by it, however faltering or hit-and-miss our attempts are to follow Christ, we’re singing that song. Any time we make a hard decision to speak a kindness rather than a mean word, choose to love where hate (or worse, apathy) reigns, we’re stepping to that heavenly music. Any time we respectfully disagree with “the way things are” when they stand against the way God calls them to be, we join that song.

Our family recently went to see the wonderful movie “August Rush.” In it, a young boy raised in an orphanage listens to the music he hears all around him, knowing that it is his connection with the parents he has never known. He refuses to be told that such music doesn’t exist. And as much as you might say it’s simply a fond hope, or a delusion, or wishful thinking, it becomes his reality.

I think there’s a lesson here for us at Advent. We can walk into the stores and hear endless recorded versions of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” or “Walking in a Winter Wonderland,” or even “Silent Night.” In that context, they’re not heaven’s music, even though all around us. The material, consumer culture in which we live is not heaven’s music. Even our ideas of a “perfect” Christmas, our desires to have everything come out the way it “should” be for the holiday, can become an idol rather than an expression of the truth of God’s love becoming human in Jesus’ birth. The “busy” of the season can get in the way of our hearing the music of God’s love made flesh.

It would be easy for me at this point to launch into a tirade against the Christmas binge culture, and talk glibly about “the reason for the season.” Let me be clear. I’m not opposed to Christmas! I’m not Rev. Scrooge! But because there is so much—so much busy-ness, so much shopping, wrapping, baking, sending, entertaining, celebrating, it becomes even more important to build in time to listen to God’s song, however far off it may seem.

Advent is a time of preparation. That doesn’t mean preparation for the celebration of Christmas. It means a time of preparing our hearts for the birth of Christ; as we sing in the Christmas carol, “let every heart prepare him room.” The reality is, we don’t give up the first. It’s just important to keep the celebration in perspective so we don’t lose the second, the more important, truth.

In the midst of it all this December, may we be still enough to hear it--the real, though far-off, hymn, that hails a new creation. That new creation is Jesus, the Word made flesh, which comes to dwell among us. May we join the song. May we live it.

On the Journey with you,

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