Saturday, December 19, 2009

the brightness of thy rising.

If you were asked to choose four songs for a Christmas medley, which songs would you pick?

I would pick Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming, O Holy Night, O Come O Come Emmanuel, and Angels from the Realms of Glory.

As of last night I'm home in Tennessee! We're going to see the Messiah tonight, so today I have a reading for you from a new book that my parents have been reading that is based on the Messiah.

“Let there be light,” we demand at Christmas. And in every household that celebrates Christmas and in every store that sells to Christmas shoppers, there is light. Homes and malls are decorated inside and out with blinking bulbs of all kinds imaginable. Many people mark the days of Advent using a wreath with four candles, lighting one candle each week of the four weeks before Christmas.

Christmas in every country and in every time has included light – candles and fires, burning logs, or electric wonders. Light is the essence of life and the symbol of joy and safety. It is no accident that Jesus is called the “Light of the World,” nor is it an accident that His birthday is marked by a universal display of light….

To know a little about light is to know a little about time and space, energy, and matter. To know about light is also to know a little about what God is like. Light is the symbol the Bible uses over and over to describe Him.

The New Testament book of 1 Timothy tells us that God “lives in unapproachable light.” These words suggest that we cannot know all there is to know about God or approach Him as equals. The mysteries surrounding the God of light are represented in the mysteries surrounding the nature of light.

Light is the fastest thing there is. It travels at a speed of 186,282 miles per second. (That’s equal to about eight times around the world in one second.) Scientists have concluded that if people could travel at near the speed of light, time would slow down for them and they would get heavier. Knowing the truth of these astounding possibilities doesn’t make it any easier to understand them. Our everyday ways of understanding nature are not enough to explain light. How then can we possibly expect to explain all there is to know about God?

Experiments have also shown another surprising characteristic of light. Light acts like two completely different things. It moves like a continuous wave, similar to a steady ripple that comes from a pebble dropped in a pond. Light is also totally unlike a wave, moving in little bits similar to a line of individual bullets shot from a machine gun. We can accept the truth of this seeming contradiction because it explains the observed facts about light. In the same way, Christians accept the spiritual mystery that God can be both a human baby and the all-powerful God at the same time….

Light is the source of life itself. Light warms our body with the heat that makes our blood flow and our muscles move. The sunlight that shines on our green planet enters leaf and plant where it is changed, by the miracle of photosynthesis, into the living food energy that every animal and human must have to stay live. So we can say that light is in every life giving bite of food that we put into our mouths. The Bible tells us that “God is light,” and that “in him we live and move and have our being” (1 John 1:5; Acts 17:28). He is, in a sense, the light that keeps us alive.

God showed Himself to Moses in a burning bush. He led the Israelites through the desert by a pillar of fire. The apostle Paul found his Savior in a blinding flash of light. Christ’s birth was announced by angels in a glory of light, and the wise men followed the light of a star. God is light. And just as every young child cries for the light that will take away the night fears, so every human heart longs for the light of God’s love, every mind searches for the light of God’s truth, and every spirit cries for the salvation to lighten its darkness.

-The Handel’s Messiah Family Advent Reader by Donna W. Payne and Fran Lenzo

4 comments:

  1. Here's my classic favs:
    What Child is This
    O Holy Night
    Ave Maria
    The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came (this year's new discovery)

    And, here's my more personal, quirky favs:
    Star in the East
    One Small Child
    One King (Point of Grace)
    Carol Of The Bells

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  2. -- We Wish You a Merry Christmas (i.e. Piggy Pudding)
    -- Nutcracker March (emphasis on march)
    -- Away in a Manger (in couterpoint with Baa Baa Black Sheep)
    -- Friendly Beasts (all verses)

    Late Addition: Jingle Bell Rock (first 5 bars, from the card that just came from Aunt Christiane & Rob)

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  3. Mmm

    -The First Noel
    -Carol of the Bells
    -Once in Royal David's City
    -Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming

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  4. My choices would be

    - Silent Night
    - Come in and Rule Our Hearts
    - Lo, How a Rose ere Blooming
    - O Holy Night

    better late than never...

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