Listen to the Angels

It's been a bit hard for me to get into the "Christmas spirit" this year. With the recent deaths in our church family as well as a pretty sudden decline in my sister's Alzheimer's condition over the past couple of weeks, I've had neither the time nor the energy--emotional, mental, or physical--to feel particularly jolly. Yet as I was reflecting on the words of one of my favorite Christmas carols, it reminded me that this is exactly what Christmas is about. God became a baby and quietly slipped into a broken, hurting world marred by sin, disease, and suffering to save us and give us a hope beyond this frail life. Take a moment in your busy day to rest and hear the angels sing!

IT CAME UPON THE MIDNIGHT CLEAR

It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold;
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From Heaven’s all gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever over its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet-bards foretold,
When with the ever circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.

WORDS: Edmund H. Sears, 1849
MUSIC: Richard S. Willis, 1850