Merry Christmas!

Peace...Christ Was Born to Save

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Today, I’m going to repost something I wrote last year around Christmas time. I have been nursing a sick husband and haven’t felt particularly well myself this last week (we’re both feeling much better now) and have had no bandwidth to write something original. However, I did write this last Christmas when my subscriber base was a fraction of what it is now, and a lot of you haven’t read it yet.

So, here it is and may it be a blessing to you on this most beautiful of all days.

Peace…Christ Was Born to Save

My childhood was a world of music from the womb forward. My mom was and remains a fine cellist and music teacher, and my dad was a baritone, choir director, music teacher and composer. My memories of Christmas past are filled with the sounds of the Vienna Boy's Choir and Luciano Pavaratti played from cassette tapes and even old vinyl records (yes, I'm that old), musical Christmas programs at church and at schools where Dad taught, Christmas caroling on freezing cold Michigan nights knee deep in snow, and the songs my dad's high school choirs sang under his direction. Dad always called his choirs to greatness, and in spite of their oft grumbling, they sang much more beautifully than even they thought possible. He did not shy away from standard or even difficult professional choral repertoire, and his young singers stretched and grew with the music of the centuries. One of those pieces was "Christmas Day" by Gustav Holst.

"Good Christian Men Rejoice" is woven throughout the piece along with other old carols and ends with a gorgeous but simple treble solo of the last verse:

Good Christian men rejoice!

With heart and soul and voice!

Now ye need not fear the grave,

Peace, Peace.

Jesus Christ was born to save.

Calls you one and calls you all

To gain his everlasting hall.

Christ was born to save,

Christ was born to save.

In my view, it is one of the most beautiful and moving Christmas choral works. It's as close as human music will get to the marriage of truth and beauty we will find in Heaven...which is where my dad is right now, living in the light of God's presence, the Maker and the reason for any music at all.

A couple of years ago, during the Christmas season, this piece popped back into my mind at random and I had to stop everything that instant and listen to it. Before I knew what was happening, my face was wet with tears, and since then, I have been unable to hear it without weeping.

Maybe it's because of those imprints I spoke of and how my dad is tied up in them. Maybe it's because he's gone and I miss seeing him in front of a group of singers doing what he did best. Or perhaps it's because there's a part of you that dies with everyone that leaves you behind. Or perhaps it's because I have yet to see my dad perfectly well and happy and without sin or suffering, and I can only imagine him in this beautiful state and want to see it with my own eyes. Or perhaps it's because I have to wait some years before that is also true of me.

But, ultimately, I think it's all of the above and the last verse of that carol. "Now ye need not fear the grave. Peace."

We live in a world filled with people haunted with an almost all-consuming fear of death. Our western society full of state-of-the art healthcare and technology has created a climate where that fear can be buried as deep down as people can sink it. We don't have to deal with death very often. We don't have to watch the last labored breaths, close the eyelids ourselves, or wash the bodies, or dig the holes to bury them. We have people we pay who deal with that. Out of sight, out of mind. No plagues anymore--just long lives full of plenty, and death with an IV drip of something to ease the way.

But I think the last two years swept the mirage away. It ripped open the grave and made many people, perhaps for the first time in their lives, truly terrified--whether it was warranted or not. That all-consuming fear of death could not be hidden any more. Advanced technology and the climate-controlled life do not a paradise make. Paradise is gone. It has been gone for a long while. A human-constructed, well-lit, sanitized edifice couldn't stand up before a virus and made the tight rope we walk every day visible again. And below that...the gaping chasm we could fall into with just one, tiny misstep.

Man is vulnerable to a thing we cannot even see with the naked eye. It will dim out the light and then...darkness.

Death will come, and we will all have to look it straight in the eyes and it will be the last thing we see before we open them on the other side.

My own struggles throughout my life have made me face my mortality many times over. The anxiety that have made life a living hell from time to time, Lyme disease, the strep infection that nearly killed me and made me feel crazy at such a young age...I suppose that's why the possibility of illness and death didn't ruffle me much. Because I have already been ill for a long time.

But, how? How did I face it?

I saw Christ's hand, nailed through, stretching out to me with peace. And I reached back and clung to it for dear life. Not just that first time, but over and over and over again.

I do not want to be at war with Him. I do not have to be at war with Him. I do not have to fear the grave. What a gift! Anything else is worth giving up for that. All the position, power, wealth, sexual pleasure or preference, my own way, and happiness cannot compete with it. It's all worthless without peace.

Peace is what keeps my nose above the waters that threaten to sink me--the days of pain and the nights of sleeplessness. It's what causes me to walk with my head up and my shoulders back. More than I know anything else, more than I am anything else, I am God's. I know who I am. I know where I'm going. And I have peace with God.

“Love came down at Christmas

Love, all lovely, love divine.

Love was born at Christmas

Star and angels gave the sign.”

And when I listen to "Christmas Day," this all washes over me in a way that is difficult to put into words. Today, this writer still feels like I have not adequately expressed it. Forgive me. It may take a lifetime.

So, listen to "Christmas Day" and be at rest. Take His offer of peace while you can. There is nothing in this world worth having more.

That's all for now. Until next time, folks…