For some reason been thinking about christmas a lot recently, not sure why (hah - see, told you I had a sophisticated and devleoped sense of humour!) and specifically christmas music. I'm a bit of a music geek - I love music. I love the way it can make you feel things, the way it can summon particular memories, the way it can enhance a situation - and at christmas thats something I'm particularly protective of. It may sound weird but I'm always careful with music that I love a lot or that has a particular memory or resonance with me, careful not to overplay it lest its power diminish. And christmas songs most definitively fit into that category of protected music.
So in a complete scrooge like way I will not countenance the playing of christmas music before I'm ready to start feeling christmassy (as a rule of thumb i figure when we're into double digits in december we're probably ok to start getting excited). Otherwise when christmas does get closer and its legitimate to be excited then the music is just that same old wizzard track you've been hearing non stop for the past month, instead of that exciting christmas-is-coming harbinger of joy that it should be! (Ok, maybe not the best example but still...)
So, in that light thursday was my first day of really unleashing the christmas vibe, and in my searches for suitable material, and in the course of my work of looking for a big name worship leader to try to entice to an event in Dorking (dont ask) I happened upon a Chris Tomlin Christmas album. Upon listening to the album via the genius of spotify I found on it the track "O, Holy Night" which happens to be a track i really like, with great music and great lyrics. (Not always a given for a carol - see "Ding Dong Merrily on High" and its contribution "and i-o-i-o-i-o, in heaven the bells be swungen" - a double whammy of nonsense lyrics and bad grammar!)
And I loved it. Its an awesome track, (heres the spotify link if you were lucky enough to get onboard with this amazing resource before they stopped allowing people to join for free. Apologies if not, cos that link is just teasing you now!) that I listened to a fair few times over the course of the afternoon.
I was listening to it again as I was about to leave my office to walk home while outside the snow was lightly falling as dusk decended, (a combination guaranteed to melt the coldest of hearts to a certain amount of christmassy joy,) and as I left this refrain was reverberating in my head.
"Fall on your kness, O hear the angels voices!"And as i walked down the high street, wrapped up warmly against the biting cold and flakes of snow that were gently drifting, all I could think of was this line. Fall on your knees. Fall on your knees. And if I hadnt been so opposed to public displays of anything that might be construed as different or strange I think i would have done just that as I thought about the magnificence of christmas.
Not the lights, not the tree or the presents, or any of that, but the real christmas.
That small baby being laid in a manger because there was no room at the inn.That small baby born in what must have been pretty difficult conditions.
That small baby, who was the Son of God himself, who had been around since the beginnging of creation. The one through whom, and for whom, all things were made. Hands that flung stars into space as Graham kendrick puts it, now unable to even feed himself.
The whole of history come down to that one point, a young women and her first baby, with her supportive husband to be standing by her side.
And the fact that that baby there in the manger was actually the king of king, the lord of lords, the one who was worthy of more praise than anyone could ever give. In as humble a setting as you could imagine. Fall on your knees indeed.
This is our King. This is our Lord, our redeemer, our saviour.
And it came to me again that what we're about here is worship. Our response to gods greatness and mercy is what matters. (And of course by worship I mean infinitely more than singing songs and playing music)
Christmas seems to be so rarely about worship for me - I get caught up in all the other stuff. The wordly stuff - food, presents, tv, decorations, holidays etc, but also the religious stuff - the church services, the carols, the proclamation of what happened, the desire to ensure that people remember Jesus as the reason for the season (urrghh, I feel guilty even writing that phrase down!) All of these things have at one stage or another kept me from remembering to really fall on my knees and worship the King.
So my prayer for me this year, and for you if you'll join me, is that this christmas, alongside all the other good things that are associated with it, will be a time of worship, of glorifying the Son of God who became one of us. Who became small weak and helpless in order to rescue us and free us.
"Fall on your knees! O, hear the angels' voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night divine, O night, O night Divine."
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