O Holy Night

We have been so busy decking the halls that it is easy to forget the true meaning of the season. In church, we are studying Christmas Carols. I love it. Christmas Carols are some of my favorite songs, and we only hear them for one month of the year. Our pastor has been taking a Christmas Carol, dissecting and explaining it's history and then choosing one line to focus on. I know when I hear these songs from now on, those particular verses and lines will stick out like a sore thumb. This past week was O Holy Night. He explained that the song was originally just a poem that someone decided to put to music, and was one of the first songs EVER to be broadcast over a radio. How cool is that? Then he took the line "the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn".

That in itself speaks volumes, without explanation. He went into detail about how weary the world was at the time, how far Mary and Joseph travelled on donkey (over 100 miles while 9 months pregnant? No thanks!), and how amazing it was when the morning broke and there was baby Jesus. It reminds me of another popular song in secular music, from Coldplay. They are singing about a girl that escapes to paradise in her dreams, and one of my favorite lines is "She knows the sun must set to rise". One of the pastor's personal comparisons was losing a friend to suicide and how the darkness and weariness can take over but there is always hope, and the sun(Son) will always rise. This spoke volumes to me - maybe because I work with suicidal people every day, or maybe because I lost a close friend in high school to suicide. Either way, there is always hope. And the sun will rise.

And now that verse, that beautiful verse about the weary world?

It will always stand out to me.