Five for Friday – Sing in the Season
Hans Christian Andersen said, “Where words fail, music speaks.” My dad, George, joins us again this week as we prepare and align our hearts, with the help of music, to celebrate the birth of Christ. Whether you let the songs fill your heart while you go about your day or use them to create devotionals with your family, we pray they bless you this week.
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Hey “Forget Me Not” friends! After my last time “lengthy contribution” I was afraid I’d be limited to a “Two for Tuesday” modified version, but hopefully with the holidays, a focus on some unique Christmas music as we celebrate the holiday season this year will work!
Now, as we’re hit a little more every year with the “standards”, I have to wonder, how many times can we be “rockin’ around the Christmas tree”, be roasting “chestnuts o’er an open fire”, lament that “last Christmas I gave you my heart”, or with all due respect, or join in singing the highly successful “all I want for Christmas is you”?
I’m known for being eclectic, enjoying a variety of genres of music & my Christmas playlist is no different. Our individual musical taste is “our musical taste”, so our favorites are rightfully personal. Now all the songs I’ll share with you are songs used in church thru the years that lend themselves to creating a moment in a Christmas Eve service that honors God in some creative way, telling the story of Jesus leaving heaven &coming to earth to save us.
Now I’ve put my Christmas playlist together just for this month for Rachel and Forget Me Not….3 weeks of “5 for Friday” as we lead up to Christmas. I hope you are encouraged by the theological truth in these songs, which many times doesn’t surface in many holiday tunes.
Here we go with our “5 for Friday” to get us thru this week…..
a. Chris Rice is an incredible writer. Not only a great musician & singer, but a great lyricist. Who else but him would try to write a song that is a “welcome” song to Jesus as He is born, letting Him know just how much He is truly needed in this broken world we live in!
b. The 1st verse pulls you in and since the song is in 3/4 time (a waltz kind of a feel), the rhythm holds you as well as the lyrics. And since I put this as the #1 song of this week, I’d like to put all the words for you to see and reflect on. Now the other 4 songs will only have “snipetts” of their songs…but here’s this one….
“Tears are falling, hearts are breaking, how we need to hear from God
You’ve been promised, we’ve been waiting, welcome Holy Child, welcome Holy Child
Hope that You don’t mind our manger, how I wish we could have known
But long-awaited Holy Stranger, make Yourself at home, please make Yourself at home
Bring Your peace into our violence, bid our hungry souls be filled
Word now breaking Heaven’s silence, welcome to our world, welcome to our world
Fragile finger sent to heal us, tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us, unto us is born, unto us is born
So wrap our injured flesh around You, breath our air and walk our sod
Rob our sins and make us holy, perfect Son of God, perfect Son of God, welcome to our world!”
a. Let me be right upfront….Michael Card has some of the best solid theology in songwriting you’ll ever find outside of Scripture. That might be because he pulls so heavily and directly from the Word of God! You’ll get a medieval vibe when you hear this one. And you might even feel like you’re at one of those dinners without the jousting!
b. Notice how Scripture-based lyrics begin the song…..Galatians 4:4 “in the fullness of time”, followed by a great lyric how the promise of how dreamers had dreamt of how God would redeem the world, but there wildest dreams had simply not been wild enough!
c. The point of the chorus is plainly made that God’s “promise was love and the promise was life…the promise meant light to the world… living proof that Jehovah saves for the name of the promise was Jesus.”
a. This African-American Spiritual song is a classic and one of the best versions I found is this one from the animated movie, “The Star”, which is a great movie to watch with your kids or grandkids!
b. Johnny Cash even recorded this song years ago. It’s a story-telling, “highlights of Bible history condensed down” song with a response to a phrase repeated every verse. After every “children go where I send thee”, there’s the response of “how shall I send thee?” It has kind of a “12 Days of Christmas” countdown feel to it. And rather than the “partridge in a pear tree” for #1, it ends very chorus with, “one for the little bitty baby, that was born, born, born in Bethlehem”! A tucked away classic that’s sung way too seldom!
a. Many times songs are born out of our experience. They are conceived in the depths of our souls. When Jimmy Wayne wrote this song about the “Angel Tree” ministry, it was near and dear to his heart, since he, himself was supported by that ministry as a child growing up. Going from different foster homes, he felt the ache of a broken family. He actually went to college and got a criminal justice degree, having been marked by the pain of his mother facing incarceration for a time. But he later found himself in Nashville pursing a music career and this song about reaching out to kids like him came out so clearly in the lyrics.
b. He paints pictures of different kids and what they hope to get for Christmas. He begins the song with a great phrase of the day after Thanksgiving paper angel trees popping up in the malls with “artificial smiles on artificial tree limbs”.
c. But his chorus is an appeal for the rest of us to do our part to help…”Paper angels, you’re in our thoughts and prayers. No matter where you are right now, remember God’s right there. He’s asking all of us to help take care…of His paper angels everywhere.”
d. Our whole FORGET ME NOT ministry is based in a similar way of sharing the love of God with the Roma people who certainly know the sting of labeling and being looked down upon, much like many kids & families like Jimmy Wayne drew up in here in the States. They feel the ache year round, not just at Christmas. Thank YOU for helping this ministry change the lives of the hurting living just outside the Tinca village!
a. This song has some of the most profound lyrics because it tackles one of the most challenging concepts in the Bible…the Virgin Birth. Amy asked her friend, Chris, who wrote it if she could change some of the words to gain a more “motherly” feel, since she was pregnant and on tour at the time and very much in touch with at least “some” of the feelings Mary would have had.
b. Now we are aware of the prayer of Mary in Luke 1:39-56, as she is staying with her cousin, Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist (about 6 months older than Jesus). When Elizabeth declared Mary as blessed above all women, she had to prayerfully sing, what is called “The Magnificat” in response to that blessing. (It’s very appropriate for our loving & grateful response to the blessing of God be in a prayerful song!)
c. But in this song, “Breath of Heaven”, we feel the worry in Mary. The chorus is literally her prayer…. “Breath of heaven, hold me together, be forever near me,! breath of heaven. Breath of heaven, lighten my darkness, pour over me Your holiness for You are holy, breath of heaven.
Thanks for letting me indulge, FORGET ME NOT family! May the Lord prepare our hearts the whole month long for this year’s Christmas celebration! Love you all and talk (and sing) to you next Friday!
george
(Rachel’s proud Papi….and Bella & Zai’s grateful BooBoo)
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