A Final Thought | Tim Gustafson
AWAKENING AT CHRISTMAS
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One August day in my early teens, I turned my bicycle up a north-country road and set out. A perfect summer breeze wafted past me. Green leaves rustled and whispered of autumn’s approach. Close by, Lake Michigan insistently nudged endless sandy beaches.
Suddenly, a wonderful, elusive feeling descended over me. I can best describe it as a longing. Gazing at the inviting road stretching before me, I wanted to keep traveling forever, pedaling into regions I’d never known. This was not a desire to run away. No, it was a yearning to run to something—a sensation of a freedom so expansive it could never quite be
grasped. In that moment, I sensed something much larger than myself—something wonderful waiting out there. What was it?
These days, I get a fleeting trace of that sensation every November 1. That’s when a radio station in my hometown begins playing Christmas music. In an exhilarating moment, I’m transported to the vicinity of that nostalgic place—the place I yearn to return to even though I’ve never really been there.
But soon, I’ve had quite enough of Christmas music. Too many of the songs ring hollow. They don’t say anything. At Christmas, give me the traditional carols. Give me substance. Give me something bigger than myself.
And so I quickly abandon the radio station for a website featuring old English carols. Their musical magnificence transports me. One day I dared to peruse the listener comments. Many of them were from people who don’t identify as Christian.
One listener wrote, “I wonder how this has touched me because I am not a Christian. But this music can really move one’s heart.” Another said, “I’m not particularly religious . . . but beautifully sung carols in an echo-y church give me chills.”
Still another praised the “simply beautiful sublime music throughout the ages.”
My favorite comment was, “THIS is what the supermarkets should be playing! I’m sick of ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.’ ”
Then there was the woman who said she’d been an atheist but had experienced a “spiritual awakening while contemplating a chord progression of Bach from the Christmas Oratorio.”
A spiritual awakening. Her phrase gives us pause.
What makes music sublime? What draws non-Christians to compositions like Bach’s Oratorio, or Handel’s Messiah, or carols such as “Silent Night”?
That thing we hunger and thirst for—the place we can’t describe—is a spiritual longing. It’s expressed in our better Christmas songs, for they point us to the real meaning of Christmas.
As for Handel’s Messiah, the lyrics are drawn from the pages of the Bible. Messiah tells the story of Immanuel, “God with us.”
So much of what passes for Christmas music today is well-packaged noise. In welcome contrast, our best Christmas music recognizes that we are singing of things we can’t fully grasp. The carols of Christmas awaken in us the knowledge that God visited His world in human form! This changes everything, for “truly He taught us to love one another.”
Why, then, is there so much chaos and upheaval in our world? Or to paraphrase the ancient psalmist (PSALM 2:1), as Handel did in Messiah, “Why do the nations so furiously rage together?”
Likewise, the poet Isaac Watts understood that our global chaos is precisely why Jesus came to earth. He wrote:
No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the curse is found.
The “curse,” as Watts puts it, is everywhere we look. Yet he anticipates a different day, a day when Jesus will return.
He rules the world with truth and grace
And makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness And wonders of His love.
Now more than ever we crave a silent and holy night. We yearn to hear the angels on high. How we wish we had peace on earth. We long to be far away, with the shepherds next to
the manger.
At Christmas, we celebrate Jesus’ birth. But He came to die, and many of our greatest composers and poets understood this. Handel quoted Isaiah, who spoke of this Messiah: “He was despised and rejected” (ISAIAH 53:3). Handel also anticipates the day when Jesus returns. Then He will be “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, forever and ever. Hallelujah.”
Our best Christmas music taps into our primal awareness that we all need rescue. Jesus came to give us that rescue—to be with us. Despite living in a noisy, war-torn world, “Christ the Savior is born.” Immanuel is with us.
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