AdventWord 2018, Day #16 – “Sing”
It’s okay to like Christmas music even during Advent. Maybe especially during Advent.
Music stokes memory, conjuring long forgotten images and feelings about a time when I approached the season with barely contained anticipation that children can summon seemingly at will. The singing of carols, traditional and new, helps me reach that place as an adult.
This isn’t about gifts or secular winter holidays. It’s about music freeing my mind to remember what it’s like to be unburdened by adult concerns and exist in the moment. Anyone can sing at almost any time, but being in the moment–listening to the music and feeling it–enhances the performance. And sometimes in a world of work, mortgages, household chores, money, traffic, and other first world problems, I sometimes forget to sing. Luckily, I have a couple of sons who create amazing music. And a wife and other son who appreciate great singing.
There is plenty of reason to sing in my safe world, loved by family and friends, with a place to live, food to eat, entertainment, a church family that thrills me when I see them, and plenty of other good things.
But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be on your own front door.
O God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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