The last few months in Missouri have felt like Narnia - Always winter and never Christmas.
This weekend while I visited the farm, I was reading a book that had a scene of a family celebrating Advent. I went for a walk in the pasture and with all that snow on the ground and the scene fresh in my head … I just couldn’t help it. I sang some Christmas songs.
Later that day, I was going through a desk drawer and came across a piece that I wrote years ago (how long ago? It was written out in pen, not on a computer!) for a Christmas Eve service.
It is a reminder that Christmas came to Narnia. Spring will come - soon. And there is reason to hope.
Hear the angels sing about it:
It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old. From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold.
A group of shepherds huddled on the hillside, winding down from a routine day of work. Suddenly, the skies burst into light. The heavens opened and poured glory onto the countryside.
The shepherds watched amazed as an angel, who only moments before had been in the presence of Almighty God, appeared before them. This heavenly messenger had come to announce the most wonderful news the world had ever heard. A message that described the most miraculous event in histroy. What were the very first words the angel spoke at that moment?
Fear not.
It was as the prophet Isaiah had testified, “Fear not, for I am with you.” (Isaiah 41:10). Fear not, for in a stable in Bethlehem, Immanuel. God is with us and the angel knew that we no longer had to live in fear. His birth had delivered us from its deathly grip.
God says “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” (I John 4:8)
The heavenly choir could sing in triumph that man could fear not because Perfect Love had been delivered that night. Perfect Love was wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. All fear, the angels sang, had been cast out.
Still through the cloven skies they come with peaceful wings unfurled and still the heavenly music floats o’er all the wearly world. Above its sad and lowly plains the bend on hovering wing. Oh, rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.
