L’heure exquise
(English translation)
The white moon shines in the forest,
From every branch comes forth a voice,
Under the foliage.
Oh beloved!
The pond, a deep mirror, reflects
The silhouette of the dark willow,
Where the wind cries.
Let’s dream, ’tis the hour!
A vast and tender calm
Seems to descend from the firmament,
Iridescent with stars;
‘Tis the exquisite hour!
He brought me to the banqueting house of wine, and his banner over me was love. (Song of Solomon 2:4)
My heart is confident in you, O God;
no wonder I can sing your praises with all my heart!
Wake up, lyre and harp!
I will wake the dawn with my song.
I will thank you, Lord, among all the people.
I will sing your praises among the nations.
For your unfailing love is higher than the heavens.
Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Be exalted, O God, above the highest heavens.
May your glory shine over all the earth.
(Psalm 108: 1-5 NLT)
Look who’s here: Mountain-Shaper! Wind-Maker!
He laid out the whole plot before Adam.
He brings everything out of nothing,
like dawn out of darkness.
He strides across the alpine ridges.
His name is God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies
(Amos 4:13 The Message paraphrase)
Come Thou fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy, never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above
Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it
Mount of Thy unchanging love
But I will sing of your strength; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning.
For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress.
(Psalm 59:16)
I try to be positive. I really do. I usually appreciate any attempt at singing. Song is a free gift that can be enjoyed by anyone. But to me some songs are sacred, holy, set apart and meant to glorify God. They are not meant to be recorded by pop singers with no sense of phrasing, or breath control, who have inadequate diction and obviously no emotional connection to the lyrics, and then piped through the aisles of Stuffmart to create background noise for harried shoppers who don’t give a damn. I’ve threatened to go postal if I hear Santa Baby in the produce aisle one more time -but that’s just irritating. It’s hearing one of the greatest hymns/carols of all time massacred over and over that makes me want to plop down on the floor by the gift boxed baubles and weep.
(Rant over)
When I taught singing my students often asked if they could work on “Oh Holy Night.”
“Not for a few years yet,” I told most of them. “And when you do it will in the original language.”
“Why?”
“Because your voice isn’t ready and because you have heard it so often in English you can’t hear the words anymore. Most versions drop half the lyrics anyway. I want you to study it, to translate it, to concentrate and savour every note and every word.”
Like songs that are sung year after year and have lost their flavour like chewing gum on the bedpost overnight, we can become so familiar with the goodness of God we cease to grasp the depth and height and width of it. We fail to comprehend the massiveness of His love. We take it for granted. We develop a sense of entitlement, as if God owes us freedom, and deliverance from slavery to sin. We fail to pay attention.
Translations that have to fit the meter and accents of a set piece of music are never entirely accurate, but here is another English translation of Minuit, Chretien. Listen to the words again.
Midnight, Christians, it is the solemn hour,
When God as man descended unto us
To erase the stain of original sin
And to end the wrath of His Father.
The entire world thrills with hope
On this night that gives it a Saviour.
People kneel down, wait for your deliverance.
Christmas, Christmas, here is the Redeemer,
Christmas, Christmas, here is the Redeemer!
May the ardent light of our Faith
Guide us all to the cradle of the infant,
As in ancient times a brilliant star
Guided the Oriental kings there.
The King of Kings was born in a humble manger;
O mighty ones of today, proud of your greatness,
It is to your pride that God preaches.
Bow your heads before the Redeemer!
Bow your heads before the Redeemer!
The Redeemer has broken every bond:
The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.
He sees a brother where there was only a slave,
Love unites those that iron had chained.
Who will tell Him of our gratitude,
For all of us He is born, He suffers and dies.
People stand up! Sing of your deliverance,
Christmas, Christmas, sing of the Redeemer,
Christmas, Christmas, sing of the Redeemer!
From the English version:
Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,
His power and glory evermore proclaim!
His power and glory evermore proclaim!
(Link to video in comments)
I had a dream a few weeks ago. I went to an A & W restaurant and ordered food for myself and friends at the counter. The girl said they would bring it to me when it was ready. Instead of tables and chairs, the restaurant had beds (hey, it was a dream). Since I felt tired I lay down and took a nap. It seemed like a long nap, but when my order was ready I got up and went to pay for it with a credit card. That’s when I discovered a $50 bill in my wallet I didn’t realize I had. It easily covered the cost.
An ordinary kind of dream, but I felt like I should pay attention, so I wrote it down in my dream journal. As I did I remembered that when I was a teenager, with a brand new driver’s license, my friends and I would borrow Daddy’s car and go to the drive-in where the car-hops wore brown and orange parkas – the A & W. We jokingly called it “The Ask and Wait,” although the service was probably faster than most other places. I made a note in my journal and promptly forgot about it, until a few days ago.
Right after this dream my dear friend suddenly became critically ill with a perforated ulcer (a hole in her stomach). She said it was the most painful thing she had ever experienced. I rushed back from Alberta to be with her. The first emergency surgery looked like a success, but it wasn’t. Instead of being released from hospital after a few days, she landed in ICU with complications and then found out, when she tried to eat some apple sauce, that the hole was still there. After several unpleasant invasive procedures the plan was to wait. So she waited. We prayed and she waited some more.
The hole was still there. I felt so badly for her laying in bed, unable to eat, hooked up to I.V.s and various uncomfortable tubes, watching room mates arrive, recover and leave. Then I remembered the dream -ask and wait, and you might as well get a good rest while you’re waiting. So her friends and husband and I prayed and asked the Lord for healing, and waited together, and learned to rest in God’s love. (She was better at it than I was, but I wasn’t sedated.)
Finally doctors proposed a more drastic surgery that would remove part of her stomach and intestine and scheduled another surgery. After it was postponed due to other emergencies with priority for the O.R., one of the specialists ordered another test to check on the size of the hole. This time the message was good: no hole found. It had closed “on its own.”
I think finding the $50 in my wallet was about finding unearned provision -God’s grace when we needed it.
Learning to rest in the middle of trouble is not a natural response for me -nor is shouting for joy. My upbringing valued decorum more highly than emotional expression. I’m more likely to fold my program into smaller and smaller squares at an exciting sports event than I am to actually cheer out loud. My friend’s Norwegian reserve is even greater than my Anglo/Germanic decorum (although I have seen her dance in the aisles on occasion) but we celebrated with shouts of joy that would not disturb the patient in the next bed -and gave thanks on American Thanksgiving with a feast of blue jello.
Thank you, Lord!
Permit me some joyful cyber-shouting: GOD IS GOOD!!!!!
One generation commends your works to another;
they tell of your mighty acts.
They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty—
and I will meditate on your wonderful works.
They tell of the power of your awesome works—
and I will proclaim your great deeds.
They celebrate your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your righteousness.
(Psalm 145:4-7)
Ask and wait. He is faithful.
Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus.
In him, this is what we preach and pray,
the great Amen,
God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident.
God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us.
By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge
—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete.
(1 Corinthians 1:20-22 The Message)
Yes, Lord.
Yes.
Sometimes the bride of Christ looks more bedraggled than glorious. Sometimes she looks like she got all dressed up only to be caught in a rainstorm on her way to the church.
We have a covered deck on the back of our house that allows me to sit outside when it rains. As I sat there this weekend, surrounded by a sudden downpour, and contemplated how getting glimpses of the glory of God makes the reality that we all fall short of that glory all the more disappointing, I wondered if God tires of us. Then this song began to play in my head:
Listen to the pouring rain, listen to it pour,
And with every drop of rain you know I love you more.
Call my name right out loud
I can hear above the clouds
And I’m here among the puddles,
You and I together huddle.
Listen to the pouring rain, listen to the rain.
God spoke these encouraging words to his people through the prophet Jeremiah, ““I have loved you with an everlasting love— out of faithfulness I have drawn you close.”
Listen to the pouring rain and know that even in our bedraggled state he loves us.
Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
I call your Name right out loud, “Abba! Thank you for Your love! Help us keep our eyes on You! Heal your people, oh Lord, that we may bear fruit that would be pleasing to You! Make us a glorious bride!”
When morning gilds the skies
my heart,
awakening,
cries,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Sunrise over the Rocky Mountains in Banff National Park from the Trans-Canada Highway this morning.
Charis: Subject to Change 