Hark, The Herald Angels Sing

Tuesday, December 17, 2013
"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"

Now this is the best of Christmas Carols - a lovely, snappy tune with an obvious basic message whose lyrics unwind into beautiful shapes when you bother to take a look.  Seriously, it's a popular standard song with strong doctrinal mentions of incarnation and some of the best description of just how shocking it is that I've ever seen.

I guess a few posts back I wished for what I want for Christmas: a way of expressing the awe with which I view the Incarnation.  Words don't go there, but these come closer than I have yet:

Veiled in flesh the God-head see!
Hail the incarnate Deity!
Pleased as man with us to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel!

I always thought it was "Pleased with man, with us to dwell" which, on further examination, doesn't make a ton of sense.  After all, He had to come down in the first place because He was most drastically NOT pleased with us.  Which reminds me of that Noah movie that I am worried is going to wreck the entire Bible study (I mean, really? We're going to have people storm the ark and we're supposed to root for them all to die horrible deaths?).

Moving right along.

God's plan with Jesus is extraordinarily generous even before you consider the alternatives.

Mild He lays His glory by;
Born that we no more may die;
Born to raise us from the earth,
Born to give us second birth.

Seriously, this is gorgeous, powerful stuff.  He lays His glory by.  He sets aside heaven.  That place where we are all striving to go.  That state we are all trying to be.  He set aside His power, His state, His position above the muck we make here.  He waded into the mud -- literally!  That stable didn't exactly have plush carpets or even hardwood floors.

So that we don't have to take our deserved punishment for sin.  He did all this to let us ascend higher than we ourselves dare.  To show us how to fly.  To show us how to be more than we think we are.

I really have nothing as beautiful as the lyrics today.

Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!"