O Come All Ye Faithful Verse 1

O come, all ye faithful

Joyful and triumphant!

O come ye, O come ye to Bethelehem 

 Come and behold Him

Born the King of Angels. 

O come let us adore him.

O come let us adore him.

O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord. 

This song seemed like a compromise between Christmas and Advent, which is apparently the theme of this week.  It's always sung at Christmas, usually with the gospel about the shepherds, but it could easily belong to Advent.  A few minor changes and (perhaps) a transposition to a minor key would easily adjust its place in the musical canon.

 Because it's easy to see how this would be not about parading to see a child with a suspiciously timed birth appear in a stable.  Which makes you wonder just what the neighbors thought of the three kings showing up, now I think about it.

It's easier to see, in many ways, as a story about the Second Coming, rather than the first.  But then -- all this glory and impressive language and events...they were for this very ordinary thing.  On this very ordinary, even lowly thing, the fate of the cosmos and of every human soul depended.

If we really, truly understood that, we would be clamoring night and day over it.  We would be begging as surely as this song is begging to be allowed (by whom I'm not as sure) to worship Him -- always sure that there must be a higher level to which we can gain admittance and finally do the event of Christ's birth true justice.

May God bless us with a more perfect understand of what He did for us 2,000 years later -- where even if we had lived in a clamor both joyful and triumphant, we still wouldn't have made nearly enough noise to do it justice yet.