(If you’d like to read the other days, you can do so by clicking here. Don’t forget I’m making a playlist in Spotify as we go through this series, you can subscribe to here.)
One of the biggest joys for parents (and biggest pains for children) about Christmastime is waiting. And that is was advent is all about. (If you’re interested in some ideas for advent for your family, check out my wife’s blog!)
Perhaps we should take a moment and think about advent from the perspective of someone who knows about waiting:
“Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting is the art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespectful hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them.
Whoever does not know the austere blessedness of waiting — that is, of hopefully doing without — will never experience the full blessing of fulfillment.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (written from prison)
That’s where we start this day of Christmas songs, with a nation who has been waiting for centuries for a savior that many of them no longer believe will ever come. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel. That mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to Thee o Israel.”
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus
Another song that flows in the same vain is this one. It’s a fairly short Christmas carol, but there is so much content in such a small amount of space. It’s a very efficient song. Not that we’re looking for that in particular, but it’s still a great carol!
(The recording below is from my album: “When The Snow Falls” which is available on iTunes.)
