Another Christmas Season Ending
As the twelfth night of Christmas comes to a close, I’m organizing the Christmas sheet music back into the music filing cabinet and reminded of favorites played, new found friends, and much that will await another year. So many wonderful hymns. So many instrumental pieces that sing these hymns. But more important, I am comforted by the Word made incarnate in the flesh for us, the Word in worship for us, and the Word that will come again for us.
The Christmas season seems like a blip on the church year calendar (with respect to the amount of time observed) sandwiched between two “sprawling” seasons of Advent and Epiphany and often reduced further to observe Epiphany on the 2nd Sunday after Christmas. So much compressed, and yet so much heard and received during these last two weeks. These words from Jaroslav Vajda’s hymn “Where Shepherds Lately Knelt” seemed fitting for the close of the last day of Christmas.
Can I, will I forget how Love was born, and burned
Its way into my heart unasked, unforced, unearned,
To die, to live, and not alone for me,
To die, to live, and not alone for me? (LSB 369, st 4)
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