A Blessed Epiphany

Blessings to you on this feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord when we commemorate “God in man made manifest.”  Lutherans usually associate Phillip Nicolai’s “O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright” (LSB 395) — the queen of the chorales — with this day.

It is a hymn full of comfort and devotional thought.  Jesus the bright Morning Star.  God’s blessings in the midst of life’s difficulties.  Those blessings being the gifts God gives us in His means of grace that sustain us.  Then strengthened and nourished, we go forth and proclaim the story as we wait for the feast to come.

O Morning Star, how fair and bright!
You shine with God’s own truth and light, (st. 1)

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.

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