Hark! The herald Angels sing
Glory to the Newborn King!
There is so much packed into just the first two lines that I'm going to stop here. After all, this is a blog, not a book. There's a lot to consider and ponder and savor, just in these few words. Come with me and let's open this treasure together.
Hark! …
Hark… What? What is THAT sound? What is this abrupt change in the atmosphere? What is this intense yet welcomed interruption in the mundane usual normal stuff of daily life?
Hark… as in, stop whatever you are doing and whip your head around toward the sound, searching for its source, and listen to the perfectly orchestrated beauty of angelic voices. It sounds so otherworldly. Because it’s, well, so otherworldly. Never heard anything as beautiful as this.
Hark! the Herald Angels sing…
The Herald Angels sing…You sought the source of this symphony of commotion, you found it, and it literally takes your breath from your body. A moment of sheer inescapable wonder at a vision of that bursts on the scene with supernatural intrusion. The angels sing… after performing a sacred and monumental task: They are heralds. They are heralding, spreading the good news, which is the pinnacle of the most wonderful of wonderful news: The long awaited Messiah has come. A much needed and anticipated Savior is born! They announce the news, and then they break into beautiful song.
Hark! The Herald Angels sing Glory…
Glory... Praise. Worship. And not just any kind of worship. Worship led by angels, a multitude of angels, too many to count, that fill the sky and illumine the darkness with gentle and soft shimmering sparkling rays of magnificently bright light. Beauty everywhere, filling all five senses. Overwhelming, in the very best way.
Worship. Your response to the news and the beauty and the enveloping joy is void of thought. Worship. It is the only response. Worship. Bowing down in humility and awe. Acknowledgment of God’s glorious infinite vastness and holiness, and as there is not a human way to fully describe Him, His absolute “God-ness”. The reaction? Incredibly humbled. Changed. Forever.
Everything within and without is hyper focused on this, this time, a time when God chose to reveal the beginning of the redemptive story, so long awaited by Israel. Desperately awaited. On pins and needles awaited. Amidst a horrific and lengthy time of God’s anger for the apathetic lack of commitment from His people that resulted in persecution and captivity and exile and severe suffering… they waited. With desperation and longing for restoration they waited.
God heard. God spoke of His love and restoration. But His plan to save the world did not start until after the people had waited in unbelievable shrill and piercing silence for 400 years after the prophetic messages abruptly and completely stopped. 400 years.
And God chose to have this dramatic and incredible revelation of the beginning phase of restoring all that had been lost due to man’s sin be received with great fear and amazement by… shepherds. Shepherds. The most lowly of men in the most lowly of occupations. Why?
Because this revelation to the most ordinary and “less than” group of people shows us His great love, for ALL people, in all circumstances, all walks of life, all social statuses, all personalities, all nationalities, all skin colors, all. Everyone, everywhere.
Hark! The Herald Angels sing. Glory to the Newborn…
Newborn…The Messiah, God with us, coming to us in the most unusual, yet so normal a part of everyday life, way. The birth of an infant. Commonplace, yet not. Back then it was an expected part of the life of a married woman.
This newborn babe was birthed in an unlikely setting – a cave that served as a stable for the animals, far away from home. So much dirt and filth cleared away as much as possible in a rush, because it was time to change the world. A newborn placed into a feed trough, aka manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes.
There is a tradition that may or may not be true that says that newborn lambs that were to become sacrificial lambs in Jerusalem were wrapped in swaddling clothes immediately after birth and placed in a manger to prevent them from injuring themselves until they calmed down. Whether or not this was an actual practice at the time of the birth of Jesus, we do know that the newly born Lamb of God was calmed by swaddling and laid in a manger for His bed.
The Word made flesh was born into the world in a quiet remote area. Unassuming. Totally lacking in grandeur for such a grandiose plan. But this is God’s way. To show us, through the birth and life and death of Jesus, how to live. To help us see that Jesus never made it all about Him, but He was always like a beacon pointing to God. It’s not about us. Yet it is all for us and for His glory and honor.
Hark! The Herald Angels sing. Glory to the Newborn King! …
Our King… He is a newborn baby, but also King at the same time, for all time. Not a king. But the King. KING. There is no other. A newborn, an infant, is the supreme ruler of all. A tiny helpless human is also the sovereign, holy, King of Kings. Lord of Lords. Savior of the world.
Fully God. Fully man. The one, the only one, who was born to die. For us. To save us from ourselves.
Awe and wonder and incredible conviction of all we are not and all He is. This should be our continual response to God and His incredible redemption plan – Jesus Christ.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Phil 2:5-8
Glory to the Newborn King!
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