Sunday, December 13, 2009

Dearest God,

I was given a ticket to the Purdue Glee Club Christmas performance in Lafayette. In a packed house I listened to the young singers make their offering to God. Wrapped in choir robes amidst dimmed blue lighting I listened intently as they sang Silent Night, Holy Night. All of a sudden I found myself atop a mountain, just above the cloud line. I listened to the sounds of contented animals, a cow, a lamb and a donkey. I saw the golden hue radiating outward from the manger. I watched the movements of a newborn baby.

During the singing I found myself in various places: at Bethel United Methodist Church on Christmas Eve, the candles burning as we sang the old, familiar song, in a Living Nativity outdoors as I played a shepherd during Advent and sang, in my darkened living room except for the twinkling white lights on my Christmas tree at midnight on Christmas day watching the mass at the Vatican, standing on risers, wearing a choir robe singing the German tune, in 1997 as I stood by the back pew harboring breast cancer, allowing the tears of great joy to stream down my face, at my grandmother's church in Atlanta, Indiana on Christmas Eve and finally when I was a young girl in a reenactment of the nativity scene in a neighbor's home. In those precious, prized moments, I realized the deep meaning of salvation.

I thought of the countless times young and old have sung together the alleluias of heaven. I recounted wondrous mystical moments when the angel choirs sang the songs of faith. I gazed upon the faces of the young adults as they continued, "...wondrous star loves pure light, radiant beams from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace..." And surely I thought again I heard the sound of a baby's soft cry.

Redeeming God,
save us
once again;
for our
minds forget.
Our hearts
long for what
we have lost.
Stir within us,
reaching deep down
for the
lost pieces
of faith.
Open our ears,
our eyes
and finally
our voices.
Set us free
to sing
once again.

Love, Andrea