Focussing on Grace – Damien Gibbons
Ok, full disclosure before I go any further: generally speaking, I dislike Christmas music. So much of what I grew up listening to is schmaltzy, overdone, and (in some cases) severely overplayed. Add in the fact that some radio stations start playing it 24/7 after Halloween (really? They couldn’t wait until after Thanksgiving?) and you have a recipe for a young man who hates the genre.
Whew. That feels good to get off my chest. So why oh why would an admitted Christmas music hater listen to a conversation between his wife and her sister about a blog post concerning Christmas/Advent music and volunteer to write one? Because there are a few exceptions, and I only recently discovered them.
A couple of years ago, I was on a flight from my home state of Maryland out to visit our family in Kansas for the holidays when I decided to pop on a Christmas album I had taken a chance on and downloaded. The artist is a guy named Sufjan (SOOF-yan) Stevens and I liked a lot of his other stuff. On that album, “Songs for Christmas,” I discovered a new approach to a lot of holiday classics that were so tastefully done that I even enjoyed “The Little Drummer Boy.” Y’all, I enjoyed “The Little Drummer Boy.” I can’t even describe how amazing an achievement that is.
The song that jumped out the most, though, is one that isn’t strictly a Christmas song. It’s a familiar hymn in most churches, “Come Thou Fount of Ev’ry Blessing,” a song I’d heard many times growing up in various denominations but one I hadn’t really paid much attention to in the past. For reasons I can only ascribe to the work of the Holy Spirit, the lyrics jumped out at me like they never have and I found myself on the airplane with tears running down my face.
Listen to Sufjan Steven’s “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1bSlS6OWTs
“Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be! Let that grace now like a fetter bind my wandering heart to Thee! Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love! Here’s my heart, O take and seal it – seal it for Thy courts above!”
What a powerful admission this is. We need grace, every day, the grace given to us by the little guy whose birthday we celebrate very soon. His birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension all were acts of grace that bridged a gap between God and humankind. We’re fragile, broken creatures in many ways but we’re redeemed creatures, too, and all we need do is seek it. How incredible, and this song is such an beautiful reminder of that fact.
This Christmas season, may we all keep our hearts and minds fixated on that one amazing act of grace, the arrival of Jesus on earth, and celebrate the answer to prayer He was and is.
Damien Gibbons and his wife live in Maryland and are expecting their first child in February. By day he’s a ship captain in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and by night you’ll often find him either acting and directing in plays or singing with his barbershop chorus. He’s an occasional blogger, avid reader, and lover of all kinds of music.