Devotional 12-14-04

Mace and I took a vacation out West this past August and had a wonderful time visiting 8 National Parks and Monuments and seeing lots of new and unusual sights. While we were driving through Wyoming, one of the things we noticed was the gates and signs that had flashing lights to warn you that if the lights are flashing, the highway is closed due to heavy snow. We kept seeing these warning signs, and even though it was August, a Christmas hymn popped in my head. I began humming “In the Bleak Midwinter” and thought about how the winters in Wyoming must fit the description of the winter in the hymn.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
snow had fallen snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

The picture that you get from the earth being hard as iron and the water like stone indicates a very cold winter. The strong description for me is the snow on snow giving you the visual of lots of snow and huge snow drifts. That was what I kept picturing every time I saw those signs on the highway.

We kept driving, and I kept singing the hymn in my head. This nativity poem includes shepherds, wise men, and angels as it tells the story of the birth of Christ. The poem is a proclamation and a witness to the amazing mystery of the Word becoming flesh …God becoming man. What an awesome occurrence!

I learned this hymn when I was in the fifth grade singing in one of our children’s choirs here at Johnson Memorial. At that time, we kept a choir notebook, and there was always a hymn of the month that we learned, and often it was the processional hymn the Sunday we sang in church. This hymn was the hymn of the month for December and that was why I learned all the words and the music. I can remember that as a child I really liked the words to the hymn…especially the last line:

What I can I give him: give my heart.

Those words jumped out at me when I first learned the hymn, and I think they mean even more today. There is a progression in the hymn around the idea of giving something to the Christ Child, and it starts by asking the question:

What can I give him, poor as I am?

Then it moves through the giving by saying that a shepherd could give a lamb and a Wise Man could do his part but what about little me?? I am poor and what in the world can I possibly give? Then the poem concludes with the revelation that we EACH have something to give…our hearts. As a fifth grader, I thought that seemed easy…and really it is. But in another way, it is a very difficult gift to give because you have to wrap that gift every day.

Becky Sturm