Country Music and the Christmas Story

 

As I have gotten older, I have grown in my appreciation for country music.   Such was not the case when I was a teenager.   Why, country music by the likes of George Jones, Loretta Lynn, and the rest was music my parents liked and I wanted to listen to that cool rock and roll.   In Ken Burns documentary on “Country Music”, someone says that country music is “3 chords and the truth”.     One of the things I like about country music is that it tells the truth about people I see in the grocery store, Walmart, or in the pew.   Country music tells the story about ordinary people and ordinary events.  

During these days, I find myself lingering  more than usual at the stories from Matthew and Luke of the birth of Jesus.   There is a part of me that sees the birth stories of Jesus  akin to some  of my favorite country songs in that we hear of ordinary people facing  ordinary events.   As I read the story of young Mary hearing that she will conceive a child,  I think of  some teenage girls in congregations  past who heard the same news.   As I hear the news of Zechariah and Elizabeth hearing they will bear a child though they are advanced in years,   I think of childless couples who I have known who yearned to have their own child.   As I read of wise men from the East following a star to Bethlehem,  I think of immigrants who I have met through the years who came to this country yearning for a better life and a brighter future.  

 In the course of common ordinary events in the lives of people like you and I, we hear the story that God bursts on the scene.  Emmanuel, God is with us.     God cries out in the whimpers of a small, frail child.  In the hills and hollers and rural hamlets of 2021, people live and move and have their being in these pandemic days some uttering to God or to themselves, “How long, Lord?  How long?”    In the secret places of their hearts and in the ordinariness of their lives, may they find comfort in the presence of an  extraordinary God who still bursts upon the scene in the most common of ways.   Grace and peace,      Randy L. Wall

           

 

·Previous Book:Go to Job

·Previous Chapter : Go to Psalm 62

·Expand: show the entire chapter ofPsalm 63

·Next Chapter : Go to Psalm 64

·Next Book:Go to Proverbs

·Listen to this passage : Psalm 63

·View commentary related to this passage

PRAYER

Thank you, Lord, for  what you have done and are doing in my life.   Give me wisdom and courage, Lord, to share that story with others;   through Christ our Lord.  Amen.