Sing Christmas!

Joseph reaches down for the strap of a heavy shoulder-bag. Hoisting it over his shoulder, he bends again and pulls up a second bag. He slings that one atop the first, and bends yet again. The third bag slaps heavily against the others as he turns to Mary and takes her arm.

Around him swirls music about a Singer and sweet harmony and the Song of the Redeemed, and a choir sings “Let there be Light”… but he just feels like a man stepping out on a long journey under a heavy responsibility: Mary, with Child. Immanuel.

To watchers of FAC’s Christmas musical, this 21st century Mary and Joseph are setting out for Bethlehem. The eyes of the congregation are fastened upon them, choral well-wishers sing them on their way - but we all know that in the end, there is no one to accompany them. It is their journey.

It’s Joseph’s journey, and the weight of responsibility in those bags is even heavier than he yet knows. For it will be up to him to move the Christmas story from Point A (Nazareth) to Point B (Bethlehem ) and, although he doesn’t yet know it, on to C (Egypt) and back to A (Nazareth). He’s got to see them through this journey, oversee a divine birth, meet Kings and shepherds, protect an infant Savior from a murderous monarch, obey angelic orders and divine dreams…

No wonder those bags feel so heavy, Joseph.

But he carries his responsibility anyway (and we should be glad). It’s his glorious burden, his privilege, his song, as the angel says. No one else can sing it for him. He alone can do what God has given him to do, play his part in bringing Light to a shadowed world, sing in sweet harmony of peace on earth, good will to men.

We cannot see what is in the bags of responsibility that lay at our feet today. But we can be sure that no one else is supposed to pick them up for us – they’re ours. We might shrink back, protesting that they’re too heavy, there are too many, someone else is better built to bear them. But they’re our bags, and God is asking us to carry them.

We might be more willing to bear our burdens if we remember two things:

1. Our burdens come with a song. When we stoop to pick them up, that melody will arise behind and around and within us… if we will take the time to listen. It’s the Song of the Redeemed and it arises in sweet harmony with the Redeemer, swells with the power of the Holy Spirit, and swirls with the promise of eternal peace.

2. Our songs matter. Each are meant to move some part of the Redemption Story from Point A to Point B. From darkness to light. From fear to peace.

Sing, then. Sing your song, the song no one else can imitate. Don’t let it fade to a faint hum; belt it out! For it’s a song holy angels cannot sing. A song that brings glory to the Son of the Singer. A song that will reverberate through all eternity.

Sing!