For lo! The days are hastening on

Dear Caldwell,

“For lo! The days are hastening on . . . .”

This line of poetry from “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear” speaks to how Advent “hastens” to its close tonight – but also how the world is hastening on to the completion of the Kingdom of God. With all the world’s troubles, we have plenty of days when it doesn’t feel that way, don’t we? We could use a little more hastening, which is the promise we gather to celebrate tonight.

The carol “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear” is one of the first composed by Americans. It is the combination of an 1849 poem by Massachusetts minister Edmund Sears and an 1850 melody from Boston musician Richard Willis. Even if the skies in Charlotte are gray and foreboding today, we can sing of a “midnight clear” two thousand years ago on a night that changed the world.

Take your time as you read all five original stanzas and savor their words about how grace came to earth, as the prophets had foretold. I hope to see you at our service today at 5:30.

In Christ,

John

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth,

To touch their harps of gold:

“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,¹

From heaven’s all-gracious King.”

The world in solemn stillness lay,

To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,

With peaceful wings unfurled,

And still their heavenly music floats

O’er all the weary world;

Above its sad and lowly plains,

They bend on hovering wing,

And ever o’er its Babel sounds

The blessèd angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long;

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled²

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man, at war with man, hears not³

The love-song which they bring;⁴

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,⁵

And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,⁶

Whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow,

Look now! for glad and golden hours

come swiftly on the wing.

O rest beside the weary road,

And hear the angels sing!

For lo!, the days are hastening on,

By prophet bards foretold,⁷

When with the ever-circling years

Comes round the age of gold⁸

When peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling,⁹

And the whole world give back the song¹⁰

Which now the angels sing.