Getting Ready For The Week | Christmas With Compassion | Hope

Throughout church history, music has been one of the most powerful ways people prepare for and celebrate the birth of Christ. Over the centuries, Christmas hymns have become an integral part of the season because they do something unique that sermons, stories, and traditions alone cannot do.

• Music helps us remember the story. Well-known tunes, harmonies, and rhythms lock these truths deep in our minds and hearts. Before people had printed Bibles or widespread literacy, hymns were how the church remembered important Scripture and theology. This is still true today!
• Christmas hymns also connect us to generations before us. They are one of the few things we do today in gathered worship exactly as believers have done for many centuries. These ancient songs connect the church across time and around the world.
• At Christmas, music becomes a form of proclamation—a way of preaching the gospel, remembering the story, and sharing it with others.
• Singing unites people. Something special happens when people sing together. Music has a unique way of creating unity, warmth, and shared celebration. Typically, even people who don’t attend church often feel drawn in by Christmas songs. 

MUSIC marks the season—Christmas songs awaken wonder! The story of a Savior—God incarnate, coming to us and seeking relationship with us—is a strange and wonderful mystery. His humble birth, angels lighting up the sky announcing peace, shepherds and kings kneeling before a baby, God coming quietly and vulnerably—this is a story we don’t want to forget! Christmas hymns help us remember as we retell it again and again.

Our focus this week is on an ancient prayer we have come to know as the hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” In its earliest forms, this text can be traced back to the ancient church—likely around the 8th century—first appearing as a prayer written in Latin.

This poetic expression of Christ’s imminent arrival has a clear and powerful connection to the prophet Isaiah’s foretelling of a virgin conceiving a son and calling his name Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is one of the oldest of all Christmas hymns. It is rich in theological content and biblical imagery. It seamlessly connects Old Testament prophecies with the New Testament gospel: Jesus, the promise of God’s salvation, has come!

You can find the text of this captivating hymn at hymnary.org or lyrics.com. Pay close attention to how the text alludes to many of the great stories of Hebrew Scripture and places Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament narrative, poetry, wisdom, and prophetic literature.

As we reflect on the heart-cry of this great hymn, let’s offer this prayer together:

Come, Lord Jesus—this world seems broken.
Come, Lord Jesus—the shadows seem to deepen.
Come, Lord Jesus—it seems the darkness might stop the light from getting through.
Come, Lord Jesus—help us remember
You are the light within our midst!
It is good that we remind ourselves of this—Immanuel has come!