Text: Luke 2:1-21. Hymn: 359, Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.
It’s Christmas Eve. Gotta read Luke 2, especially if your highly anticipated viewing of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” got bumped. I like the first two verses of the passage, because it’s a reminder that we are dealing with real history. This isn’t a vision that some guy got in a cave.
Merry Christmas, Time Out listeners!
- Lo, how a rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming
As prophets long have sung, (sic)
It came, a flow’ret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night. - Isaiah ’twas foretold it,
The rose I have in mind;
With Mary we behold it,
The virgin mother kind.
To show God’s love aright,
She bore to us a Savior,
When half-spent was the night. - This flow’r, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor
The darkness ev’rywhere.
True man, yet very God,
From sin and death He saves us
And lightens every load. - O Savior, child of Mary,
Who felt our human woe;
O Savior, King of glory,
Who doest our weakness know:
Bring us at length we pray
To the bright courts of heaven,
And to the endless day.
