Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Advent Day Eighteen: fragile finger, tiny heart




Welcome to Our World

Tears are falling, hearts are breaking
How we need to hear from God
You've been promised, we've been waiting
Welcome Holy Child
Welcome Holy Child

Hope that You don't mind our manger
How I wish we would have known
But long-awaited Holy Stranger
Make Yourself at home
Please make Yourself at home

Bring Your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be filled
Word now breaking Heaven's silence
Welcome to our world
Welcome to our world

Fragile finger sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born
Unto us is born

So wrap our injured flesh around You
Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sin and make us holy
Perfect Son of God
Perfect Son of God
Welcome to our world

***

This song by Chris Rice (listen to it HERE) has become one of my favourite contemporary Christmas songs.  On his album notes, Rice describes his own song better than I ever could:

"This song is intentionally naive.  'Our' world?  Breathe 'our' air?  Walk 'our' sodIt is too much to take in that God would go to these lengths to display His love so beautifully.  Such a fragile finger, with a tiny fingernail, that would be the means of God reaching out to us and restoring us as His sons and daughters."
 

2 comments:

  1. This is one of my favorites, too. I heard it for the first time during the Advent season of 2002, when I was hugely pregnant with my first child and had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder that November. The people at our then-church ignored my problems. Tears . . . broken hearts . . . injured flesh . . . hungry soul: I could identify with these things. So the song has always made me a little teary.

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    Replies
    1. I can see why, Laura. I'm glad you found comfort in the song when there didn't seem to be any elsewhere. It's so hard when we're struggling and just want to feel seen and acknowledged by those around us. Thanks for sharing.

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