For the past couple of years, I’ve been singing with the praise team at
our Church on Sunday mornings.

Looking back at it, I see that that statement doesn’t have the air of
absurdity on the screen that it has in my mind. Let me explain: I love
to sing. I sing wandering about the house, I sing to the kids, I sing to
Jane (usually silly made up lyrics to tunes I know). But as it happens,
I have very little musical training. I sang in the Glee Club for part of
a year when I was in third or fourth grade; I’ve taken a piano lesson or
two; I’ve taught myself to read music and play the recorder middling
well. I’ve had no training in choral singing whatsoever beyond singing in
the congregation on Sundays. I might add, Jane was in choir all the way
through Junior College–her best and oldest friends are mostly from those
days–so I have some notion of what I’m lacking.

Now, our praise team. Our music director has sung with the a
capella group Chanticleer; he also plays a mean piano. Among the
other volunteers are folks who play flute, saxophone, cello, and bass
professionally. The musicianship of these folks makes my mind boggle–or,
more precisely, boggle is just what my mind would do if I had to deal
with the changes and complications they take in stride. And then most
(probably all) of the other singers have considerably more choral
experience than I do.

And I get to sing with these folks! I feel rather like the smoldering
wick of Matthew 12:20.

Now, I don’t mean to say that I sing badly, so that it’s an act of mercy
to allow me to sing with the praise team; nor do I mean to say that
somehow, miraculously, I sing with such natural talent that I can perform
at their level. Frankly, I have no real idea how well I sing.
Adequately, apparently. But it’s a real blessing for me to be able to
sing in church in this way, worshipping God, and nowhere has this been
more apparent than this Christmas.

This is the first year since I–

A digression: Jane, David, and James are next door in the bedroom,
singing, “No, no, no, no, yes yes, yes yes,” to the tune of the Blue
Danube Waltz. It’s a moment I thought should be remembered.

This is the first time since I began singing with the team that I was
available to sing at the Christmas service. It was a big time
commitment, as there were lots of rehearsals, but when the service came
around, we were good. Our service music is always a mixture of
traditional and contemporary styles, and so we began with a traditional
reading of “Joy to the World”. We followed that with one of my
favorites, a song called “The Hands That First Held Mary’s Child”. It’s
our music director’s arrangement (and I think maybe his words too), to
what he calls a “traditional Scottish tune” but which I know as the melody
to the Irish song “Star of the County Down”. It’s got a rhythm that just
about picks you up out of your chair. Then we did a rocking, swinging
version of “Go Tell It On The Mountain” that begins quietly with a sax
solo and grows until by the end the roof is practically coming down. And
then a modern arrangement of “Angels We Have Heard On High” with that
beautiful “gloria in excelsis”. Later we did “What Child Is This”,
“Silent Night” (never my favorite, but it was still soft and lovely) and
then the amazing piece of the night, a Latin seven-part Ave Maria. I
sang bass, more or less. I don’t know how we pulled it off, but we
sounded really good, much better than we ever did in rehearsal. And
finally, we ended with an arrangement of Mannheim Steamroller’s version
of “Deck the Halls”.

In short, I spent more time preparing myself for Christmas this year than
maybe I ever have; and more of that preparation time in plain worship
than I would usually engage in either. And it shows. I can feel it.
Christ is more present to me this Christmas than ever before.

Go, tell it on the mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere!
Go, tell it on the mountain,
That Jesus Christ is born!

Again, God bless you and your families during the coming year. Merry
Christmas.