12 Days of Christmas Songs Day 1 (Dec 14, 2024)

 12 Days of Christmas Songs Day 1

Our ward choir is on its third year of performing the song, “Where Shepherds Lately Knelt” (Craig Courtney’s version) & I simply cannot sing it without choking up! I find it incredibly powerful. Perhaps because it makes it so personal, putting me & my “half-belief” at the manger scene, an “unlikely place,” all at once realizing, “with pounding heart,” that the prophecies had been fulfilled.

There is room & welcome there- for me.

A still, small voice to cry one day- for me.

A child, a son, the Prince of Peace- for me.

To die, to live, & not alone- for me.

For me.

Love is born & burned into my heart, as I imagine being there with that baby, my Savior, in a manger.

Jaroslav Vajda, who wrote the beautiful lyrics, explained, “Rather than report the event again in the third person, as so many Christmas songs do, I placed myself in spirit at that poor manger bed & reviewed the implications of that visit in my life & future & in that of my fellow human beings. I have struggled, & more so as I grow older, with the incomprehensibility of that event & of my connection with it & with each commemoration of that miracle becoming more routine, though its impact on God’s heart remains the means of my salvation. I pictured myself at the opposite side of the event from Isaiah & his prophecy (Isaiah 9:6, 7) applying the same promise to myself as a late-arriving pilgrim.”

1. Where shepherds lately knelt and kept the angel’s word,
I come in half-belief, a pilgrim strangely stirred;
But there is room and welcome there for me,
But there is room and welcome there for me.
 
2. In that unlikely place I find him as they said:
Sweet newborn Babe, how frail! And in a manger bed,
A still, small voice to cry one day for me,
A still, small voice to cry one day for me.
 
3. How should I not have known Isaiah would be there,
His prophecies fulfilled? With pounding heart I stare;
A child, a son, the Prince of Peace for me,
A child, a son, the Prince of Peace for me.
 
4. Can I, will I forget how Love was born, and burned
Its way into my heart unasked, unforced, unearned,
To die, to live, and not alone for me,
To die, to live, and not alone for me?