CLICK HERE for a complete schedule of this season's devotionals.
CLICK HERE to learn how you can support the mission of Austin Seminary
Advent Devotional for Thursday, December 25
Luke 2:8-10
One of my favorite artists is Carroll Cloar, an Arkansan whose paintings were often illustrated fables set against the backdrops of Southern landscapes. Cloar left his native Crittenden County, Arkansas, to get his education at Rhodes College, and stayed there in Memphis for much of his life. He became perhaps the city’s most famous artist. When I think of his work, I think particularly of his painting, “The Night They Heard the Heavenly Music.” It’s based on his childhood memory of walking home one Sunday evening from the humble Pentecostal church to which his mother was devoted. Dressed in the best they have, the painting captures a rural scene and Cloar and his mother pausing to look up at something. They have heard music, and they search for its source through the leafless tree branches and amidst the twinkling stars across a night sky.
Has the music come from somewhere way up and above them? Their faces, cocked intently toward the heavens, make it clear that this is no ordinary night, and what they’re hearing is no ordinary music. Instead, this is a moment of great mystery and wonder.
I think of this well-known painting as I imagine those shepherds “keeping watch over their flock by night.” They are interrupted by an angel who announces to them— to them of all people!—that a Savior has been born in Bethlehem. A humble child wrapped in bands of cloth is lying in a manger; and the angel’s news is hardly out before the most beautiful heavenly music starts up for them, too. “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
The shepherds run until they find that child, and they tell Mary and Joseph about the heavenly music. And, who knows? It may be this news about the music that Mary treasures the most—pondering it in her heart long after the shepherds have returned to their flocks. On their way back, by the way, Luke tells us that they, too, form their own impromptu choir—“glorifying and praising God for all they have heard and seen.”
What is it about this birth, this baby, this Gospel, that invites such heavenly music into our lives and hearts? Even today, it’s a safe bet that, as you read these words, your sound system is rejoicing with Bach and Handel and Amy Grant and Bobby McFerrin. How can we not sing when we get the news that he is born?
Across the days and months ahead, as this baby grows up, we will be following him—as he challenges us,
inspires us, even disturbs us. We will follow him, as best we can, to a world in need, and to a cross, and finally to the life everlasting. But, in each moment of the mystery and wonder of the Christian life, we will never be without a soundtrack. In every season of his life, and of ours, it will all be set to music—sweet, majestic, hymnic, redemptive, heavenly music.
“My life flows on in endless song,
above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the clear, though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,
how can I keep from singing?”
Glory to God, Hymn 821
Theodore J. Wardlaw
President and Professor of Homiletics
For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the Presbyterian-Reformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God's people.
No comments:
Post a Comment