Have you heard the song "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence"?
I first heard it while on a traveling retreat team years ago; it was on the CD that we would play during the prayer ministry time. It was always playing at a low volume, so I could not make out all of the words right away, but even then it's hauntingly beautiful melody stayed with me.
It's the perfect song for Advent. This should be a time of preparation, not primarily through listening to Christmas songs on the radio or running out to the mall or snatching up some online deals for Cyber Monday, but mostly through silence.
We live in a world that lacks silence, but it is silence that our souls crave the most.
And this silence should help us enter into the awe-inspiring reality of the Incarnation. God sent his Son as an infant -- how tremendously unexpected, how amazingly messy, how terribly inconvenient. The truth of God becoming man in the form of a human baby is no Chicken Soup for the Advent Soul; when we really consider the Nativity, it is wonderfully, soul-shakingly terrifying.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descending
Comes our homage to demand.
King of kings yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords in human vesture,
In the body and the blood,
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.
Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads it vanguard on the way
As the Light of Light, descending
From the realms of endless day,
Comes the powers of hell to vanquish
As the darkness clears away.
At his feet the six winged seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
"Alleluia, alleluia! Alleluia, Lord Most High!"
Let us carve out a few moments of silence tonight.
Be still.
Know that He is God.
As always, thanks for stopping by, and be assured of my prayers.
Peace and all good,
Leslie
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