Get Real November 23 Devotional
November 23, 2024
LUKE 2:13-14 | 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
Walter Wangerian, in his book Preparing for Jesus, says something powerful about Mary’s song. “It is never just the intellectual meaning of the words that captures the messages of the Almighty. The messages consist of things that must be felt, experienced: God’s ineffable love, our emotional and spiritual responses, elements whose truth cannot be objectively analyzed not reduced to doctrine. Praise and thanksgiving require more than our brains. They want our laughter, our capering bodies, our trembling delight,...and song.” For these birth narratives are filled with music. Old Zechariah sings, the angel Gabriel and the heavenly host give the first Christmas concert in a Palestinian field. For as Wangerian suggests, God is our musician and we are His instruments. His breath brings us to life and when He sends the wind of the Spirit “we like chimes cannot be silent...God plucks the strings of our hearts and we become a Psalm.” This is why, ever since the first Christmas, and not only during this holy season, we fill the sanctuary with song.
Do you feel like God’s instrument?
What is your favorite Christmas carol?
