Have you heard the story? Ok, maybe it’s more of a legend…but it’s really a timeless legend, now of OUR Time.
It was Christmas Eve 1818 and a small church in Austria had gathered together for their Candle light services. Tragedy struck. The organ was broken. It was discovered that, Church mice, literally had eaten through the bellows the organ and it was rendered useless.
No Music on Christmas Eve Candle light services?
A young Pastor, Joseph Mohr quickly penned down some words, familiar to all the world now:
“Silent Night, Holy Night, all is calm, all is bright; round yon virgin, mother and child. . . .”
He handed these simple, meager words over to the Choir Director, Franz Xaver Gruber, who then concocted a simple tune on his guitar as they sang the words.
What’s astounding to me is that it wasn’t so much out of necessity that this famous Christmas Carol was created, but out of Brokenness.
Not too many of us come to this Season or leave it UN-broken, nicked up or scarred.
If nothing else unites us all for all time–it’s our Brokenness, isn’t it?
Whew…good thing that there’s a solution for that, huh? I mean, aren’t we told to, “PICK UP THE PIECES AND GO ON?”
Sure, and we walk around like a Ghost from Dicken’s Christmas Carol jangling/clanging with every miserable step we take.
Or, or maybe we can embrace what this Season, this Day, this MOMENT offers us continually, or at least, every time we Discover, Recognize it:
BEHOLD–ALL THINGS ARE MADE NEW!
It’s the truest message of every major Religion.
Embrace the Brokenness. Acknowledge it. Don’t Settle for picking up the pieces and going on. In the Brokenness, write a new song, sing a new tune and become new in a way that even the brokenness never imagined and you, you never hoped….
And then, perhaps the greatest elixir for Brokenness:
GO AND APPLY ABUNDANTLY!
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