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DECEMBER 22 - "The First Christmas Day"
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DECEMBER 22 - It’s Christmas Week! At my church yesterday , our pastor’s message was about Jesus being our Everlasting Father, and it was so good. So many people had a little sparkle in what they were wearing, and the greeters were especially enthusiastic in welcoming everyone who came through the doors.
In my Life Group, we read a few devotions and song lyrics from Tony Wood’s new book Manger Throne, and they were kind to share a couple of songs that have been on this calendar. For me, the whole day just had a feeling of anticipation better than any I ever had as a child waiting for Christmas Day. It’s made me think about Earth’s the first day with the newborn baby Jesus. I don’t know what Mary and Joseph did the day after, but I’m guessing Joseph spent a big part of the time trying to find them a better place to stay. I think Mary slept and took care of Jesus and pondered what had happened. Simeon and Anna went to the Temple just like they always did, probably unaware that their longing to see God’s Messiah was going to be fulfilled. The Heavenly Host were on their way back home, congratulating each other on the performance of the night before. The shepherds were back with the sheep but they had a new topic of conversation they couldn’t stop discussing. The wise men were on their way, their eyes on the heavens, their treasures packed away securely, ready for the new king. Most of the world had no idea that it wasn’t just another day. The world had changed. God had come to earth and was breathing our air. It was “The First Christmas Day,” |
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DECEMBER 21 - "Heaven and Nature Sang"
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DECEMBER 21 - One of the things I like most about writing a musical is the opportunity to write the narration or sometimes the drama that goes with it. I enjoy the study, the planning, and the creative work of helping listeners get more enjoyment from the songs by helping them understand their context and how they fit into the narrative in a certain way. For many of the musicals I wrote with Russell Mauldin before 2020, there was one narrator whose voice was heard. His name was David Ford, and you’ll hear him at the beginning of today’s song. We laughingly called David the “voice of God” because of the beauty and depth of his booming bass voice. He had more than just the sound of his voice going for him. He always caught the vision of what I was trying to do with the narration, and he had an incredible ability to express the emotion of every line as well as a great sense of timing. Besides that, David had graduated from Baylor University (my husband’s alma mater) AND he was a St. Louis Cardinals fan. It was inevitable that we would get along great. How I loved working with him. Both David and his wife passed away during the Covid pandemic, and I sure do miss him.
“Heaven and Nature Sang” was written with Kenna West and Leonard Ahlstrum for a musical that Kenna wrote for Word Music. I was excited to write about the wonder of heaven and nature joining forces to sing about the birth of Jesus. Somehow I think the reverberations of those songs still exist in the universe somewhere. |
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DECEMBER 20 - "Go Where I Send Thee"
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DECEMBER 20 - You may recognize today’s song because it is built around the old spiritual and teaching song “Go Where I Send Thee.” It’s also a “cumulative” song because, like “The Twelve Days of Christmas” the singer adds a number to those being “sent” with each chorus. The added number refers to a different Bible story or event. One, of course, is the “little bitty baby born in Bethlehem,” and how fitting is it that the song always returns to that baby— what could be more important! Some of the other stories are obvious and some not quite so clear. They can even change, depending on which version of the song you sing. Two is Paul and Silas, three refers to the “Hebrew children” Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego. Four alludes to the four Gospel writers, and I love that the “four” stood at the door, getting ready to spread the good news. Five is about the feeding of the 5000, and six (when the world was sized) is the number of the days of creation, and so on.
Because it come from oral tradition and there are many versions, Russell Mauldin and I felt there was some freedom to add our own interpretation for the musical Bethlehem Morning. Instead of our choruses accumulating numbers, the choruses refer to being sent out with hope and joy, and finally we added two verses. It’s a fun moment with a lot of energy, and hopefully it’s what will get you up and going on this last busy, busy Saturday before Christmas! #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting |
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DECEMBER 19 - "Christmas Together Again"
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DECEMBER 19 - Just a very simple message today for all of you who have an empty place at the table and a few tears that you’re crying for someone who was a big part of your Christmases until recently (or maybe not so recently). It might seem weird to choose this as the song to post on my birthday, but I just can't get away from feeling like someone needs it today. Melissa Brady invited me to write this song with her after her mom went to Heaven. Today it’s for all of us whose hearts look forward to “Christmas Together Again.” #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting #WriteAboutJesus
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DECEMBER 18 - "Holding Her Baby Boy"
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DECEMBER 18 - The past few months my timeline has been filled with videos of babies doing remarkable things and carrying on grownup conversations. They’re all created with AI, of course, but they can be entertaining the first few times you see one of them. Once it’s clear that they’re all fake, I kind of have zero interest in them. The end result of all the fake stuff is that I have almost no faith in anything I see or hear online anymore. Beside, babies and little kids are incredible enough all on their own, don’t you think? (I have videos of my two little “greats” that prove it, just ask me.)
I can’t help wondering what kind of baby Jesus was. Was He an easy baby? You kind of imagine he would be content and not fussy, but I can’t say for sure. (Maybe that’s why that line in “Away In A Manger” that says, “The little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes” has been rewritten.) It’s fine to be curious about this, but I don’t think we “need” to know. Maybe that’s the reason the Bible tells us that Mary spent a lot of time ”pondering” everything that happened. not giving interviews about it. Several years ago when Tim Lovelace was writing a Christmas musical for Daywind, he and Lee asked me to help them write a song from Mary’s viewpoint about what that first Christmas night might have been like. I couldn’t be in Nashville with the guys, but it really didn’t matter once we got started. Writing “Holding Her Baby Boy,” a song where we just did our best to imagine what Mary thought and felt that holy night when Jesus came into the world, was an amazing experience I will always remember, resulting in a song I will always be grateful to be part of. #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting #WriteAboutJesus |
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DECEMBER 17 - "Christmas Like We Mean It"
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DECEMBER 17 - My youngest grandchild started college this year. But every Christmas I think back to an evening when the three in Nashville were still young enough to need a “sitter.” It was the middle of summer and for some reason Houston had gone into his parents’ closet. He came out with a very serious look on his face. He motioned me to follow him back into the closet. He went over to a laundry basket that was piled high with quilts, and he pulled back the corner of one. “Look,” he said as he pointed to what was hidden in the folds of one quilt. It was the family Elf on the Shelf that had been the source of a lot of fun the previous Christmas. The expression on his face seemed to say, “I think someone has played a huge trick on me and I’m not at all happy about it.”
We stood there staring at each other for several seconds, Houston silently demanding an explanation, and my mind racing for what to say. All I could come up with on the spur of the moment was, “Why Elfie, what in the world are you doing here? You were supposed to go back to the North Pole months ago!” I don’t think he bought it, and we’ve never talked about it since then. He’s 21 now and seems pretty well adjusted, so I guess he wasn’t scarred too bad. I don’t know what your Christmas traditions are and I’m not here to argue whether the “pretending” parts of our celebrations confuse kids about the truth of the Christmas story. However you’ve decided to handle it in your family, I just hope you “keep Christmas with all your heart,” like Ebenezar Scrooge would say. Do Christmas with love and joy, and celebrate what matters. Put your all into it. Do Christmas like you mean it! #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting #WriteAboutJesus |
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DECEMBER 16 - "From the Realms of Glory Bright"
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DECEMBER 16 - The hymn “Angels From the Realms of Glory” has one of my favorites lines from any Christmas carol.
“Ye who sang creation’s story, now proclaim Messiah’s birth.” Have you ever considered that the angels who surely must have sung and celebrated God’s creation as it came into being, might have been the same angels who sang “Glory to God in the highest” over the Bethlehem hillside that night Jesus was born. What a great thought, and what a great line, by poet and hymn writer James Montgomery. Montgomery, who was born in Scotland just before the beginning of the American Revolution, was brought up in a Scottish group of Moravian brethren. When he was 8, his parents left him with members of the group and went to the West Indies to do mission work. They died four years later without ever returning to Scotland. James spent years of his life wandering, without much direction and little success. He had talent for writing though and spent several years working at a newspaper, the Sheffield Register, eventually becoming the editor. In 1814, Montgomery’s life changed when he came to true faith in Jesus. He began to write poetry and then hymns. In his lifetime, he wrote over 400 hymns. On Christmas Eve, 1816, readers of the paper discovered a poem called The Nativity, written by James Montgomery. It was the words of that poem that became the song “Angels From the Realms of Glory.” While the verses of the carol focus on the angels, then the shepherds, and finally the “sages,” or wisemen, it is the chorus that calls us to action: Come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ the newborn king. I guess that one day in Heaven, James Montgomery is another songwriter I will need to search out to thank him for his beautiful words and for inspiring today’s song. It was recorded beautifully by The Talley Trio. “On the planet far below the throne of Heaven In the darkness untold generations passed An ocean of despair where man was sinking There seemed no refuge on this sea so vast But God was list’ning and He heard our helpless cry From the realms of glory bright” #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting #WriteAboutJesus |
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DECEMBER 15 - Getting Ready For A Baby
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DECEMBER 15 - I was driving to a co-write with Lee Black and Jerry Salley thinking about Mary and Joseph and being visited by an angel, one in the broad daylight and one the middle of the night. I couldn’t imagine how I would have handled that.
Most first-time parents are sharing the news, preparing their home, putting together a crib, gathering diapers and onesies, and other supplies, planning the place to give birth, reading parenting books, visiting the doctor… Mary and Joseph were dealing with a possible stoning, the swirling rumors around them, and a Roman census. Somehow in the middle of thinking about it, it crossed my mind that despite ALL THAT, in many ways they spent those nine months of waiting just “getting ready for a baby.” That’s what I remember. That phrase was the hook for me. Now… memories are tricky. So if either Lee or Jerry remembers how this idea came to be differently, well, I would not arm wrestle them over it. However, there is one moment that is crystal clear in my mind. We had written how Jesus’s birth changed Mary and Joseph’s life forever. We had a line that said “One silent night He changed their lives, like babies always do.” We sat there talking about what would come next when Lee said, “But Mary and Joseph had no idea how He would change mine too.” THAT moment will stay with me forever. Every so often— like today— I like to get that memory out again and relive it because it felt so Holy Spirit inspired. It felt sacred in the room, and at the same time, it felt like we should have a party. I know that most people who listen to the songs I’m posting are believers already. They know how they’ve been changed because Mary and Joseph were willing to surrender their lives to what God had planned and most of all, because Jesus came into the world as a baby and lived a sinless life and then laid down His life to atone for our sins. If your life hasn’t been changed because you’ve put your faith in that truth, let talk! It’s an earth-shaking, world-changing, life-giving story that all started with a young virgin girl and a faithful man just “Getting Ready For A Baby.” The first cut of this song was by the legendary Oak Ridge Boys. I'm so grateful to them for it. The version I'm posting today was recorded by Jerry Salley. If you'd also like to hear Lee Black's beautiful recording of it, it's wherever you get your music! #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting #WriteAboutJesus |
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DECEMBER 14 - Over 300 years ago, the French mathematician and Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” The concept of a “God-sized hole” we all carry around inside us is actually much older than Pascal. The writer of Ecclesiastes, traditionally thought to be Solomon, wrote that God has “set eternity in the human heart.” And the apostle Paul wrote in Romans that every person has an innate awareness of God through creation.
We don’t have to be godless. We don’t have to exchange the truth of who made us and who we are intended to worship for a fake substitute. Even today in 2025, God wants people to turn to Him, to surrender to Him, to find the meaning of their lives and their purpose for being. At Christmas, the answer is all around us if we’ll stop long enough to focus. Find Jesus. If you don’t know Him already, He’s waiting for you. If you’ve lost sight of who He truly is, listen to the angels proclaiming His birth and follow the shepherds as they search Bethlehem for Heaven’s gift to the world. When you find Jesus, “You’ll Find Christmas.” |
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DECEMBER 13 - Home For Christmas Again
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DECEMBER 13 - In the more than 20 years I commuted every other week to Nashville to write songs, I never spent Christmas here until John passed away in 2020. That year someone set off a bomb in downtown Nashville on Christmas morning and we not only weren’t together physically as a family, but we couldn’t even contact family in Texas and California by phone. That may have been my worst Christmas ever.
This year the plan is for our whole family to be together in Nashville. I’ve forbidden anyone to get sick. I’ve banned any terrible weather or airline system glitches that result in massive cancelled flights. We’ve experienced every one of these since 2020. This year nothing is allowed that keeps us apart. Other than the Rapture happening, Christmas WILL HAPPEN in Nashville the way we’ve planned. Nashville has become home for me, especially since my mom left us in 2022. So I’m holding my breath just a little bit. I’m praying every day for it to happen. Counting down the days until, we are all… HOME FOR CHRISTMAS AGAIN! |
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DECEMBER 12 - This Is Your Kingdom
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DECEMBER 12 - I was a staff writer at The Benson Company, later Brentwood-Benson, for around 30 years, starting around 1990. God was so kind to me for all those years. Johnathan Crumpton, who was the vice president of print and choral began asking me to help write musicals for the company, and that was significant in allowing me to leave teaching and write full time. In all I wrote 100 musicals at BBMP. I wrote 60-plus musicals with Russell Mauldin, who is one of the most talented people I know. And I wrote probably 15 with the equally amazing David Moffitt and Travis Cottrell.
Who knows how long I would have stayed at Brentwood-Benson? But Johnathan left the company in 2017, and then in 2020, the pandemic changed everything. Almost overnight, the market for choir music, a big part of what I did, simply ceased to exist. Near the end of 2020, the company “dropped” my contract. It was the start of 2021, John had just passed away, and I had lost my “job.” But God had a plan. Instead of forsaking print, Daywind Publishing had decided to jump into it with both feet. Thanks to Rick Shelton and Ed Leonard, Daywind opened their doors to me and I signed there in 2021. Around a year later, they brought Johnathan on board. Then they began asking Russell to create some of their Christmas and Easter projects. My working relationships with Johnathan and Russell were resurrected! And then a year or so after that, Johnathan asked David and Travis and me to get together to write a new Christmas musical. If you had told me in 2020 all that would happen, I would have laughed like Sarah and Elizabeth comparing babies in their old-age! I tell you all this because someone reading this needs to hear that God isn’t finished with you, no matter how it looks. Someone needs to know that your impossible circumstances are not a challenge to His plans to bless you with more than you imagine. Someone needs reminding that He knows right where you are and how you are hurting and how He’s going to work in the middle of all of it for your good and His glory. The Christmas musical David and Travis and I wrote in 2023 was called This Is Your Kingdom, and the final song in it is the last “THIS” song of the week. #MusicalAdventCalendar #WriteAboutJesus #songwriting #This Is Your Kingdom |
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DECEMBER 11 - This Must Be The Place
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DECEMBER 11 - Of the thousands of songs I've written over the years, there are only a handful of times when I felt the Holy Spirit so tangibly in the room as I did when David Moffitt and I wrote this lyric. Of the five “THIS” songs from this week, it’s the oldest, and it was in the first musical David and Travis and I ever wrote together.
We talked through the “map” of the song before we started. The basic idea was that any place where you encounter God’s grace and glory becomes a place of worship. The first verse was all Christmas and Jesus in the manger. The second would be at the cross, seeing Jesus sacrificed for our sins. The third would be after the Resurrection, when Thomas encounters Jesus in the upper room and falls to his knees and cries, “My Lord and my God.” #ThisMustBeThePlace #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting #WriteAboutJesus |
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DECEMBER 10 - This Is Christmas
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DECEMBER 10 - I loved “rounds” when I was a kid. Those songs where you divide a group into subgroups and each group starts singing the song at a different time so that by the time the last group joins in, the first group is almost “back to home,” so to speak. I don’t hear them much anymore. I guess they’re a little dated.
Even better than a round to me is the “partner” song, which can also be called “counterpoint.” That’s when two groups are singing two different lyrics and melodies, but somehow they blend together. Those songs are rare today as well. I think they’re fun, and it tickled me that we wrote this one as the finalé song of a Christmas musical. The main group is singing: God so love the world He gave His only Son to save us And this is Christmas And then a second chorus begins that says: This is never ending peace This is everlasting joy This is love eternal And this is Christmas I can’t help wondering if in Heaven we’ll sing songs like this. Every language, tribe and tongue, every musical style, from every age— songs of praise all woven together by the Divine Creator into beautiful harmony. #ThisIsChristmas #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting #WriteAboutJesus |
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DECEMBER 9 - This Is Our God
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DECEMBER 9 - I remember so well the day David Moffitt showed me a lyric he had started for a Christmas song called “This Is Our God.” The first verse said:
Who is this child, asleep in the manger? Tender and mild this intimate stranger, Recklessly wildly, loving a dangerous world. There are inner rhymes going on all over the place. It was beautiful but complex. I said, “You realize that we’re going to have to repeat that rhyme pattern several more times, right? It was a challenge. Sometimes when you write, it has always seemed to me, it’s almost like God has created words in advance that just work for what you want to say. What turned out to be just as much of a challenge was to write about Jesus, a tiny baby, not as a helpless infant, but as a conquering hero who had come on a great rescue mission. When we got together with Travis Cottrell, we decided the first verse and chorus would be about the child in the manger, but the second verse would transition to the cross. It was going to be demanding and a little tricky, but any songwriter who is following this story will know that feeling of “Challenge accepted.” The song was a success in that musical, but not long after that first season it was available, our publisher came to us and asked, “Could you write another version of that lyric that is non-Christmas?” I think I actually laughed out loud. But that’s what we did, because writing about Jesus in a way that wakes people up to His unbelievable love and kindness and power and greatness, well, that’s a challenge worth taking! So here's the second of the "THIS" songs: This Is Our God." #songwriting #MusicalAdventClendar #ThisIsOurGod." |
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DECEMBER 8 - This Is Jesus
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DECEMBER 8 - “THIS” songs get my creative juices going, whether I’m the writer or the listener. They call me to define something and to understand its importance and to help myself and others see it in a new way. I’ve known for a while that I’m drawn to “THIS” songs, but I’ve always been deliberate about sprinkling them throughout the month of this calendar. This year, I thought, why not just use them all at once. So here we go with the first Musical Advent Calendar “THIS” Week.
“This Is Jesus,” will always be one of my favorite songs I’ve ever been part of writing. In four verses, we see Jesus at creation, at His birth, in His earthly ministry and death on the cross, in His Resurrection, and reigning forever. I wrote it with the amazingly gifted Cliff Duren, and Cliff also did the powerful arrangement of it, and got Travis Cottrell to sing the demo. There’s no chorus, but each verse ends with “This is Jesus,” sort of putting a different frame around the portrait of our Lord and Savior. I’m so grateful God allowed me to help write it. #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting #THISsongs #ThisIsJesus |
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DECEMBER 7 - The Sound of Love
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DECEMBER 7 - This weekend and next are, I’m guessing, the weekends when most churches will be presenting special Christmas programming, musicals, dramas, pageants… Call them what you will, they represent the combined hard work and dedication of dozens, if not hundreds, of people. I first remember those kinds of "productions" because my dad led the music at our church from the time I was old enough to be aware until after I had my first child. I grew up on John W. Peterson and musicals like Night of Miracles and Born a King, and oh how I remember my mom and dad working so hard on every aspect of what our church did each year at Christmas.
All the hard work that goes into presenting a Christmas musical is not about putting on a great “show.” It’s about telling people that “this day in the city of David, a Savior has been born for you.” If you are one of those people who leads or who sings or who works behind the scenes, thank you for all the hard work you’ve put in to move and inspire all of us who come and listen! (In my family, that covers four generations.) Thank you especially from writers like me who depend on you to put flesh on songs and musicals that don’t really exist except on paper or on a cd somewhere until you do what God has gifted you to do. When we come and sit and listen, we hear “The Sound of Love” in what you’ve done, and it is a huge blessing to our Christmas season. #TheSoundOfLove #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting |
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DECEMBER 6 - If It's Christmas
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DECEMBER 6 - The accidental co-write. That’s when you didn’t know you’d be writing with someone on a certain day, but God had the appointment on His calendar. Sometimes they happen because a co-writer has to cancel. They’re sick or they double-booked, or… well, whatever the reason. Sometimes it’s because you just happened to show up to the same publishing office at the same time as someone else. If you are a songwriter, I wish you a healthy dose of accidental co-writes, because so often in my life, they have turned out to be such a blessing.
Today’s song was one of those. I was supposed to write with the amazing Michael Farren and an equally amazing artist. I had been anticipating it so much and I had an idea I thought would be so good for the three of us. As it turned out, the artist couldn’t make it. Honestly, when you write songs, you kind of learn to go with that situation. But in this case, the artist sent someone in his place, someone from his band. It was Michael Rowsey, his drummer. I didn’t know Michael already, but I did know his dad, John Darin Rowsey. So the two Michaels and I chatted for 15 minutes or so, and then we started writing, and I told them the idea I had brought, and we ended up writing a song that I love so much. I can’t tell you how many times this has been the case with the accidental co-writes God has placed in my life. Here’s the song, and the cut is by John Darin Rowsey and the Guardians. Now how fun is that! |
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DECEMBER 5 - What Christmas Really Means
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DECEMBER 5 - I love a good Hallmark Christmas movie. There. I said it and you won’t make me feel bad if you scoff. Go ahead and say they all have the same plot, they follow the same formula, they’re soooo predictable. That’s what I like about them. John liked them too and we had fun watching them together.
There’s one thing about Hallmark movies and nearly every Christmas movie out there, that drives me a little crazy. It’s the inevitable point in the movie where someone says “that’s what Christmas is all about, right?” That’s where they lose me. Usually the “that” they’re talking about is being with family, or being kind to others, or doing good things in your community. Last week I heard a character say, “Isn’t second chances what this season is all about?” While I think all those things are important, it’s Jesus that makes Christmas precious and sacred. It’s God giving His only Son for our salvation that makes the day worthy of celebration. I’m not writing any angry letters to Hallmark or correcting anyone in the checkout line. I’m just trying to live every day of this season with Jesus at the heart of it. Today’s song is one of my very favorites I’ve ever been part of, and I always include it on this calendar, because each verse is special to me. It looks at the big story of Christmas, beyond the manger and into eternity. It’s beautifully sung by The Erwins, one of my favorite groups and some of my favorite people. Hope you enjoy “What Christmas Really Means.” The song was written with David Moffitt. #MusicalAdventCalendar #songwriting #WriteAboutJesus |
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DECEMBER 4 - Heaven's Greatest Gift
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DECEMBER 4, 2025 What’s the best Christmas gift you’ve ever gotten? The first Christmas that I can remember, I got a toy piano and a cowgirl outfit, complete with a double holster and two pistols. That’s a good gift for a 3 year old, right?
Not many years after that, Santa gave me twin dolls. A boy and a girl. The summer after Christmas I gave one away because, as I told my mom, “I had two of them.” My poor dear mother wanted a little girl so bad and I was such a tomboy. She never gave up giving me dolls though. One year my mom took the wedding dress off a doll I already had, and made a cheerleading outfit for her that looked just like the one I cheered in at games for “dear ole Berkeley High.” That was a great Christmas gift! One year I HAD a baby at Christmas! She was a wonderful gift! Are you scrolling back in your mind right now to pin down your “best gift ever?” If you haven’t figured it out by now, today’s song is “Heaven’s Greatest Gift.” I believe we’d all agree that God’s gift of His only Son is hands down the greatest gift ever given in the history of humanity. A gift that is for anyone who will receive Him. A gift that comes with His love and grace and faithfulness. A gift that includes the promise of everlasting life. I’ve written around 3000 songs about “Heaven’s Greatest Gift,” and I’m just one songwriter. Can you imagine all the songs about this one topic down through history? I never get tired of writing about Jesus, and I don’t think I ever will. Thank you to John Bolin and Kenna West for this co-write! And to Marsh Hall and Emma Rose Williamson for the beautiful duet! |
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DECEMBER 3 - Love You Remember
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DECEMBER 3, 2025 “LOVE YOU REMEMBER”
When I was a little girl, I was convinced that “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” was about my own parents. My brother and I sang “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” until I’m sure it drove my mom a little crazy. There was a song called “Susie Snowflake” I loved and did my best popularize single-handedly, but it never really took off. It should have been clear to everyone that even at four years old, in my heart I was a songwriter. Music was always a huge part of our Christmas. We sang at home, at church, and in the car going from one to the other. After John and I got married, our tradition was that any time we drove somewhere during the Christmas season, we sang. One by one, each person got to choose which Christmas song or carol they wanted to sing, and every person in the car had to participate, no matter what kind of mood you were in. Any time and every time it was John’s turn, he would choose “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear.” Among a million other Christmas memories, that is one of my favorites. I ’m sure our Christmases were lavish by some standards and modest by others. But Christmas was always filled with love and that’s what I remember most. It’s one of the reasons today’s song is a favorite of mine. The last line of the song says “At Christmas, it’s the laughter and love you remember.” I’m so thankful that’s true for me. These days, I spend very little time and money on presents, but I know this season will be filled with love from beginning to end. |
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DECEMBER 2 - Good News
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DECEMBER 2 - I've been reading The Complete Jewish Study Bible all this year. This marks somewhere between 20 to 25 times I've read through God's Word, and it always is the most amazing journey. I grew up a church kid. The first Bible verse I ever memorized was not John 3:16, as you might guess, but Isaiah 53:6, a prophecy about the coming Messiah.
My journey through God's Word in 2025 has required me to look at every verse and every story through a Jewish lens. At a time in history when the fires of anti-semitism have been re-ignited in our own country, something that's still so shocking to me, reading what God has spoken throughout history has reminded me that the gospel message that God sent His Son to save us and redeem is timeless and forever will be Good News to anyone who believes in Jesus. In the CJB, He is called our Lord Yeshua. I don't know if we can truly appreciate how good that news is until we somehow experience or have an appreciation for all that came before it. There are books in the Old Testament that are a real mountain to climb every year, but that just reminds me that so many generations of people didn't just read about it, they lived it. And now here I am more than 2000 years after Jesus came, and it all is still the best "good" news you could ever hear. "In the countryside nearby were some shepherds spending the night in the field, guarding their flocks, when an angel of ADONAI appeared to them, and the Sh'khinah of ADONAI shone around them. They were terrified; but the angel said to them, "Don't be afraid, because I am here announcing to you Good News that will bring great joy to all the people. This very day, in the town of David, there was born for you a Deliverer who is the Messiah, the LORD." Luke 2:8-10 CJB. *A big shout out to Jim and Melissa Brady for this cut of “Good News” which you’ll find on their project “Christmastime.” It is one of my favorite Christmas projects! Wanted to also mention (though the end of the video says it) that the song was a collaboration with Melissa Brady and Kenna West. Thank you, friends! |
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DECEMBER 1 - Because of Your Tender Mercy
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DECEMBER 1 - Just imagine Zechariah, a priest going about his work in the temple, getting ready to burn incense to the Lord, when suddenly by the altar an angel appears and tells him that he and his wife Elizabeth were going to have a son. This son, born when both his parents were way too old to have a baby, would be “filled with the Holy Spirit” even before his birth! God would use John— that’s what the angel said they should name him— to “make the people ready for the Lord.”
Oh for sure Zechariah doubted it could happen. So Gabriel— this wasn’t just any ordinary angel but one of the named messengers from God — Gabriel put Zechariah in “talking time out” for Elizabeth’s entire pregnancy. Let that sink in for a minute. Think of all the great news he didn’t get to deliver and the questions he was unable to answer. It should come as no surprise to us that Zechariah was so filled with praise during all the months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy for what God had done and what He was doing and what He was about to do, that it’s a wonder he didn’t explode with it. But finally, the baby was born and when they were having his circumcision ceremony, there was confusion because Elizabeth said his name would be John. So of course they had to ask Zechariah because no one in the family was named John, so it made no sense to anyone. But when Zechariah confirmed it, suddenly he was able to speak again, and naturally all the praise he’d been storing up for all those months spilled out. It’s from this beautiful song of praise that my co-writer David Moffitt and I wrote a song called “Because of Your Tender Mercy.” Think of how blessed we all are because God, in His tender mercy, sent His only Son to us. (If you tend to get a little lost in the language, sometimes it’s helpful to read a song like Zechariah’s like it’s a “call and response” moment. Read each line as though you are the leader, and then read it again, like you are the congregation responding.) “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us-- to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.” Luke 1:68-79 NIV |