Hope of the ages, light of the world
Born a baby, a beacon in darkness
Into the silence, God speaks his word
And the angels alight singing Glory!
All history hinges here
This the day that the prophets longed to see
Earth raised and heaven near
Christ is born! God is with us! Immanuel!
How can a stable house this new king?
Could the whole of creation contain him?
Hills bow in worship, rocks rise and sing!
Let the earth burst forth with his praises!
The great author of life
writes himself in the pages of history,
To free us from our strife
Christ is born! God is with us! Immanuel!
Rest for the weary, sight for the blind
And new life giv’n to all who’ll believe him
Drink from this fountain, feast on his word
Come, step out of the darkness, receive him!
Into the black of night
Hope has come, God the Son, living here with us!
Shining eternal light!
Christ is born! God is with us! Immanuel!
sar 2012
Hey Simone,
ReplyDeleteI like the style of it.
Is it your intention to focus on the incarnation as God's act of atonement? 'All history hinges here This is the day...'
(I wouldn't think, so btw)
Rhyming 'believe him' and 'receive him' in the last verse?
Does the third last line in the last verse have one more syllable than its counterparts? Is the word 'here' necessary?
It'd be interesting to see how a melody treats the fifth line of each verse and where the stresses fall.
Thanks for posting
Is the aim for it to be sung at Christmas time or at any time of the year?
ReplyDeleteAnd what Gary said too...not sure about the line "all history hinges here." I think resurrection day is that day...
Every single week, at every single christian gathering that puts in a ccli return!
DeleteThe brief was to write songs on the incarnation that could be sung whenever. This may not be one.
Clearly I've been conditioned over many years to only singing the words "baby", "stable" and the phrase "Christ is born" during the Christmas season.
DeleteForgot to say earlier that I do think it's not such a bad thing to sing a song about Christ's birth at other times of the year. Just not sure that everyone would go for it though...
I have reservations too.
DeleteWow - you read carefully!
ReplyDeleteNo. I don't see incarnation as the atonement. With 'All history hinges here' I'm thinking of the whole package of God on earth - That 33 years. I'm also thinking the calendar BC/AD thing. Do you think that line would win me a heterodox label?
I don't have an issue rhyming believe him and receive him.
L6 of verses 2 and 3 have 11 syllables. V1 only has 10. I can stick an extra syllable in v1 if I need to. Thought I'd wait to see which way the tune goes. What usually happens is that I have to rework several lines of each verse anyway.
Yes, I'll be interested to hear the tune for L5 as well. V2 emphasis is slightly different, but the right tune could make it not an issue. (Or I'll re-write.)
Thanks. I'm really hoping this one gets a good tune. May be too wordy.
Did you start this one about 6 years ago?
ReplyDeleteNo. Fresh this week.
ReplyDeleteI wrote another Christmassy one back then.
I don't think it's too Christmassy. I think it'd work well any time. "Servant King" starts off with "helpless babe" but it doesn't only get sung at Christmas. I thought "all history hinges here" was fine - especially given the explanation in the next line "the prophets longed to see". It's the moment.. The Moment... that God becomes flesh.
ReplyDeleteThe Incarnation is to you what the eschaton is to Mark Peterson.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a shame you tacked the extra words on so pages didn't rhyme with praises... but the second verse is my favourite.
I really like it. I think it's a great shame we only talk/sing about Jesus birth at Christmas.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Deb is saying.
I like the song, and also think that we should sing of the incarnation outside the church calendar.
ReplyDeleteI'm no songwriter, so these comments will need to be evaluated.
These two lines felt below par compared to the lines around them:
Let the earth burst forth with his praises!
To free us from our strife ("us" and "our" seems redundant)
It felt to me as though the second half of the second stanza is adding a second theme to the stanza:
The great author of life
writes himself in the pages of history,
To free us from our strife
and that felt like a change of gears to me - I'd rather one theme/motiff/set of metaphors per stanza. It didn't feel that way with the first stanza because history hinging seems an exposition of the previous lines.
If instead the idea is to have two themes per stanza - revelation and history stanza 1, creation and history stanza 2, then I'd be looking for a similar pattern in stanza 3.
Otherwise I'd be using the following extract to generate another stanza, and continue the creation theme further for the rest of stanza 2:
The great author of life
writes himself in the pages of history,
To free us from our strife
I also wondered that, as stanza three seems to be more expressing a personal ownership and response to the incarnation and its effects, whether it might not work better to draw on the imagery already existing in the previous stanzas than to draw in a lot of new, unrelated concepts. These lines:
Rest for the weary, sight for the blind
And new life giv’n to all who’ll believe him
Drink from this fountain, feast on his word
don't seem to draw on anything previous, and you've got images of God speaking, angels singing, history being fulfilled, of the uncontainable entering creation, God being with us, of creation praising God that all could be picked up and a response sketched out in that last stanza.
shhhh Mark!
DeleteDon't let everyone see the flaws!
Was it really that obvious that I wrote all the second halves first then tried to cobble together some lines to pre-empt them? Did you notice that nothing is lost if you put V1A with V2B and V2A with V1B?
Yes. That shows that I'm not developing any themes/images well.
Verse 3 needs to be a doing verse. So I need to find some verbs to replace those in lines 1 and 3. I'll look.
Thanks. Philip is trying to write a tune right now. I'll do a re-write once he sends me something.
Hmmnnn, in that case I'd suggest the following ways of organising the lines for the stanzas before the last one:
DeleteStanza 1:
Hope of the ages, light of the world
Born a baby, a beacon in darkness
Into the silence, God speaks his word
Stanza 2:
How can a stable house this new king?
Could the whole of creation contain him?
Hills bow in worship, rocks rise and sing!
Let the earth burst forth with his praises!
And the angels alight singing Glory!
Stanza 3:
All history hinges here
This the day that the prophets longed to see
Earth raised and heaven near
Christ is born! God is with us! Immanuel!
The great author of life
writes himself in the pages of history,
To free us from our strife
Christ is born! God is with us! Immanuel!
It would give you a "incarnation-as-creation" theme a la John 1 stanza 1, response of creation to incarnation stanza 2, and incarnation as the fulfilment of history stanza 3.
Just want to say thanks for sharing not only the song, but for allowing us to see how to approach its fine-tuning.
ReplyDeleteSeems I'm too late to do much more than observe the cheeky "I'll rhyme the odd lines rather than the even ones if I want to, so there" aspect. Except at lines 1 and 3 in the third verse, so I wonder if that's a rewrite/oversight?
ReplyDeleteBtw, having recently recorded a couple of my older songs for an upcoming collaboration disc, I've been inspired to get back into some writing - stealing your brief for a thematic launch pad, hope that's ok ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm having trouble getting the rhythm - maybe it'll become clear with the tune. Do you have a particular meter in mind?
ReplyDeleteIt's an irregular meter, swapping between iambic and trochaic feet. The point of it is that it's unexpected. You can't easily imagine it till it's tuned up - then it will make sense.
DeleteThanks for posting this - it's a good thought-provoking song. I agree with what the others have said about line lengths. You could probably fudge them tune-wise but I'm sure you'll fix them up as you work on it more. I love the imagery of it and some of the phrases are quite beautiful.
ReplyDeleteFrom a content/incarnation point of view I struggle with it a little because the Jesus it protrays is still very "heavenly" if you'll forgive that clumsy way of putting it. Heaven and earth seem to be brought together by earth being raised more than heaven coming down. Earth can hardly contain him, hills and rocks come alive, he's a shining eternal light and so on. While the element of veiling this glory is there to some extent in the last verse it's very muted where to my mind the incarnation is much more earthy than that - it was possible for Jesus' contemporaries to see him as just another human.
I guess it's only fair, seeing as I stole your 'brief' of incarnation, to let you critique my attempt: http://www.thingsfindothinks.com/2012/03/new-song-draft-he-is-exalted/
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, I'd love some of your thoughts! (and I really hope you don't mind me borrowing the theme!)
I commented - before I saw this!
DeleteAnd I certainly don't mind you borrowing the theme.
This song may be dead in the water- after all the hours I put into the lyric! Alas, hard work doesn't nec. translate into anything. It is onto its 4th tune... We'll see. Having more success with a happy little song we've spent one tenth of the time on.
Thanks!
DeleteWell.. you never know. I recently pulled out a hymn retune I did almost a decade ago, added a new chorus, and it might very end up on a CD soon. In any case.. you can always borrow from yourself later.