I was listening to Céline Dion‘s version of O, Holy Night in the car this week…and it brought me to tears.
I love the song, but I’ll admit over the years I’ve become accustomed to robotically singing along.
But not this time.
Maybe it was the Holy Spirit pricking my heart — or maybe just my perimenopause flaring, but something about the opening lyrics stopped me in my tracks:
“O holy night!
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth.”
In particular, the poignant words,
“Long lay the world in sin and error pining,”
opened the flood gates for me on a random Tuesday morning as my children obliviously played on their iPads in the backseat.
It’s a short phrase, but one that so accurately describes the state of the world before Jesus Christ was born.
And for the first time, the gravity of the situation of those B.C. (before Christ) hit me like a ton of bricks.
How dark it must have felt to live before the “Light of the world” was born (John 8:12).
Long lay the world — and I mean LOOOOONG lay the world…we’re talking thousands of years here, spanning the entire Old Testament and all its Bible periods (before the flood, the flood, the scattering of the people, the patriarchs, the exodus, the wandering in the wilderness, invasion and conquest of the land, the judges, the united kingdom, the divided kingdom, Judah alone, the captivity, return from captivity and the years of silence).
As all are (Romans 3:23), they were living in sin and error — even the “faithful” mentioned in Hebrews 11 were trapped by their depraved human condition, as the apostle Paul describes it in Romans 7:15-20:
“15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”
Because of this, they were pining for a Savior…pining for a someone who was worthy to “open the scroll” (Revelation 5).
Because before Him, there was no hope, no light, no Savior, no perfect lamb, no one worthy to bring salvation to all. I don’t exactly know what that feels like to live through, but like John (Revelation 5:4), the thought of it brought me to tears.
Maybe I’ve just taken the offer of salvation through Jesus Christ for granted all my life, because I’ve grown up in the church or because the gift of Jesus’ sacrifice has been freely available for 2000 years now.
And maybe I’m not alone. I suppose we all take it for granted from time to time, because we no longer have to pine for a Savior — making it easy to forget what a priceless gift He is.
I hope the words of this song hit you the same way they hit me.
If the same lyrics were written about us as we wait for his second coming, how would we be described? Are we also pining for his return?
Praise God, through belief in the sacrifice of His Son and baptism into His death, this time the world can wait for Him in “forgiveness and redemption, shining.”
Until next time,
PWAP