I don’t know about you, but there are some songs that can just transport me back to a different era. There are the ones that remind us of people and places, and the ones that make the years roll away and we find ourselves back in time, back at the age we were when we first heard them.
One of these for me is the song of hope I have chosen today – When a child is born.
This was most famously released in 1976 by singer Johnny Mathis and became the Christmas number 1 for that year. I had reached the dizzying height of 5 and a half years old by then and, while I’m not sure I remember it specifically in 1976, I do have to say that I genuinely don’t remember a Christmas when I didn’t hear it played or a Christmas singles compilation ever since where it hasn’t appeared! Every time I hear it played I am transported back to my childhood and the happy Christmases I have spent with my family through the years.
I think it’s those first couple of lines that always get me:
“A ray of hope flitters in the sky,
a tiny star lights up way up high,
all across the land dawns a brand new morn.
This comes to pass when a child is born.”
What wonderful images those words create – the ray of hope, the star, the morning coming and the birth of the child. As we travel through this song we see so many other word pictures created by the lyrics – perhaps you will have time to listen and let your imagination see them all as you do.
But what does that hope mean? What can it do? How can it help us? No matter how hopeless we can feel, how worried we are about all that is going on in our world and our lives, how desperate the outlook seems, so often there is the ray of hope if we just look for it.
There’s a ray of hope as we celebrate the birth of Jesus at each Christmas, that ray of hope that we get as we follow Jesus each day, that ray of hope that we can bring to those around us as we share his good news with others.
So as we enter the time of Advent again this year, help us to see the ray of hope all around us, and more than that, let us reflect that ray of hope out and on to other people. Let us remember the ray of hope given to us in the birth of Jesus, not just available to us at Christmas, but a yearlong, lifelong, gift to us all!
Catherine Booton
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