Thoughts during a much needed break (last night)

Here's a mental ramble for you:

So, I've been reading scripts from about 3pm-9:30pm today. (That's a complete guess - I was looking at pages, not the clock.) And during my entire time doing so I've been listening to the Christmas Music station I created on Pandora. That's a lot of Christmas music. (But it's provided a better background sound than my neighbors' driving bass line to the hip-hop that they were listening to.)

At any rate, this song just came up:
"Hark the Herold Angels Sing" by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra on their album entitled, "Christmas Choral Classics."

My first thought when I finally noticed hearing it was to skip the song. It's not quite "my style." I love classical music but this is/was a bit - how shall I say it - "heavy" for me.

And yet, as I held my finger poised, lightly scratching the button to skip the song, I made a little mental connection:

A friend of mine and I were talking last night about how this holiday season is a time of Spiritual Warfare. I mean, real spiritual War. The evil one knew that his defeat was imminent. The first Christmas wasn't nice, it wasn't gift wrapped, and somehow I kind of doubt that it was "peaceful" or "quiet" in the sense that we think about. This was no Hallmark image.

Evil raged against Good. Choirs and armies of angels filled the sky. Their appearance was glorious and terrifying.

Bring it back to this song, sung in this manner, by this choir, in this orchestra... "Heavy."



"'Hark!' The Herold Angels sing, 'Glory to the newborn king!'"



The style carries strength. And that's something to consider. The divine combination of absolute strength with absolute vulnerability.
It's beautiful.


It's Christmas.