Mouthing the Words

It's that time of year again. I love music and Christmas music is especially touching to me. Once I became a mother, I was even more entranced by the idea of Christ coming to Earth as a helpless, innocent baby and the music of the season really tugs at my heartstrings. To look at my own babies and imagine the Lord of all creation humbling himself to become one of us, and not just anyone, but a newborn baby - well, it's just wondrous to me.

And so I find myself listening to Christmas music on the radio, and in the stores, and on my Zune... and I start to wonder about these so-called secular artists singing about Christ's birth. Just today I heard Josh Groban sing "O Holy Night" and when he sang about "our dear Savior's birth" I caught myself wondering, *Is* He really Josh Groban's Savior? While some secular artists might be true Believers, surely not every one of them who records Christmas songs is. I'd like to think I would be able to tell by the whether or not they seem to put enough passion into it, but so far that's an imperfect strategy. I wonder what goes through their minds as they sing about holiness and our Savior. When they sing "Christ is the Lord, oh praise His name forever," do the words mean anything at all to them? Does the Holy Spirit prick their hearts, or do they feel like a fraud? Do their hearts beat just a little faster? The Praise Team has a running joke about how, if you happen to forget the words to a song, you can mouth the word "watermelon" and make it look like you know what you're doing. Is that what it's like for some people when they sing songs about Christ's birth? Could they be singing "watermelon" and it have just as much meaning to them? And how does God view their singing about Him? Does it sound like Charlie Brown's teacher: wah, wah, waaaah, wah, waah?

SIDE NOTE: That does not mean that there is no such thing as a born again secular musician. I'm sure there are some out there, in the same way that I'm sure there are Contemporary Christian singers who are NOT born again.

My question doesn't only apply to secular artists, of course. How many people sit in churches every December and sing about their Savior and the wonder of His birth, and they might as well be singing "watermelon" over and over? I'm not just talking about the Easter and Christmas Christians either. I think sometimes we sing about Christ and we don't even think about the words coming out of our mouths, much less whether or not we truly mean them. Maybe over time we get hardened to the meaning behind the songs and they don't affect us anymore. I know I have had periods of time when it seems like the world has me distracted and I might as well be singing "watermelon" instead of "How Great Is Our God" but thankfully that hasn't happened lately. Or maybe we're in some misguided self-protection mode, not wanting to think too hard about the words because if we do, we're afraid we will be overcome by emotion and embarrass ourselves. When I first accepted Christ, I was in high school and I was a crier. Maybe a more accurate word would be "blubberer" because I couldn't get through a service without bawling. Whenever we had the Lord's Supper I was an absolute sobbing mess! After one particularly wet Sunday morning service, the Youth Pastor stopped me and told me this: "Don't ever be ashamed of your tears. That's a sign that you are being sensitive to the Spirit." That has stayed with me all these years. Nowadays I WANT to cry. I never want to get to the place where I am no longer affected by songs about my Lord.

So this Christmas, when you hear a Christmas carol, take some time to really think about the words. When you sing, "Hark the herald angels sing glory to the newborn King! Peace on Earth and mercy mild; God and sinners reconciled" turn that over in your mind for a while. God and sinners reconciled - that means you and me, folks. We're the sinners God came to be reconciled with. Bad sentence structure, but right idea. He came to us, in the most humble of ways, to save us. The baby Jesus was born to die for our sins. That's something worth singing about.