Because the angels are, in fact, STILL singing and because some of us need a messenger of the Lord right here, right now, I wanted to highlight this portion of the Rhoades Family Christmas card from 2010. Because the angels that sang and rejoiced in the sky pronouncing PEACE & GOODWILL on the night Jesus Christ was born are the same angels who now attend to the household of faith!
“Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” Hebrews 1.14
REJOICE, friends and familia! The angels of the Lord are near. Listen for the song – it’ll be good news for sure.
Now please go back and notice how many times the angels said: Fear not (do not be afraid)!
Thank-you, Jack Hayford, for preaching Christmas up year after year!
Remember that song from the 1980s Hosanna! Integrity’s music???
Oh, I loved singing it. And I just found myself singing it a few minutes ago as I am glittering up 3 sets of angel wings for a certain Nativity photo shoot this Saturday. There are sparkles everywhere!
I hear angels singing praises,
I see men from every nation
bowing down before the throne
Like the sound of many waters,
like a rushing wind around us
Multitudes join the song
And a symphony of praise arises
Tears are washed away from eyes
as men from every tongue and tribe all sing
Holy, holy, God almighty
Who Was, who IS and Is to come
All the angels are crying holy to the Lamb who sits upon the throne.
I think I love this song so much because I was 4 when I first {heard} the songs of Heaven and {saw} the multitudes in the Spirit. And sometimes I still do. Call me crazy, but as soon as my breath returns when I hear it (awe-awe-awe), I sing along.
Andy Williams churned out Christmas specials regularly. They are part of the background noise of my growing up years, an easy-listening soundtrack to my life and times.
Obviously at some point I became too sophisticated and cool for Andy’s shows (she says rolling her eyes at her posturing silly-determined-girl phase, before real maturity set in). Apparently the whole world got over him, too. For the Christmas specials ceased.
He died a few months ago and I wrote about it {HERE},but I happened across this yesterday on YouTube (thanks for the suggestion You-tube-robots – you really do get me, it seems) and how delightful! 59 minutes and 17 seconds of pure, unadulterated red-and-green-over-the-top-joy-to-the-world-sacred-and-silly CHRISTMAS. Yes, CHRISTMAS in all caps!
There are appearances by the Williams Brothers Singers (Andy’s sibs) and the Osmonds started with Andy, ya know. Claudette Longet, Andy’s French and oh so very modern and extremely cool wife is a treasure. She sings. Lovely!
Hook it up to your giant flat-screen TV and get some hot chocolate and cookies and I promise you will have a Christmas experience like never before…unless you were watching in the 1960s and 70s…in which case you will do it because you KNOW it was wonderful and the best of Christmas times! A little hokey? Well, heck yes! That is why I LOVE it.
It’s the MOST wonderful time of the year! Just ask Andy!!!
You know I love me a good 10-minutes-or-less project, right?
I had this one stepping stone from Lowe’s. I think I was contemplating using it for another project or something and I brought home this sample. But didn’t use it.
I had also thought, at some point or another of painting or stenciling a simple greeting on my front porch, “hello.” Didn’t do that either.
Then 10 minutes happened my way, just after brewing my morning coffee.
On hand: 1 fake-slate-travertine-type stepping-stone, approx. 12″ x 6″, some latex paint, a photocopy and packing tape and a sponge brush and~
I told you about PicMonkey before {HERE} so you can see what the heck I am talking about.
1// I uploaded my handy-dandy “white” jpg to PicMonkey.
2// I selected a very simple and casual font and added the word “hello.” Maybe 2 minutes to decide which font?
3// I saved the image to my computer and threw it into a Publisher doc and stretched it to fit within the paper’s parameters, so my finished image would be about 5″ x 10″. And hit print. 1 minute.
4// I put two strips of packing tape over the printed word to make it sturdier for cutting and painting over. Then I cut out my word. 3-5 minutes. Didn’t go for perfection. It is a stepping stone.
5// Use teeny-tiny little tape donuts on the backs of the “insides” of letters. 30 seconds.
6// I tried {and tried} to get my brown, gold-flecked enamel open, but couldn’t, so I used brown latex paint and sponge brush and just “stippled” the paint onto the letters. 1 1//2 minutes, if even.
7// I ripped away the paper and voila! It was not perfect. :)
8// I wiped excess paint off with my finger and then used some creamy white to just barely make a couple of edges more perfect.
Done and time to dry. I may or may not put a thin coat of tile sealer or satin poly over it before it takes it place on the front porch after Christmas decorations come down. Either way, aren’t I just the friendliest?
One teensy-tiny drawback to listening to your music via vinyl (I love an LP, people), is that sometimes, since I have purchased some albums from a thrift store, there are records that are in less-than-pristine condition and there might a scratch or two.
Our countdown Santa
It doesn’t really bother me, though. Part of the fun of a record playing on the stereo is some of the crackly sound you get with it. I even digitize my favorite songs from my favorite albums because I love the sound of the needle dropping onto the record and the heightened anticipation of the crackling turning into the sound of a song I love on the surround-sound. {schckskrschkdkschhhh, not sure, but I think my spelling on that is right} ;)
Today, as I prepare for all the grandbebes to descend (for our annual Christmas overnight), I have gone quite traditional by listening to The Time-Life Treasury of Christmas.
And oops, it got stuck as Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops were performing {just for me} their medley of Here We Come A-Caroling/O Tannebaum/I Saw Three Ships. At the precise moment my steak reached perfection in the kitchen and I reached for a plate to enjoy it, the phone rang and there I was, plating and talking and in the background, the Pops, just singing away
And God bless you and send you a
And God bless you and send you a
They must’ve sung that line 37 times before I got to the stereo. So you know what I did? I received it as an early Christmas blessing from the Father of Lights. Yep. I think it was just a sweet message from God to me. I bless you and I am sending you a Happy New Year – don’t miss this message, busy-girl!
A scene from the family room
I didn’t. It may have taken 37 times, but I got the beautiful message. And since it is mine now to share, I bless you with it, too:
God bless you, BLESS you, and send you a Happy New (fresh as the driven snow) Year!
I love the Bing Crosby song from “Holiday Inn” that he sings (while missing his love, who has recently become engaged to another man) on Thanksgiving. So he is a little grumpy, but the song on its’ own is a happy, grateful, true story!
Best lines from this clip?
Mamie: Women has to have them things told to them the right way. You could melt her heart right down to butter, if you’d only turn on the heat.
Jim considers what Mamie is telling him.
Jim: Well, sure. [He is now resolved] Women has to be told things the right way.
Uh, yeah. Right. Anyway, I am singing this song all day today! Sing with me, come on! I have included lyrics! Because I am nice like that.
Tara may or may not have remembered to tell us (she did not) that Megan Isaacson recorded her song, “Broken,” last year (may be purchased on Amazon here) and now CNBC has asked Tara’s permission to use some of it on a story they are doing.
It is an amazing song. I totally remember when she came in and just sang it in my family room (September 2009), no instruments – it was heaven coming to earth in the purest prayer ~ a really honest and good prayer of surrender.
Stephanie has sung it live, Rocky has, Tara and Rocky have sung it, Tara and Dave, a bunch of different worship leaders have used it. But I didn’t know it had ever, finally gotten recorded (yeah, Megan Isaacson!). Still waiting on Tara and Dave to record it, too!
The night, darkest, they say, just before dawn, drapes over me in warmth like a heavy old quilt. The lightlessness almost paralyzing, pushing me into deeper slumber.
Then the disintegration of the blackness begins. And in one {breathtaking} moment, like cracking an egg over a bowl, a severing of its’ power for what is to be – there it is. Light. Night is over. Bright.
The darkness of night cannot remain, cannot overcome the morning sun. It just rose in an instant and took its’ regal place ~ one moment longed for, disconsolate, the next, a done deal.
Morning has, indeed broken.
Cat Stevens* really knew.
Arise, shine;
For your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.
For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the Lord will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you.
The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising. Isaiah 60.1-3 NKJV
The night {your night} cannot last forever. Every night will be broken by a day. Every blackness will eventually meet its’ match in a sunrise that will be seen upon you. You will be bright in your rising and you will be where His glory is seen again.
Stephanie ran across some one’s Andrae Crouch record album collection at a thrift store the other day and brought me 3 I didn’t have, but have loved my whole life long. I selected the one that was “big” to me from about age 12-14 or 15 (Christian songs have staying power that other songs don’t), and placed it on the turntable while I was busy with other things.
Each new song brought an o-I-loved-this-song and a smile to me, as I was hearing it in the distance a room or three away. But when it reached the final song on side one, I had to stop for a moment and just sing with Andrae. I’m not dead yet, but wouldn’t this just be an epitaph that said what really needed to be said?
I thank God for the mountains, and I thank Him for the valleys,
I thank Him for the storms He brought me through.
For if I’d never had a problem, I wouldn’t know God could solve them,
I’d never know what faith in God could do
Through it all, through it all
I’ve learned to trust in Jesus, I’ve learned to trust in God
Through it all (sometimes through the fire), Through it all (sometimes through the flood)
I’ve learned to depend upon His word.
Terri Pickett and I used to sing “Through it All” at the North Pine Church of God in Davenport, Iowa.
And I remember that back in the 70s, my dad (who taught me to love Andrae), used to want to mangle the words and sing it “Through it all, I’m learning to trust to in Jesus, I’m learning to trust in God,” which drove me crazy. :) But now I do get what He was saying. For through all the days of my life, yes, I actually have learned some about trusting God with the whole of me and my life, trusting He will never leave me nor forsake me. He is true to His word, and I get that to some degree.
But it is also true, like my dad thought – I am in process. Since I haven’t been through all quite yet (14,976 days, but still – not all of the ones I get), since there are more days to come and sights to see and life to live and faces to kiss and hands to hold and tears to cry and things to lose and unexpected and undeserved gifts to get and gray hairs and wrinkles to hide and reunions for rejoicing and songs for singing and books for writing and seasons that change (and change me) and blogs to post and all the good and bad and ugly and ravishing beauty of life to behold …well, then, my dad was right (like always): Through it all, even though I have no memory of one day without Jesus in my life (not one!), I’m just really just, starting just, beginning just, learning to trust in Jesus…
And as Andrae so powerfully communicates in this song, Through my sickness and pain, through it all, through my sorrow and shame, I’ve learned (and I am learning) to depend upon His word. And that can get me all the way through all my days to the end.
By the way– the reason I won’t play the piano is because I can’t play like Andrae…but in heaven… Oh yes!!!
