When the Carols Break In

Every year, there is a point in the Christmas season when a particular Christmas carol deeply touches my emotions.

Every year, there is a point in the Christmas season when a particular Christmas carol deeply touches my emotions. Even when I was away from Christian faith in college, it would sometimes happen on the drive home through the Michigan snow to be with my family for the holidays. Sometimes it’s unexpected; other times I seek it out. In our family tradition, we often go to the Kennedy Center for their annual A Candlelight Christmas performance in the concert hall. Sometimes during the wonderful medley of choir, band and sing-a-long carols, one of my then-small boys would lean over and ask “Dad, why are you crying?” It became a happy family humorous memory.

The Quaker minister and painter Edward Hicks is best known for his Peaceable Kingdom pictures, which represent prophecies in the book of Isaiah.

This year was as wonderful as ever with the Washington Chorus, highlighted by the audience holding up their cell phone flashlights for the singing of Silent Night – my favorite hymn at Christmas. But in the car on the way home, Jack noted how beautiful the song just before that was. It took but a moment for him to find the carol on his smartphone so we could all hear and understand. And that was my moment this Christmas: not the spectacular Christmas concert at the Kennedy Center but the car ride home with Luke, Jack, and Joy – all listening to The Dream Isaiah Saw, a choral Christmas song composed by Glenn L.Rudolph to the hymn Lions and Oxen Will Feed in the Hay by Thomas H. Troeger. 

Here are the lyrics to the Christmas Carol that broke through to my heart this year. 

Lions and oxen will feed in the hay,

Leopards will join with the lambs as they play,

Wolves will be pastured with cows in the glade,

Blood will not darken the Earth that God made.

Little child whose bed is straw,

Take new lodgings in my heart.

Bring the dream Isaiah saw:

Life redeemed from fang and claw.

Peace will pervade more than forest and field:

God will transfigure the Violence concealed

Deep in the heart of systems gain,

Ripe for the judgment the Lord will ordain.

Little Child whose bed is straw,

Take new lodgings in my heart.

Bring the dream Isaiah saw:

Justice purifying law.

Nature reordered to match God’s intent,

Nations obeying the call to repent,

All of creation completely restored,

Filled with the knowledge and love of the Lord.

Little child whose bed is straw,

Take new lodgings in my heart.

Bring the dream Isaiah saw:

Knowledge, wisdom, worship, awe.

Blessed Christmas, everyone.