Christmas Season Songs

Last Saturday evening I had the opportunity to spend two hours watching one of my "musical hero's" sing and play his greatest hits. I've been listening to Gordon Lightfoot for forty years. Over seventy years old now, his voice a slight bit slurred and also raspy from cigarettes (he admitted during the concert), he still put on an amazing show.

His was the first and only concert I remember attending where the sound was near perfect. We could hear every word, every instrument, and every key change. Sitting there I wondered how many times he's sang some of his hits in a concert setting and as we listened to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald it seemed like Lightfoot had the three-thousand of us in the palm of his hand. Nobody moved. We were focused on him and his band on the stage.

But as I thought about it on the drive home, I thought how sad it was that the concert was mostly Godless. Yes, he asks the question in the Edmund Fitzgerald song, "Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours," and it's a good question and is mainly, I think, what the biblical Book of Job is about. But if I remember correctly none of the other songs contained references to God.

And then I remembered something I thought about during last years Christmas Season while I was listening to Frank Sinatra sing a Christmas Carol. What came to mind last year was how empty the Christmas Carols sounded from Frank, Dean, and Bing, James Taylor, or George Strait. The same songs sung by Fernando Ortega, Michael W. Smith, Stephen Curtis Chapman, Chris Tomlin, and Casting Crowns sound different somehow and I think I know why. It's because of the joy of the Lord in those artist's lives. It's the reality of Christ in that individual's life.

Joy is one of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). Part of Psalm 16:11 says, "In Your [God's] presence is fullness of joy." Let Psalm 33:1-3 sink deeply into you being, "Sing for joy in the LORD , O you righteous ones; praise is becoming to the upright. Give thanks to the LORD with the lyre; sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings. Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a shout of joy."

I believe that joy in the Lord is the difference. And when Christian artists sing Christmas Carols the reality of Christ, and the inward joy of knowing they are His, comes through in their voices.

You know what, I love and listen to all sorts of different music including all of the singers I've mentioned including Gordon Lightfoot. But this Christmas Season I'm going to purpose to sing and play all of the well-known Christmas songs with the joy of the Lord bubbling over in my life because I'm one of His. I'm going to listen to Christian radio and cd's hearing the joy of the Lord coming through loud and clear.

You too?

Dan