No crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head. Did you know that the word Jesus means Savior, or God saves. So when the angel told Joseph and Mary to name the baby Jesus it was not because God thought it sounded like a cool name, (the name has actually been changed around a lot and is not really original anymore but that's besides the point) God was calling His son what He was -the Savior. So when we sing about how sweet the little baby Jesus was all wrapped up and laying on a bed of straw, I think we ought to be deeply moved with emotion, God's love for us was so great that He entered His own creation in this way, sweet innocent and vulnerable, only recognized by very few as the king of kings and Lord of lords. So let's make sure that we recognize Him as king over all kings, and Lord over all Lords. Think about how you might feel if the president of your country came to greet you personally, or maybe your favorite actor/actress, or singer, or if we had a world president how would you behave in his presence? How about the president of not only the Galaxy we live in but every Galaxy out there. Something tells me that if you were the author and ruler of all that exists, you would demand a great deal of respect from everyone, especially if you made yourself to be part of your creation in order to save your creation from your own wrath, even when your creation hated you and did not recognize you as their creator. I love thee Lord Jesus look down from the sky, and stay by my side till morning is nigh.
In our Thursday night group we agreed that it might be fun to go out and do some caroling, so we began our practice at the songs we chose. And while sitting around in a circle singing our favorite praise and worship is easy enough, singing to perform was a little more difficult. The Lord knows He didn't give me the talent to sing :) but we got pretty good. We started out by the beach, singing and waiting for those crowds to come and see what this beautiful sound was about. No crowds. So we moved to the town square and I think we sang a bit better, but still no crowd, but a few people did pause to listen for a few seconds. After that we thought we would give it one more shot at a place in town called "the walk of peace" this is where lots of people hang out at night. We sang our hearts out, and by the last song it actually seemed like we were gathering a bit of a crowd, so we decided to quickly decide on one more song to give to the crowd, only to watch them leave before we could start the song, and we found out later they were family and friends of one of our guitarist :) I learned two things that night, one, Peruvians like things loud and they will not pay attention unless it's loud enough to do damage to the ear drums (I like to blame it on that rather than our singing :) ) two, if you have your mind set that you are serving God and not man, than no matter how the outcome, you feel good and satisfied knowing you've done good in the eyes of God. I'm not saying that we sang all that bad, I think it was actually pretty good, I'm very proud of my group, but we're not pros, but just as my kids scribbles look like a master peace to me, whatever we accomplish is a master peace to God when our heart is in it for Him. God bless you all in the name of the King, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
