This time of year is a perfect occasion to gorge on beautiful old music. I've been doing so on various Rdio, Pandora, and iTunes Radio stations as well as our wonderful local public radio station 91.1 in Nashville.
This tune in the video above, composed by Sir John Tavener, isn't particularly old, but the verses are by William Blake in the 18th century. Not exactly Christmas music but in a way, it is.
The excerpt below is from a favorite book, Valley of Vision, and dovetails nicely with our pastor's Advent sermons on the humanity and deity of Jesus. This is from "Gift of Gifts":
Herein is wonder of wonders:
He came below to raise me above,
He was born like me that I might become like Him.
Herein is love;
when I cannot rise to Him He draws near on wings of grace,
to raise me to Himself.
Herein is power;
when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart
He united them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created.
Herein is wisdom;
when I was undone, with no will to return to Him,
and no intellect to devise recovery,
He came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost,
as man to die my death,
to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
to work out a perfect righteousness for me.
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