The weather this week could make one think of Bethlehem and Jesus’ birth. One scripture not read very much during Advent and Christmas is Micah 5:2. It reads in part, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for Me One who will be ruler over Israel.”
Phillips Brooks was a native of Boston. He became an Episcopal minister and was a powerful preacher in Philadelphia and in Boston. He is considered to be one of America’s greatest preachers. His preaching came in lightning bursts; he felt he had more to say than time in which to say it.
During the time he served in Philadelphia, he traveled to Israel. On December 24, 1865, traveling by horseback from Jerusalem, he attended a five-hour Christmas Eve service at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. He was deeply moved. “I remember standing in the old church in Bethlehem,” he later said,”close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices I knew well, telling each other of the Wonderful Night of the Savior’s birth.”
Three years later, as he prepared for the Christmas season of 1867, he wanted to compose an original Christmas hymn for the children to sing. Thinking about his time in Bethlehem, he wrote a little hymn with five verses.
Lewis Redner, his organist, put the lyrics to what we know as “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” A group of six Sunday School teachers and 36 children sang all five verses the night after he composed the tune.
The fourth verse, usually left out of hymnbooks, says:
“Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child,
Where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild;
Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.”
Many people of faith in Jesus Christ have longed to have the spirit of Christmas all year long. The snow falling today, with stillness around us, can help us to have that feeling, at least for a day or two.
