It came upon a midnight clear

It feels like midnight is falling on the world.

I cannot bear to look at what is happening in places like Aleppo.

And I cannot see eye-to-eye with half of my fellow Americans who cast a different vote than I did on November 8.

Every time I spend five minutes on my news feed or social media, my vision dims. My mind goes dark. A shadow falls across everything I love.

In the darkness, next to my little boy’s bed, I sing Christmas carols to him as he falls asleep. My favorite carol to sing to him this year is ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.’ It reminds me that the angels sing their announcement of “peace on earth and goodwill to all” at “midnight.” It is in a dark hour that the light of heaven shines forth.

Everyone knows the first verse. The second and third verses, however, strike a chord with me this year. These words were written 167 years ago during a season of similar division, injustice, and violence:

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

If you can believe it, the angels are singing their song of “peace on earth and goodwill to all” even now. We “hear not.” Our ears are full of noise. The “babel sounds” of “sin and strife” and “man, at war with man.”

Christmas is not the announcement of a conquering king who, under the threat of superior force and violence, will make everyone behave and get along. That would only be more of what we already have.

Christmas is the announcement–heard by some–of “peace on earth and goodwill to all.” Christmas is the arrival of the Christ as an unknown stranger in our midst, appearing in a form we least expect.

Peace on earth and goodwill to all–like the angel’s song–is there for us all along. Will you and I quiet our “babel sounds” and call a truce in our wars so we can hear the angels sing? Will we humble ourselves so the Christ, who is lowly and meek, can appear among us?

Whose song will you choose to hear this Christmas?