December 10

O Little Town of Bethlehem

by Suzanne Herron

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHKORmpW4Cg 

Who doesn’t know this lovely Christmas carol that was written in 1868, over 150 years ago? Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal clergyman, wrote the text of O Little Town of Bethlehem for the Sunday School children of the Church of the Holy Trinity on Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square, to sing on Christmas Eve.  He was inspired by a trip he had taken three years earlier during which he rode, on horseback, from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and spent Christmas Eve in the birthplace of Jesus. “How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is giv’n.” Lewis H. Redner, the church’s organist, set it to music. Redner is quoted as saying, “I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868.”

Micah 5:                                                                                                                                                   

“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,
whose origins are from of old,
    from ancient times…5 And he will be our peace.”
“And praises sing to God the King, and peace to men on earth!”

The last verse is a beautiful prayer:

 O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
Oh, come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!