Behold: Song Story

"Behold" is a beautiful reminder that Jesus is Emmanuel: God with us. No matter what happens in life, we should have no fear, because God is with us through our failings, our hardships, our doubts. In Jesus we find hope that prompts us to give glory to God forever.

It's a simple but powerful statement of God's goodness and love. The song was written by Aerie and Bella Camp, two sisters. And if you don't recognize those names, maybe you recognize their dad: worship leader and songwriter Jeremy Camp. In 2015, when Aerie brought the song to her dad, he suggested they go in the studio and record it. In the original recording (here on Youtube) you hear and see every member of the Camp family singing: daughters Aerie and Bella, Jeremy and his wife Adrienne, even their 4-year-old son Egan.

What's amazing about the song and the story is that Jeremy's life portrays clinging to the hope in Christ in the midst of terrible loss. Tragically, Jeremy's first wife died of ovarian cancer in 2000. Then in 2009, Jeremy and Adrienne lost a child to a miscarriage. It's inspiring, then, to hear the family sing, "He is our shepherd and He is our strength, I won't be afraid. He is our comfort and He is our fill, I won't be afraid."

I'm grateful for songwriters like Jeremy and his daughters. I'm grateful for people who can point me to Christ, even when I know their story is marked with grief, loss, and despair. When I can hear and sing their songs, I feel less alone in my grief, loss, or despair.

Go Tell It On the Mountain: Song Story

Sunday we sang "Go, Tell It On the Mountain." I chose the song mostly to expand our Christmas carol offerings, but I also knew this song was originally a Negro spiritual. Its history is worth recounting.

Last year I focused some time each Sunday morning on telling the story of one of the carols we sang that morning. I enjoyed learning about the history of these songs that are attached to this season and embedded deeply in our hearts. I thought I'd take an opportunity to reprise our song history exploration here...

"Go, Tell It On the Mountain" once saved a university from financial collapse. In 1871, Fisk University of Nashville, TN was debt-ridden and about to close its doors. A ten-member touring ensemble called the Fisk Jubilee Singers was formed to raise funds for the university. They took the entire treasury with them for travel expenses, and departed on an 18-month tour which ultimately saved the college from closing. In the course of the tour, the African-American singers began using more and more spirituals in their shows, at the encouragement of George White, the Fisk University treasurer at the time. Their use of spirituals earned them an international reputation, and preserved the legacy of the Negro spiritual in the process.*

Among the spirituals the Fisk Jubilee Singers presented was "Go, Tell It On the Mountain." The earliest version of the hymn was published by John Wesley Work, Jr. in 1909, under the title "Christmas Plantation Song." John's father was a teacher at Fisk, and he loved "Go, Tell It On the Mountain," which was sung by students on Christmas Day each year as they walked the buildings of the university.

As with many popular hymns, there have been a variety of stanzas attached to the song over the year. The original stanzas featured slave dialect:

When I was a seeker


I sought both night and day.


I ask de Lord to help me,


An' He show me de way.

He made me a watchman


Upon the city wall,


An' if I am a Christian


I am the least of all.

Chorus:

Go tell it on de mountain,


Over de hills and everywhere.


Go tell it on de mountain,


Dat Jesus Christ is born.

This year, more than previous years, I've found myself in conversations about how to deal with loss in the Christmas season. One friend lost his dad in 2015. Another friend will lose her cousin-in-law to illness before Christmas Day. Another friend recently had a miscarriage, and another is watching his hospice-bound wife slowly give in to cancer as I write this. So it was interesting for me to learn that the students involved with the Fisk Jubilee Singers were reluctant to sing spirituals to audiences across the country. One said, "The slave songs were never used by us then in public. They were associated with slavery and the dark past and represented the things to be forgotten." But at the encouragement of George White, they began to sing these songs in public.

I think this is a great example of God bringing something good out of something bad (Rom 8:28), and I think God used community to bring it about. The Negro spirituals represented oppression, slavery, a dark chapter for African Americans. But because they were brought into public spaces, they saved a university, they preserved an art form, and they give us words to proclaim the hope we have in Christ today. You may be in the midst of loss, or struggle, or pain. I don't minimize that: dark chapters of our story are real as we walk through them. What I will say is this: God is there. He walks through the darkest valley. But he soon leads us out of it, to quiet waters where he restores our soul. May we place our hope there.

* Much credit for this blog goes to C. Michael Hawn, Distinguished Professor of Music at SMU Perkins. Read more on "Go, Tell It On the Mountain" here: http://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-go-tell-it-on-the-mountain

Advent: He Came and He Will Come Again

I only recently saw the movie Inside Out, where personified feelings (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear) inside a little girl’s head struggle to help her cope with a move to a new city. The feelings catalog joyful memories, sad memories, angry memories, etc. that shape who the girl has come to be. I loved the movie. There’s this amazing moment when you (and the feelings) realize that a memory can be both sad and happy. It can contain elements of many emotions at the same time.

Christmas can be like that. My mind goes to memories of snow outside the window in the morning, hearing the wind whistle through the trees in Oak Valley, the smell of a fire downstairs, and the promise of new toys, sledding, and time with family during school break. When I think of Christmas, I am filled with joy.

But I’m also filled with sadness. My cousin died in a one-car accident when both of us were 25. I remember our family getting the phone call, and sitting in shock in our living room, my mom sobbing, on the first day of a vacation from work that Tracie and I chose to spend with my parents.

I remember finding out my grandfather had died. We knew it was coming, but it was difficult, nonetheless. Instead of gathering with extended family for Christmas Eve, we gathered a few days earlier for a funeral. Christmas is a time of joyful anticipation, but also mournful yearning for a time past, or maybe a future reunion.

It was the same for the Israelites, waiting for the coming Messiah. They were exiled, scattered, refugees living far from home, waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled. And it’s the same today. We, the Church, live in expectant hope for Jesus to return, to wipe away every tear, to right the wrongs, to raise up the valleys and lay low the mountains. This year, with so many tragedies in Syria, Paris, Beirut, Nigeria, and even in our country, we yearn for Jesus to come and redeem the world around us.

In a nutshell, that is what the season of Advent is all about. Advent means “arrival.” We not only celebrate Jesus’ arrival as a baby born in Bethlehem. We also await the arrival of Jesus who is coming again to rescue and redeem us all forever. As we near Christmas, embrace this season. Consider New Cov’s Christmas Experience, a weekly opportunity to enter into Advent and Christmas with family or close friends. You might also look up World Vision’s 2015 Advent Prayer Guide.

Know that you are not alone in feeling the joy and the sadness of the season. And know that Jesus comes to us all, promising to fulfill our joy and banish our sadness one day soon, just as he did for the world once already. 

Peace on earth. Good will to all people. 

Merry Christmas!