A few weeks back I was sitting with a friend talking about a line out of the Christmas song “O Little Town Of Bethlehem.” The line is found in the first verse of the song

O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.

What a beautiful and odd lyric.

The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.

I have done quite a bit of research on this lyric to try to discover the original meaning that the author intended but try as I might, there is no interview with the author explaining it’s meaning. This is probably due to the fact that it was written by the rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in 1868 and was only really intended for his Sunday school Christmas service. The rector, Phillip Brooks, gave his lyrics, the week before the Sunday service, to his organist and asked him to write the music for the song. According to the organist, he had difficulty writing it and wasn’t able to come up with what would be the music until the night before the service. Sheesh! Now that is pushing it, but, sometimes it is in the crunch time, when you are not triple thinking yourself that you, as a songwriter, can come up with your best ideas. In the case of the organist, I think this is also true.

Just think of that melody on that line

The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.

Ahhh. It is perfect.

So what does that line mean?

I have a few songs that I’ve written over the years that I don’t like to explain the meaning to. In the beginning I never intended to hide the meaning of these songs but ended up keeping them to myself after people would come to me and excitedly describe to me what the song or songs meant to them. It reminds me of a C.S. Lewis quote I read once in his book “The Four Loves”

“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.”

Songs are like this. Each different listener brings out a different meaning or facet or view of the song. They shed light from a different perspective and reveal something new that is wrapped in the words and melody making that revelation, through the lens of their lives, a great beauty for the rest of us to behold.

I think this lyric has been one of those with a kaleidascope of meaning as revealed by thousands of listeners and singers throughout the years. Listeners who have tucked these words right into their hearts and then breathed out it’s personal meaning to them with each aching heartbeat.

So tell me, what light do you have to shine on this lyric?

What revelation do you have?

Please do us a favor and let us see this lyric through the your light and perspective so that we can know it more than we ever have before.

Comment below and tell me, what are those hopes and fears met in Jesus that night 2000 years ago?

20 hours.

That’s the amount of travel time that I spent getting to and from a place where I spoke and sang on Friday night.

9.5 hours to get there and 10.5 hours getting home, all for 1 hour of singing/speaking.

I am now sitting on the flight home typing this blog as the last few of those hours go by. Outside the window I see clouds and the setting sun, even though when today’s travel began the sun was just barely starting it’s ascent into the sky.

I sit and think. Why do I do what I do? Why would I travel so much knowing that there is a high likelihood of men with broad shoulders sitting next to me on planes, forcing me to lean like the Tower of Pisa for an entire flight or women at airline check in counters, who don’t like the look of me and the guitar on my back, who give me a hard time about carrying my guitar onto the plane or people leaving me in the cold waiting for them to pick me up while my luggage surrounds my feet, or many breakfasts, lunches and dinners that will consist of only the peanuts or crackers or cookies the plane supplies?

Because, each time I do, I come off of the stage and speak to the people that were sprinkled throughout the audience who connected with what I sang.

Brokeness
Joy
Grief
Love
Excitement
Happiness
Relief
Exhaustion
Hope
Longing
Praise

All of these things I wrap carefully into songs. Weaving them bit by bit with melody and lyric, hoping for that moment where, what I have learned, what I know, what I question, and what I search for meets the same in someone else and the two of us can share our stories and see that we are not alone.

Once again, this happened on Friday night and once again I left knowing that this is what I am supposed to do.

So, now, as I look out the window, the sun now hidden until morning, I see the un-countable dots of light that are street lamps and signs illuminating cities where people finish their days. I think of how many are celebrating or smiling or surrounded or hopeful or giving or laughing or satisfied or at peace. Then, I think of how many of them are feeling isolated or lonely or hopeless or un-championed or unnoticed or unwanted or unheard or unvoiced. Maybe there are those out there for whom my words are their words. Maybe their story is my story.

I travel looking for these people. Then, I step onto the stage and I hand over my words, hoping that they are present in the audience so I can say, “Here, these are for you. I think we share a bit of the same story.”

So, if you are there, out in the crowd of faces at my next show please say hello. Let me know that you are one of the No-Longer-Lonely’s. We could stick together, all of us, and make quite a rag-tag group.

I’ve been thinking a lot about breathing and the function of our lungs. The process is started by the contraction of the diaphragm, just below the lungs, causing air to flow into and fill the lungs. The air that is drawn in is sifted through, separating what is needed (oxygen) and what is not needed (carbon dioxide, nitrogen, helium, etc.), and then the part of the lungs called the alveoli grabs a hold of that oxygen and hands it off to the bloodstream, where the much needed source of life is pushed from fingertips to toe tips. After the sifting has occurred, the diaphragm relaxes and the remaining gases are forced back out of our lungs, rejoining the air around us. This process is repeated approximately 22000 to 24000 times per day, almost always unnoticed. We breathe in, we breathe out. Inhale, exhale.

And then again,

and again.

The way that people who don’t know Christ perceive Him, through people who claim to know Him, is similar. The things we say and do make up the “air” around them and at some point they inhale, usually unnoticed, these words and actions and their brain and heart goes to work sifting through what has been said and done, deciding if there is any life within them.

This thought is heavy.

I know many people both close to me and acquaintances, even someone unmet who happened to walk by the amphitheater where I am singing or someone at the table next to me in a restaurant, who do not know or choose to believe in this Savior, Creator, God at whose feet I have placed my life. This God who’s Spirit fills me with any life worth having. This God who has promised to, someday, make all things right. This God whose very existence explains the unexplainable, fills in the voids, gives purpose, and displays the only example of perfect love this world has ever seen.

Romans 1:19-20 says,

“For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God [Himself] has shown it to them. For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification]….”

With just these two verses I feel the weight of responsibility. I am part of His handiwork. I am one of the things He has made, therefore, He should be seen through me.

Have I relinquished my grip on the things that would distort or poison His life that is housed within me? Have I continued to cling to things that would drive His Spirit away like two repelling magnets making clear Galatians 5:17

“For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another….”

Have I been surrounding myself with unbreathable, lifeless air that is being inhaled and coughed back out by those around me?

I can know if I find myself living in a way that Galatians 5:19-21 describes:

“repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community.”

I want to make sure that this is not the air that envelopes me, but instead I desire to express life through my actions and words and songs and deeds and Galatians 5:22-23 describes what this looks like:

“affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity…a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.”

I want people to see real Love.

I want people to inhale life.

These are the thoughts that swirled within my head and heart until finally latching themselves to a melody, forming a song. A song that I could sing to remind myself that everything I say or do could be being inhaled by someone who does not know Christ and set their brains and heart to work, sifting, sifting, looking for anything worth holding on to, anything that would bring them life.

I am posting the lyrics to my new song “Calling, Calling” below and if you would like to listen you can find it by clicking the title below:

Calling, Calling

When the road is long
And the mountain steep
Let my mouth find words
Any word that I could speak
To find myself calling after you

If my words had a meaning
If my life pulled away
Then I would find the mountains move move move
If I spoke with assurance
If my heart joined my head
Then I could tell you how to breathe breathe breathe
Cause

Light is brighter
Air more fragrant
Hope is here in my hand
Life will be without end

Changer, chameleon
I will be red and then I’m green
Let my heart find strength
Any strength so I will keep
And find myself waiting on you

I remember the day(or night rather) clearly when I crawled into my camper (my family and I were camping in the Rocky Mountains) and picked up my vacation abandoned phone to find a gift waiting for me in the inbox of my email. I had been waiting on it and now here it was waiting on me. With three taps I started the download process of one of my songs, sent back to me by JT Daly, one of the producers on my new record (my husband Jonathan MacIntosh is the other producer and they teamed up to make the duo “Jay-tonny” or some such word sandwich of their two names).

JT is some kind of mythical artist/musician. You know, the kind that hides in studios (the type of studios that just as easily have paint and brushes as well as guitars and harps), you have phone conversations with him, email with him, brainstorming/song writing/music pushing/crafting dialogue, you send song scraps to him and he sends back wonder and yet somehow you never actually see him in person. Sometimes you doubt he actually exists at all.

On this particular day, though, I didn’t yet know what this Sarah Mac/JT/Jonny combination would be. We were all so hopeful. I know I was so expectant that I didn’t think we could combine and live up to my expectations, my hopes. Then I sat back on my camper bed, in the dark, slid on my earphones and Ahhhhhh! I laid there with tears in my eyes. JT had written a string part (played on a keyboard) on my song “Current” that is so beautiful that I must’ve listened to it 30 times in a row.

Later my husband (Jonathan MacIntosh) hired an actual string arranger/player/conductor, Alexander Michael Tseitlin (The Fall of AI), out of L.A. to record the live strings that would end up on the record. Eventually they filmed a chamber orchestra playing a portion of the song and my husband let me see it last night where I, once again, found tears filling my eyes.

I love music and the way it moves me. It can lift or bring down. It can calm or cause riots. It can shout or whisper. It can groan or laugh. It can encourage, motivate, challenge, push, draw out, explain, or give hands to and I am so very thankful that I get to be a part of this industry.

Below you will find the clip of the string section playing the intro to my song “Current” that I’ve just written about. I hope you enjoy.

Also if you want to hear/buy my brand new CD with this song on it, you can check it out here: Sarah MacIntosh “Current”