Thursday, December 25, 2008
Silent Night, Holy Night
Last night during our Christmas Eve service we sang "Silent Night" in 4 languages: German, Spanish, French and English. It's beautiful in German and Spanish, and easy in English....beautiful too. One of our teens, whose family is from West Africa, sang it in French. We are blessed, very blessed, with many African families in our church, and as Linda sang the song in French, the sweet voices of the other French-speaking children rose above the movement of everyone else in processional toward the advent candles (during the candle-lighting portion of our service). It was crystal clear to my ears as they sang. I liked it....I couldn't sing it because I don't speak French, but that in and of itself was a gift. As I listened I received the gift of their clear clear voices giving praise to God in their language. And then the song also takes me back to when our daughter was about four, again singing "Silent Night", truly wide-eyed as she sang with absolute assurance the following lyric, "Silent Night, Holy Night.....Mommy's calm, all is bright!" Merry Christmas from our house to yours!
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9 comments:
I love the children's version of soooo many lyrics!
Hello Kathy, thanks for stopping by for a visit.
How cute what your daughter said. She probably really was happy that you were 'calm'.
A funny tidbit about singing Silent Night. A couple years ago our choir sang it in German. However, I could not for the life of me remember the words, so I cheated and wrote them down to glance at during the performance. Unfortunately I left them at the back of the church and had to quickly learn the art of lip syncing!
Merry Christmas!
What a wonderful blessing!!! Our small little town does not have much diversity.
Thanks for visiting my blog. I have just finished reading yours from the beginning. What a gift you have of saying so much in a few words. I seem totally unable to do that, as you can see from this long comment :o) I hope you'll visit often.
I did print out the Thomas Hooker work!
Susan
Merry Christmas, Kathy! We love you guys!!!
I'm with you Nancy. Kids have a wonderful way of a slip up speaking volumes of truth and pieces of humor here and there. Blessings.
To "It's All Good"....I would have been hard pressed to even learn the German let alone memorize it. I think that's when I start saying, "watermelon, watermelon...".
Susan, I am glad you came by for another visit. I appreciate your encouraging words. I am thinking of printing out the Thomas Hooker piece for regular prayer and review through this next year. Oh I can't wait until heaven so we can all enjoy each other in the presence of the Lord....my, what a time that will be!!!
*smiling* ... that is a lovely story!!!
and in our home, we sing silent night in three languages ... i sing in my mother tongue - finnish ... my husband sings in his mother tongue - french ... then we sing together in english, our common ground ...
blessings on you! and thank you for the visit ... :o)
Saija, that is so neat that you all sing it in those languages in your own home. Hubby's job has him in Calgary for about the next 30 hours. Glad you could come by.
How true that is. I'm sure she knew what she was saying. ;)
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