See songs for Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3.
We watch and wait for the coming of Christ while journeying through a vale of tears—a broken world, one full of suffering, sorrow, sin, and death. That brokenness leads us at times to think things will always be this way.
The season of Advent reminds us there’s a day coming when everything sad will come untrue, a morning when our weeping will turn to joy, a time when the entire creation will erupt in exuberant praise and we will feast and weep no more.
The psalmist, anticipating that day, exclaimed:
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity (Ps 98:7–9).
But that day is not yet. We continue to watch and wait in hope. We offer God both our praise and lament, longing for and anticipating that great day of celebration when Christ returns.
J. Todd Billings, in his book Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Incurable Cancer & Life in Christ, says:
Until that day when we join the whole earth in a song of praise, we still focus on God’s promise through lament and thanksgiving, petition and praise. Full justice and restoration have not yet come; the world has not yet been made right. And while we have real tastes of the new creation in Christ by the Spirit, we still wait with groaning for our adoption to come in fullness. We walk on a cross-shaped path with the psalmist and with our crucified Lord, and yet in the end we will reach the final chapters of the Psalms, joyfully singing, “Let everything that breathes praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!” (Ps. 150:6). Then our true story, our true life—which is none other than life in the living Christ—will no longer be hidden but unveiled. “When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Col. 3:4). Christ is our life now in hiddenness. And Christ will be our life then in open glory. It will be clear to all that God is bigger than cancer and all of our other calamities. Thus whether we find ourselves in the darkness of the present time or the glorious light of the coming age, this good news is enough to bring us through: “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” Amen.
May these songs minister to you during this final week of Advent.
One of my favorites.
Here are the lyrics:
God is with us.
Hear ye people, even to the uttermost end of the earth.
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.
The people that dwell in the shadow of death, upon them the
light has shined.
For unto us a child is born, for unto us a son is given,
God is with us,
And the government shall be upon his shoulder,
And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
God is with us,
The mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
Hear ye people, even to the uttermost end of the earth:
God is with us, Christ is born.
I pray that this coming Christmas morning when you celebrate the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Father will grant you a foretaste of the eternal joy that will be ours when Christ comes again.