🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌

This week's call to worship is a dip into history - originally written and posted in December 2023....

In 1843, a French priest commissioned renowned poet, Placide Cappeau, to write a poem to commemorate the renovations to the church organ. Cappeau penned the poem "Midnight, Christians". At the priest's request, he worked with distinguished composer, Adolphe Adam, to turn his poem into a song called “Christmas Carol". Today, we know it as the song, "O Holy Night".

The carol was instantly popular but quickly banned from French liturgy when church leadership found out Cappeau was an atheist and Adam was Jewish. The French wouldn't let the song go, however, and it lived in their homes when the church wouldn't sing it.

Legend has it that on Christmas Eve 1871, amid fierce fighting between the armies of Germany and France in the Franco-Prussian War, a French soldier jumped out of his muddy trench, boldly standing with no weapon. He lifted his eyes to heaven to sing all three verses of "O Holy Night". A German infantryman climbed out his hiding place and answered with Martin Luther's robust "From Heaven Above to Earth I Come." The worshiping soldiers declared an unofficial 24-hour treaty in the name of the Prince of Peace.

In an innovative Christmas miracle on Christmas Eve in 1906, Reginald Fessenden broadcast over airwaves for the first time in history. Fessenden read from the Gospel of Luke and played, "O Holy Night" on his violin, making the work of an atheist and Jew to be the first song ever played on the radio.

How could an atheist ponder the birth of Jesus and write something so profound... so historical? How could a holy God leave His throne to enter our disbelief, desperation, doubt, and all the muck and mess of this world? How could he come in such an undignified way, leaving none below him? How could one baby change the course of history, not distinguishing our worthiness - but giving us His?

Listen to “O Holy Night” by Tommee Profitt.