Advent is always a very special time to me and music always expresses it best. Of course, I have trouble narrowing it down to one song, but I would pick, especially in this crazy year of 2020, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day (the Sara Groves version is my favorite).

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

The origin of the song is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He lost his wife tragically in a fire and shortly after almost lost his son in the Civil War. On Christmas day 1863, Longfellow, a 57-year-old widowed father of six children, the oldest of which had nearly been paralyzed as his country fought a war against itself, wrote a poem “seeking to capture the dynamic and dissonance in his own heart and the world he observed around him. He heard the Christmas bells that December day and the singing of “peace on earth”, but he observed the world of injustice and violence that seemed to mock the truthfulness of this optimistic outlook.”

This describes my own heart over 150 years later. It seems we have no peace on earth. The line “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep”, makes me cry every time. I believe that “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail with peace on earth, goodwill to men.” And THAT is advent. God not only LOVES us so much, he has kindness for us (good will). He came for us. He didn’t make us come to Him. It’s absurd enough that it has to be true.