O Little Town

 

A few weeks ago, probably during Advent, our congregation was singing O Little Town of Bethlehem. I noticed there is a phrase of music in the third line that is lacking some of the harmony that is present in the rest of the song.  As you sing it, you arrive at this section, and there is a musical unity to it that was striking to me. 

This time singing it, though, I looked at the words that we sung at this part of the music (and I've expanded the word phrase a little bit to place it in context:

• the everlasting light
• proclaim the holy birth
• but in this world of sin
• the great glad tidings tell

When you read them in sequence, they are almost a poem.  I don't know why there is this unusal (for the song) piece of unharmonized music (or at least, less harmonized), but I like to think it is because the musician wants us to notice something. 

There is an everlasting light, born to us. We live in a world of sin, but we have great glad tidings to tell - to proclaim the holy birth. 

God as a mother?

In worship a few weeks ago, we sang the hymn Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (UMH 139).  Verses 1, 3, and 5 were written by Joachim Neander in 1680.  Verse 2 was written by S. Paul Schilling in 1986, and verse 4 was written by Rupert E. Davies in 1983.  I didn't know that until this moment, and I find that very interesting.  

The fourth verse of the song includes the phrase, "Then to thy need God as a mother doth speed, spreading the wings of grace o'er thee."  

Never mind that two modern authors used words like doth and thee to fit there words into the ancient sounds of verses 1, 3 and 5.  Davies verse, which is quoted above, has an outlook that I have always considered appropriate but modern.  "God as a mother," are not words without controversy.

As I was singing the song, though, I thought that those words might not be so modern after all.  Why do we have preconceptions of what is maternal and what is paternal?  Other than the biological, why do we only consider women to be nurturing?  My husband definitely nurtures out sons.  When we cast our stereotypes on God, doesn't that box God in?  

I completely agree that God nurtures, and that God covers us with wings of grace, but why would we only think  of those as feminine traits?