The carol, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, only mentions Jesus once, saying, “Peace on the earth, good will to all, From heaven’s all gracious king.”  And that was God’s message to us.

The words the angels brought to a fallen and broken world was of peace and goodwill.  Angels proclaimed their message to a weary world. Isn’t that like our world today?  Isn’t that like us?  I think of the homeless, bending low, who toil along the way with painful steps and slow; the people who struggle with addictions and life threats; the people who have lost loved ones; the families who don’t speak to each other anymore.

We all long for peace.  These words are for us on days when our steps are painful and slow, when our forms are bent low. They give us hope of a better day when peace will reign on earth.  They assure us that eventually God will heal our brokenness. And this Christmas season we can be a part of bringing God’s peace to the needy and hurting by blessing them; by giving of our abundance.  We can bring the message of God’s love and peace to the hurting in our world.
1.It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold.
“Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From Heaven’s all gracious King.”
The World in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing

2. Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heav’nly music floats
O’er all the weary world.
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing.
And ever o’er its Babel sounds
The blessed angels sing.

3. And ye beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow:
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing.

4. For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet-bards foretold,
When, with the ever-circling years,
Comes round the age of gold.
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.

The lyrics of “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” were born out of a pastor’s struggle to make the message of Christmas new to his congregation.  His people, like us, heard the same message every Christmas; Jesus is born.  After a while it becomes mundane and we value it a little less.

But Edmund Sears, who was thirty-nine at the time and a Unitarian minister from Wayland, Massachusetts, found a way to make the message new. As he read the Christmas story of how the angels proclaimed Christ’s birth to the shepherds, he must have thought, what else is there to say about God who came as a baby to save us from sin and despair?

This all happened in the year of 1849 long before The War Between the States.  Slavery with the poverty and hopelessness it brought reigned in the US. Edmund Sears cared about the poor and wanted to reach out to them. So he wrote the poem which became a treasured Christmas carol, lasting through the centuries.

The poem was published in a church magazine and made Sears famous with his profound words.  Later Richard Storrs Willis, who is thought to have been a student of Felix Mendelssohn, composed the melody for this carol. Willis was an editor and music critic for the New York Tribune. Here is an interesting fact: the acceptance of this carol was the beginning of celebrating Christmas in New England as a holiday, which has been prohibited by the Puritans until now.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, the well known American poet, said that this is one of the finest and most beautiful hymns ever written.  And I believe as we sing it this Christmas season the same thought resonates in our hearts.

In the same way that Dr. Sears wanted the Christmas message to touch his church’s heart again I too wanted to make the Christmas story real to our children.  That is why I wrote and published a new Christmas book, A Christmas Present for Goliath.  This story is about the camel who carried the Magi’s gifts to Jesus that first Christmas so long ago.  You can learn about this book and order it at my website www.ruthwillms.com/goliath.html