My friend Penny brings new light to Christmas through a discovery of a missing verse from the classic hymn: “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”.

I’ve always loved this evocative hymn, with its angels and their unfurled wings coming to us through a mysterious door from heaven to bring God’s news to us in splendid celestial song.  I appreciate its recognition of our weariness and the sad fact of the constancy of war and strife that drowns out the angels’ love song.  It poignantly reminds us just how much we need a savior.

But it speaks to me even more urgently now, now that I know this verse.  Those of us who do not soar and sing but are ourselves bent, not curled over in caring but bent out of shape – distorted – beneath life’s crushing load of fear or sadness or anxiety or loneliness, or lack of every kind – we are bidden on this night to just rest beside our path and listen God’s messengers singing heavenly music.