Caroling

 

On Monday afternoon, I joined a small choir of people who had arrived at the church to bring tidings of comfort and joy to various households in Sanford.

 

Led by our choir director, we traveled in a small caravan from place to place, sometimes standing in yards to sing, sometimes going into homes.

 

We sang spiritual songs. We sang secular songs. We sang favorite songs. We sang songs by request.

 

Sometimes the people we visited sang along. Sometimes they didn’t. But everywhere we went, they greeted us with smiles and thankfulness for our presence…and for the music.

 

Music is so very powerful.

 

One of the men we visited has dementia. He doesn’t remember much about his life, but he remembered the music.

 

Verse by verse, he sang carol after carol.

 

Just before singing “Silent Night,” he carefully made his way across the kitchen so that he could stand beside his wife and hold her hand.

 

Side by side, they joined us in singing.

 

His beautiful tenor voice blended with his wife’s alto voice and together they sang along with a strength and confidence that otherwise he has lost.

 

Harmony filled the room with a sweet richness that the house hadn’t heard in a long time.

 

It was such a tender and sacred moment.

 

Friends: We hold the sacred in our voices when we sing.

 

We hold light and love and joy in the lyrics that plant themselves so deeply in our souls that they cannot be forgotten.

 

We hold power in our melodies.

 

We hold grace in our songs of old…and new.

 

Oh God: You have given us the gift of music to connect with others in a way that nothing else can. This Christmas, accept our songs as sacrifices of praise. Help us to sing as we’ve never sung before…knowing that our songs connect us to one another and to something deeper and more powerful than we will ever know. Amen. And Amen.