Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

How Music Can Be Breath And Food

How Music Can Be Breath And Food

As much as others take to literature, some can find music as nourishing as breath and food.

You instinctively know this if you have ever been brought to tears by a song.

It’s amazing how much we can be touched by the right music at the right time.

  • Music can teach children the alphabet.
  • It can heal our hearts.
  • Remind us of the past.
  • Show us beauty.
  • Teach us about love.
  • And it can even lead us back to God.
Eventually, a few months after I started coming, I took a seat in one of the folding chairs, off by myself. Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone’s very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.

-Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

This Is The Best Christmas Song

This Is The Best Christmas Song

 I am a snob about Christmas music.

A good rule of thumb is that if Bing Crosby didn’t record it, I do not consider it actual Christmas music.

As you can imagine, I have little but contempt for the mountains of original Christmas songs written and recorded in the last number of decades.

That all changed recently.

See, I stumbled across Andrew Peterson’s, Behold The Lamb of God: 10th Anniversary Edition

Song #8 is entitled Labor of Love, and is sung by Sandra McCracken, I believe.

It is hauntingly beautiful.

(And come to find out, it is an old Point of Grace song from 2010.)

I hope you look it up and give it a listen.

And I hope you have a Merry Christmas.

Labor of Love
It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David’s town

And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother’s hand to hold

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David’s town
In the middle of the night

So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love
Sterling Terrell