He didn’t quicken his pace. He had found long ago that good news would keep, and bad news didn’t get any better for rushing it.”
–Elmer Kelton (Shotgun)
“And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
“And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
–Matthew 1:21(NKJV)
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I came across this little bit of history many years ago. I’m not sure where I found it, possibly Guideposts. The author of the article is Elizabeth Sherrill. It’s a little different from my normal devotion, but the information is inspiring. The title is, “Christmas, 1818.”
My husband and I were staying in the little village of Oberndorf, Austria, when the letter reached us last December.
“You picked the right Christmas to be away!” our friend began. Our church back home–St. Mark’s in Mt. Kisco, New York–he went on, was having the asbestos insulation removed from the heating pipes in the basement. Since the air intake for the organ was also in the basement, this meant that so long as asbestos dust was being created, the in-strument could not be played. If the job wasn’t finished by Christmas Eve, our friend continued, he and his wife would go to church elsewhere: “Can you imagine the midnight service without the organ?”
I put the letter on the windowsill and looked across the swirling gray water of the Salzach River to the distant Alps. The Salzach takes a horseshoe loop at Oberndorf, and where the river curves, a church used to stand. High water had eaten away its foundations, and eventually the building was torn down. But I wanted to tell our friend about the vanished church. Because there too, one Christmas Eve, the organ was silent…
Damp from the river had corroded the pipes until by Christmas Eve, 1818, the organ in Oberndorf was emitting only a wheezy whisper–and the itinerant organ mender was not due in the village till the following week.
The bad news especially affected two young men. One was the 31-year-old church organist, Franz Gruber. As a boy, Franz had often been beaten for sneaking away from his linen loom to take music lessons. Now he had worked hard rehearsing the village choir for the midnight service. But to ask them to sing the elaborate Christmas chorales unaccompanied was out of the question, and Franz Gruber was in despair.
Equally distressed was the 25-year-old pastor, Joseph Mohr. An illegitimate child educated for the priesthood on the charity of the church, Joseph had only recently been ordained. He’d dreamed of making this Christmas celebration an especially glorious one, but here it was December 24, and no organ!
Joseph did own a guitar. But a guitar could hardly substitute for the organ on a night like this, with its tradition of elaborate fugues and cantatas. If only there were some melody simple enough for a guitar to carry alone, with homely words to capture the holiness of this night.
Even as the wish formed itself, the words began to come. The young priest seized a scrap of paper and began to write, his quill pen racing across the page.
It was afternoon of Christmas Eve when Joseph showed the little poem to the organist. Could Franz set the words to a melody for the guitar? Franz Gruber said he would try.
The choir was assembling by the time he finished. It was too late to teach them the whole piece, so Joseph and Franz decided to sing the song as a duet, with the choir repeating just the last line of each verse.
And so it was that the disgruntled congregation, muttering over their mute and useless organ, heard instead the new pastor’s tenor voice and the bass voice of their organist, sing a song to the plucking of a guitar, with the choir echoing the final words.
The words stuck in the worshipers’ minds, and so did the tune; many were humming it as they left the church.
They were still humming it when the organ mender arrived in Oberndorf a few days later. He liked the song so well he committed both the words and music to memory and played it as he journeyed from town to town. In the Tirol a group of traveling singers added it to their repertoire.
Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber never knew the end of the story. Neither man guessed that the song they had created the night the organ failed was to become the world’s most popular Christmas carol.
But it was about that original organless service back in 1818 that I wanted to write our friend. There must have been many in that congregation who’d been tempted to go somewhere else that night. And that would have been too bad. They would have missed the chance to see what God can do with bad news. They would not have been in Oberndorf to hear the very first singing of “Silent Night, Holy Night.”
Amazing how God can work through man. It is important to remember, not just at Christmas, that we can worship the Lord any time, any place. Worship comes from the heart; it is a lifestyle. I don’t know who said it, but there’s truth to the following–“You can’t always have a good day. But you can always face a bad day with a good attitude.”
———————————-
I came across this little bit of history many years ago. I’m not sure where I found it, possibly Guideposts. The author of the article is Elizabeth Sherrill. It’s a little different from my normal devotion, but the information is inspiring. The title is, “Christmas, 1818.”
My husband and I were staying in the little village of Oberndorf, Austria, when the letter reached us last December.
“You picked the right Christmas to be away!” our friend began. Our church back home–St. Mark’s in Mt. Kisco, New York–he went on, was having the asbestos insulation removed from the heating pipes in the basement. Since the air intake for the organ was also in the basement, this meant that so long as asbestos dust was being created, the in-strument could not be played. If the job wasn’t finished by Christmas Eve, our friend continued, he and his wife would go to church elsewhere: “Can you imagine the midnight service without the organ?”
I put the letter on the windowsill and looked across the swirling gray water of the Salzach River to the distant Alps. The Salzach takes a horseshoe loop at Oberndorf, and where the river curves, a church used to stand. High water had eaten away its foundations, and eventually the building was torn down. But I wanted to tell our friend about the vanished church. Because there too, one Christmas Eve, the organ was silent…
Damp from the river had corroded the pipes until by Christmas Eve, 1818, the organ in Oberndorf was emitting only a wheezy whisper–and the itinerant organ mender was not due in the village till the following week.
The bad news especially affected two young men. One was the 31-year-old church organist, Franz Gruber. As a boy, Franz had often been beaten for sneaking away from his linen loom to take music lessons. Now he had worked hard rehearsing the village choir for the midnight service. But to ask them to sing the elaborate Christmas chorales unaccompanied was out of the question, and Franz Gruber was in despair.
Equally distressed was the 25-year-old pastor, Joseph Mohr. An illegitimate child educated for the priesthood on the charity of the church, Joseph had only recently been ordained. He’d dreamed of making this Christmas celebration an especially glorious one, but here it was December 24, and no organ!
Joseph did own a guitar. But a guitar could hardly substitute for the organ on a night like this, with its tradition of elaborate fugues and cantatas. If only there were some melody simple enough for a guitar to carry alone, with homely words to capture the holiness of this night.
Even as the wish formed itself, the words began to come. The young priest seized a scrap of paper and began to write, his quill pen racing across the page.
It was afternoon of Christmas Eve when Joseph showed the little poem to the organist. Could Franz set the words to a melody for the guitar? Franz Gruber said he would try.
The choir was assembling by the time he finished. It was too late to teach them the whole piece, so Joseph and Franz decided to sing the song as a duet, with the choir repeating just the last line of each verse.
And so it was that the disgruntled congregation, muttering over their mute and useless organ, heard instead the new pastor’s tenor voice and the bass voice of their organist, sing a song to the plucking of a guitar, with the choir echoing the final words.
The words stuck in the worshipers’ minds, and so did the tune; many were humming it as they left the church.
They were still humming it when the organ mender arrived in Oberndorf a few days later. He liked the song so well he committed both the words and music to memory and played it as he journeyed from town to town. In the Tirol a group of traveling singers added it to their repertoire.
Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber never knew the end of the story. Neither man guessed that the song they had created the night the organ failed was to become the world’s most popular Christmas carol.
But it was about that original organless service back in 1818 that I wanted to write our friend. There must have been many in that congregation who’d been tempted to go somewhere else that night. And that would have been too bad. They would have missed the chance to see what God can do with bad news. They would not have been in Oberndorf to hear the very first singing of “Silent Night, Holy Night.”
Amazing how God can work through man. It is important to remember, not just at Christmas, that we can worship the Lord any time, any place. Worship comes from the heart; it is a lifestyle. I don’t know who said it, but there’s truth to the following–“You can’t always have a good day. But you can always face a bad day with a good attitude.”