Born To Die

If you're someone involved in the music ministry of your local church, there's no doubt that this season brings a massive influx of Christmas-themed worship songs on your Sunday service setlist. I can probably no longer count how many modern worship arrangements I've heard of those timeless Christmas songs, some of them I like and some of them I feel like it did not give the song justice. But then again, there's nothing bad with proclaiming year after year that this time is indeed the fulfilling of Biblical prophecy: that Jesus Christ had come in the form of a man, in the most humbling manner I might add, that He would one day bear our sin and shame in a death that we deserved in the first place.

Which brings me to a song I'd love to share. (No, I won't do a cover of it.) You see, of late I've somehow now become one of those people who would listen to the more heavier genres of music. But there's something about this song that is very somber to me: how the lyrics reflect one's thoughts about the birth of our Saviour and how His birth has indeed changed the world as we know it. I am more than convinced that I have lost count of how many times I almost cried when I give this song a listen.

The song is called I Celebrate The Day, written by Matt Thiessen.

And with this Christmas wish is missed
The point I could covey 
If only I could find the words
To say to let You know how much
You've touched my life

Because here is where You're finding me
In the exact same place as New Years Eve
And from the lack of my persistancy
We're less than half as close as I want to be

And the first time that You opened Your eyes
Did You realize that You would be my Savior
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever

And so this Christmas I'll compare
The things I felt in prior years
To what this midnight made so clear
That You have come to meet me here

To look back and think that 
This baby would one day save me
In the hope that what You did
That You were born so I might live

I celebrate the day that You were born to die
So I could one day pray for You to save my life 

In less than a month, I'll be twenty years of age. Back in those days in which church meant Sunday School and bragging rights on who's got the coolest craft made from the activity; it's funny how I use to brush off the notion that Jesus, not the gifts or some red bearded guy, is the reason for the yearly celebration. Today, I stand here in absolute awe of how He was able to take a wretch like me and slowly but surely transform me into His image. I am way far from perfect; but I'll forever be thankful that when the fullness of time had come, as Paul notes in Galatians, Christ came to free us from sin.