O Come O Come Emmanuel

Looking back over 2020, it’s been a tough year. We have woken up every morning with COVID-19, racial tensions, and volatile election year. This is not to mention our own personal struggles. Some of has lost loved ones this year. Some of us have lost our jobs or taken a significant pay decrease. Some of us are struggling psychologically or emotionally in dealing with all of the challenges and changes we are going through in light of a lingering global pandemic. This year has exhausted our souls.  To kick off this series, we are looking at a song that speaks to the longing for God to intervene when the world around is falling apart: O Come O Come, Emmanuel. This song has been remade over and over by many artists over the years. It’s actually seven verses but people alter it or shorten for time’s sake. The song sings the names and titles of Christ by relating him primarily to prophecies in Isaiah, which was written about seven hundred years before Jesus arrived in Bethlehem. The form in which we have this song comes from the late nineteenth century Anglican scholar, missionary, and hymnist John Mason Neal. But the origins of this song go all the way back to eight century Benedictine monks. They would take the last week of December and sing a verse each day of the week. So this song has a great history in the church.