The Beauty of Christ's Birth and the Carol of the Bells
by Tim Peabody
I kid you not, my third grade music teacher had us play this song on the handbells. That gives new meaning to the phrase "throw cares away." What kind of woman entrusts a song as magnificent as "Carol of the Bells" to a dozen west Texas farm kids?
A saint. That's what kind of woman.
She was a woman who knew that God loves to hide treasure in jars of clay. She knew the God who entrusted the newborn king of the universe to a peasant woman, who deliberately placed the Messiah in a family too poor to afford even a little privacy for childbirth. My music teacher knew the God who chose an audience of graveyard-shift ranch hands for His only son's birth announcement.
Our world is full of beautiful voices who are afraid to sing. Don't be one of them. Let your bell ring out. After all, the beauty of a bell does not come from the bell-ringer, but from the bell-maker.
Let me tell you, our handbell ensemble sounded nothing like Manheim Steamroller or Pentatonix. But with holes in our jeans, and shirts made by our mothers, we let the music flow through us anyway. We practiced hard, and when the time came, we let the sound of the sweet silver bells throw our cares away.
That's what happens when we experience the beauty of Christ—we can't help but be transported by the song to a place where we forget ourselves, forget our cowlicks and questionable rhythms, and delight in the ringing.
"Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us." – 2 Corinthians 4:7 (CSB)
Click the play button above to hear "Christ is the Morning Star" performed by DBU University Chorale
Recording Engineer: Klair Julian | Written by: John Rutter
Tim Peabody, Minster to Adults at Morrison Heights Baptist Church, is a current Ph.D. in Leadership Studies student with a concentration in Ministry Leadership at Dallas Baptist University.
The DBU University Chorale is an auditioned, touring choral ensemble featuring DBU music and music business students. In addition to tours in Europe, the Chorale has performed throughout the United States with notable concerts at Carnegie Hall, the National Cathedral, and The White House.