Dev: Dec 24 - Hark the Glad Sound

Hark the glad sound!

The Savior comes,
The Savior promised long;
Let every heart prepare a throne
And every voice a song.

 

What is the glad sound that we are invited to harken to? Well, let me tell you a story ...

 

A seminary classmate of mine attended a small Christian college -- since she was older than most of us, this was probably fifty years ago now. 

 

Anyway, she had a classmate who was rabidly fascinated with the rapture. It seemed to be all he would talk about. He was eagerly waiting and wanting to hear the final trumpet! 

 

This trumpet call was, of course, the glad sound proclaimed in this hymn. And he'd be quick to tell you that it would be a very glad sound ... for believers. But for unbelievers, he would say, it would not be a glad sound at all. This would be the clarion call the final judgment was coming. (The rapture calling home believers first, and thus, the signal that the final judgment was approaching.)

 

Why I called him "rabidly fascinated, though, was that he was loudly certain that only a few people -- like him, of course -- would be good enough to be raptured immediately. He'd say, "When you hear the trumpet call, you'll see just a pile of clothes where I stood only moments before." The implication: "You'll still be here to see my pile of clothes, because you people, who only claim to be Christians, don't believe properly and will be left behind."

 

He didn't win many friends. 

 

So his supposedly heathen classmates decided to play a practical joke on him!

 

Late one night, the whole dorm got out of bed. They arranged their pajamas -- empty pajamas -- in bed, in positions like they'd been sleeping ... and had suddenly disappeared. 

 

Then they all went and hid, while a band member blew a loud trumpet. 

 

The young man awoke suddenly. Patting himself to see if he was still physical -- real. He was. In fact, why was he still here? 

 

He looked in his roommate's bed -- a nice, Christian boy who was nevertheless deemed a heathen. And yet, his bed was filled with empty pajamas. 

 

He checked across the hall. More heathens. But still more empty pajamas. 

 

He checked more rooms. More empty pajamas. 

 

He was running up and down the hall, crying, "Lord, you left me!"

 

Funny story! (Especially when it's the judgmental young man who gets his comeuppance!)

 

And yet the point is serious. What we believe -- or don't believe -- matters. We will all, one day, meet the Lord. And we will all be judged. And we will all be judged guilty. All of us. Read that again. Guilty. 

 

But ... for believers, Jesus will say, "Ahhh! This is one of mine. I died to take upon me her sins. She is forgiven."

 

This is Christmas Eve. The glad sound that most of us will be harkening to tonight will be carols singing of the sounds surrounding our Lord’s first coming. It will be the sound of angels, rejoicing, “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” We will indeed be invited to harken to a different glad sound: “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”

 

Nevertheless, whether we’re preparing for Christmas … or for the second coming … or for a new awakening in our hearts, may we harken to one last call in this old Advent hymn:

 

Let every heart prepare a throne
And every voice a song.

 

In Christ's Love,

a guy who worries

that if he heard a trumpet

in the middle of the night,

would try to turn back over

and go back to sleep