Infant Holy

1. Infant holy, infant lowly, for his bed a cattle stall; oxen lowing, little knowing, Christ the babe is Lord of all. Swift are winging angels singing, noels ringing, tidings bringing: Christ the babe is Lord of all. 2. Flocks were sleeping, shepherds keeping vigil till the morning new saw the glory, heard the story, tidings of a gospel true. Thus rejoicing, free from sorrow, praises voicing, greet the morrow: Christ the babe was born for you.

          The next song our choir is going to sing tomorrow night is “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly.” What strikes me about this song is the pedestrian-ness of it. It’s so like our lives, at least our lives as they would have been at the time. Oxen lowing, flocks sleeping, shepherds keeping vigil through the night. This is the way God seems to work most often. Life is going on, being life. We get up in the morning, do whatever the day calls for and go to bed again, and more often than not, we don’t notice the star except as a curiosity. We don’t hear or see the angels because we’re too busy listening to the car radio or checking out social media, or whatever. God does His thing, and we don’t notice. 
               In fact, we might find ourselves losing patience with those who are standing in the figurative street saying, “Look at that ‘star’! What does it mean?” There are places in Scripture where God talks to someone, and the people around him/her hear thunder. Oh, to have the ears that hear God speaking in that thunder! Oh, to have the eyes that see the angels and the stars. But you know who did hear the angels and see the star? People who were looking, and people who were more than likely bored out of their gourds… there in case something happened to the sheep. Neither group cared that the infant was lowly, because they both recognized that He was holy.