The Bells Keep Ringing...

In the hymnal our church uses, there are a bunch of Christmas hymns.  Some of them, like What Child is This or God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, are familiar and sung frequently.  Others, like Once in David's Royal City, are less familiar.  Then there are few that other people seem to be familiar with and are often on Christmas CDs but that I don't know well at all.  A prime example of this is I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.  I know of it.  I've probably even heard it sung before.  Until I heard Casting Crowns sing it, though, I had never paid attention to the lyrics, which I've copied below:

I heard the bells on Christmas day

Their old familiar carols play

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace on earth, good will to men

I thought how, as the day had come

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along the unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good will to men

And in despair I bowed my head

"There is no peace on earth," I said

"For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep

"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, good will to men"

Till, ringing singing, on its way

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime, a chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good will to men

I don't know why I didn't know this song and haven't sung it before.  Those lyrics - particularly the third and fourth stanzas - capture almost perfectly the whole of Christmas and the purpose of the incarnation.  Christ came in the midst of a world of despair to announce to a people that had not heard his voice for hundreds of years that God was neither dead nor asleep!  Amen.