Christmas Cantata

Well, I had to turn pages for my mom at church this morning. The choir was singing a rather nice Christmas Cantata that took up most of the service. It was mostly good, but there was one segment that I couldn't stand. The melody and rhythm were okay, but the lyrics... Even when I considered myself a Methodist, I could not stand songs that came across as love songs to God/Jesus. They come across as cheap, desperate, and boorish. Apart from that one segment, though, I quite liked the Cantata.

The mini-sermons were another matter (mini since the cantata took up most of the time). Eric (the pastor) explained how, according to the Gospel of John, all light in the world originated from Jesus. I very nearly cracked up (which wouldn't have been so bad as I was ensconced behind the organ and hence not visible). Christians always want to talk about how Light comes from God, but as the Creator of all, Darkness must also come from him (if it doesn't, then he's not the Creator of all). And here Eric was going on about how hard it was to fathom that all light came from Jesus. Uh, obvious much? Light, darkness, rubber bouncy balls, giant turtles, machine guns, sand, etc. Not fathoming the "hard to fathom" part. It's sort of like expressing surprise that all odd natural numbers can be additively generated by "1" when you've already proven that all natural numbers, odd or even, can be generated by "1". *shakes her head*

The children's service was at least entertaining. They were discussing Christmas trees, and how, since the trees point up, kids should be looking up at God, and not down at the presents. So Eric had them all looking up and told them they should stay that way until Christmas. One kid voiced my thoughts perfectly: "What if we fall into a hole?" So then Eric had them tilt their heads sideways to keep one eye at the ground, then reminded them it was a metaphor for keeping their hearts looking at God. One of the best moments came when Eric asked the kids what the trees might be pointing to: "The ceiling!" came one answer. *grins* Incidentally, if you're only looking at the Divine with your heart, then you're missing a whole heckuva lot, but that's a topic for another post.