”Do You Hear What I Hear?”
The popular Christmas song “Do You Hear What I Hear? Was actually written as a prayer for peace.
In October of 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union seemed on the brink of nuclear war because of the Cuban missile crisis. Composer Noel Regney was walking home in New York, having just met with his producer who “was listening to the radio to see if we had been obliterated.”
While walking, he recalled, “I saw two mothers with their babies in strollers. The babies were looking at each other and smiling…and all of a sudden my mood was extraordinary.”
When he got home, Regney (a French Resistance fighter during World War II) began to write the lyrics to a song about peace. He thought about the green fields of his native France, the innocence of newly born lambs, and the peacefulness of the first Christmas.
“Do You Hear What I Hear?” (His wife wrote the music.) was slated to be the “B” side for another song that was expected to be a hit. When plans for that record were cancelled, another record company picked up Regney’s song.
Released at the end of November in 1962, it sold out all 250 thousand copies within a week.
Noel Regney died almost 40 years to the day after his record was released. He was buried from St. Mary Catholic Church in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Dreams play an important part in Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus. There are five of them – four to Joseph and one to the Magi. In Joseph’s first dream, the angel gives him some astounding news: His wife, Mary, has conceived a child by the power of God!
Dreams play an important part in the life of another Joseph centuries earlier (“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”). When he told his brothers about his dreams, they became jealous. Eventually they sold him to a caravan headed for Egypt. Joseph ended up as a servant of the Pharaoh. Later he won great favor by interpreting the Pharaoh’s dreams.
The story of these two Josephs is the story of God working through human beings. God still does that, and I am one of the human beings through whom God accomplishes his plans.
As routine and plain as my life may seem, God acts through me to accomplish great things. They may seem small, but in the eons of God’s plan, they’re like the mustard seed “which when full-grown is the largest of plants and puts forth large branches.”
How did God work through me yesterday?