Paul Baloche - For Unto Us - A Christmas DevotionalSample

Silent Night

"All is calm, all is bright..."

Once in a while, someone writes a song that captures the heart of the public. It is sung, hummed, harmonized and played for many months before eventually sinking into the vast graveyard of fading popularity. But once in a great while, one song can be remembered and revisited for several decades. 

Yet how many songs do you know that have remained in the hearts of men, women and children for almost two hundred years? How many songs are sung by people around the world in over 140 languages? How many songs are so beloved that they've been voted a "national treasure" by the country in which they were composed? Not too many. 

"Silent Night" is one of those songs.

On a snowy Austrian Christmas Eve in 1818, Father Joseph Mohr walked the few miles to the home of his friend Franz Gruber. Mohr brought with him a poem he had written two years earlier, hoping that Gruber could set the words to music. A school teacher who served as the church's choir master, Franz Gruber composed the melody for "Silent Night" in just a few hours. And somehow, in that simple and beautiful hymn, these two men reminded mankind that... "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands." (Psalm 19:1)

And so during Midnight Mass, inside St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, the newborn song was heard for the first time. And the rest is history. On that Christmas Eve, a song was born that would wing its way into the hearts of people throughout the world. Now translated into hundreds of languages, it is sung by untold millions every December from small chapels in the Andes to great cathedrals in Rome.

How does that happen? Were the words so good...the melody so pure...the spiritual anointing so great that one song could become a beloved hymn for the whole planet? Perhaps the key to this phenomenal song simply lies in the heart of the man who wrote it. Father Joseph Mohr was born into poverty in Salzburg in 1792, and died penniless in 1848 after donating all his earnings to the elderly and to the education of village children. In a report to the bishop after his death, a co-worker described Mohr as "a reliable friend of mankind...and to the poor, a gentle and helping father."

Perhaps part of the miracle of "Silent Night" is its quiet and humble birth.

The words flowed from the spirit of a selfless servant of mankind. The music was composed by an anonymous musician unknown outside his village. Long before the invention of radio, television or iTunes, this immortal song was able to cross international borders, leap language barriers and even unify enemy soldiers one famous Christmas Eve during World War I. This song of peace has conquered the hearts of people everywhere simply because God smiled on the night of its birth, just as He smiled on that night in Bethlehem.