Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming
“Instead of standing, just sit and listen to this next one.”
It was Christmas Eve, several years ago, probably about half-past 11pm. Jon-Marc Haden was up front leading music. I was in an otherwise empty pew, stomach churning with anxiety over the day I was set to face in just a few hours. Tension crept up my shoulders, my neck, and settled into my jaw.
The holidays are hard for me; family estrangement and seasonal depression are a cruel combination. It’s been my personal tradition over the last several years to go to City Church’s 11pm Christmas Eve service by myself. That hour or so spent listening to lessons and carols anchors me so I don’t feel as untethered when the expectations of Christmas Day press in.
That particular Christmas Eve was an especially hard one. I was caring for a toddler, working two-and-a-half jobs, and feeling spread so thin I was sure I’d crack at any moment. I was sad and tired—tired down to my bones.
The invitation from Jon-Marc to just sit and listen was gift enough. The music started, and I read along with the words; they were new to me at the time.
As I sat and listened and read along, a crack did happen, but one that I needed and welcomed.
If you listen to “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” you’ll hear that it is not at all in a hurry—a perfect soundtrack for beholding, for really seeing something. Which is exactly what the lyrics ask us to do. “Lo” it says, a word once used to draw attention and express wonder. And what is that something we’re asked to pay attention to? The fulfillment of a promise that had been shared for generations. The first verse of the song calls directly back to Isaiah 11: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.” and “In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.”
From there, we hear the story of Jesus’s birth, but it’s told in such a way that we’re invited to be part of it. We get to claim it as our own. We join Mary in beholding the Rose that is Jesus, the Savior that she bore to us to “show God’s love aright” and who saves us from sin and death and lightens every load.
But the song doesn’t stop there—just as we know the story of Jesus doesn’t stop in the manger or on the cross.
In the last verse, instead of singing about Jesus, we sing to him.
O Savior, child of Mary,
Who felt our human woe
O Savior, King of glory,
Who dost our weakness know
Bring us at length, we pray
To the bright courts of heaven,
And to the endless day.
It’s this final verse of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” that speaks most to where we are now in Jesus’s story.
Just as we know what Jesus did, we also know what he is going to do. And as we move through the verses of this song, we feel that already-not yet tension that comes with being the ones on the other side of the cross. We’re watching, we’re waiting, we’re hoping, just as those men of old did. Except we know exactly who we’re going to get.
That is the stuff of Advent for us.
But it’s hard. So, we remember promises kept. We revisit stories we’ve heard thousands of times. We pray. We sing—or just sit and listen—to songs old and new that remind us of what was, what is, and what will be.
The first time I heard this song was the first time I really got that. As I sat there that night, exhausted and wrung out, that music and those words cracked me open and let in the truth like healing sunlight. I knew that my woes and my weaknesses were and are felt and known by the “true man, yet very God.” And to want to be with him, to long for his return, is right and good.
Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming
German Carol, Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen, ca. 1500; translated by Theodore Baker (Stanzas 1–2), Harriet R. Spaeth (Stanzas 3–4), and John C. Mattes (Stanza 5).
Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming,
As men of old have sung.
It came, a flow’ret bright
Amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night.
Isaiah ’twas foretold it,
The Rose I have in mind.
With Mary we behold it,
The virgin mother kind.
To show God’s love aright
She bore to us a Savior,
When half-spent was the night.
The shepherds heard the story,
Proclaimed by angels bright.
How Christ, the Lord of glory,
Was born on earth this night.
To Bethlehem they sped
And in the manger found him,
As angel heralds said.
This flow’r, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air
Dispels with glorious splendor
The darkness ev’rywhere.
True man, yet very God
From sin and death he saves us,
And lightens ev’ry load.
O Savior, child of Mary,
Who felt our human woe
O Savior, King of glory,
Who dost our weakness know
Bring us at length, we pray
To the bright courts of heaven,
And to the endless day.