25 Days of Advent: Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming

This is, at least to me, a more obscure Christmas hymn. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever sung it in a church service. I sort of fell in love with it, though, after hearing the version from Sufjan Steven's Christmas albums. Here it is, for your listening enjoyment.



Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming

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 flower 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.

This Flow'r, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor,
The darkness everywhere.
True man, yet very God,
From sin and death He saves us,
And lightens ev'ry load.

The imagery rises from the prophecies of Isaiah, including this one from Isaiah 11:1 - "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit." There's a lot of history to take into context, but in a nutshell, it foretells that the Messiah will come from the descendants of David, as promised. The Jesse being referenced was David's father. They were from Bethlehem, which is why Joseph and Mary had to travel there for the census, and why they were there when Jesus was born (Luke 2:1-4). Not coincidentally, this fulfilled the words of another prophet, Micah, who wrote in Micah 5:2 - "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. "

This stuff is important. Don't let Biblical history bog you down or bore you because it isn't directly about you. This is something I really learned through my recent study of Daniel. We need to open our Bibles ultimately to learn about God and to find him worthy of our awe and worship. The Bible is for us, but it isn't just about us.

We can find the love and mercy of God in these Old Testament prophecies, by realizing that he planned for millennia the salvation he would provide for us in Jesus. This song honors that.