Come! Worship! Proclaim Messiah’s birth! Break your chains!
James Montgomery directs the verses of this song at groups of people – angels, shepherds, saints and sinners – not allowing anyone the chance to remain passive or simply observe.
His appeals are an urgent, universal invitation; a drop-everything-and-come-now kind of call. ‘Come and worship, worship Christ, the newborn King.’
Discoverable online are several extra verses to this song, one of which addresses the Magi:
Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar;
Seek the great Desire of nations,
Ye have seen his natal star.
The Magi had been doing their thing: Contemplating, observing, studying. It was their role. It was who they were. But through their discovery of his star, they were drawn away from their everyday practices to seek Jesus and worship him.
It’s easy for us to become absorbed in doing what we do. We have our role and we know our purpose. Often, it’s valuable and good. Often, we’re doing Kingdom work and we meet God there.
But do we ever look up from our little corner, to see the ‘brighter visions’ in the distance? Is it possible that we can encounter Jesus in new ways when we look up and step away from our usual activity?
Let’s allow ourselves to be interruptible today, and to meet with God beyond our usual experience. Is there something you could do, or somewhere you could go, to create an opportunity for that to happen?
The call expressed in the song is a call to worship. It’s a call to drop everything, because the arrival of this baby changes everything.
‘God with man is now residing’: The Word has made his dwelling among us (see John 1:14).
May we be willing to step outside of our ordinary experience and encounter more of the extraordinary reality of broken chains and of God with us as we come and worship him today.
