She told me she hated Advent. Every year when Christmas came around, the Lutherans were singing those awful Advent hymns instead of Christmas songs. I know it was naughty of me, but I ignored her complaint. I loved hearing the Advent hymns.

Charles Wesley, a founder of the Methodist church, managed to write over 6,500 including one version of the Advent hymn “Lo, he comes with clouds descending” which has been sliced and diced and recombined over the years with a hymn by John Cennick and then edited and altered. I’m not sure there are any two hymnals with the identical text for this hymns.

Anyway, here is a version I like sung by the Norwich Cathedral Choir to the tune “Hemsley.”

Lo, he comes with clouds descending,
once for favoured sinners slain;
thousand thousand saints attending
swell the triumph of his train:
Alleluia!
God appears on earth to reign.

The theme of the first stanza is from Revelation and depicts the return of Jesus at the end of the ages. One of things I find striking, however, is the reference in the third stanza to the passion.

Those dear tokens of his passion
still his dazzling body bears.

Is that odd? No, look sometime through advent and Christmas hymns and you sometimes find a reference to the death of Jesus (think about What Child is This).  Jesus comes to die in the first Advent, and comes as the one who died and rose in the second Advent.

It’s something to ponder in this in between Advent.

Read Revelation 1:7 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne