During
the Christmas season, I have been performing and practicing Handel’s
Messiah with a youth orchestra that I’m a part of. One of the passages
in the great Messiah symphony is “Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion.”
I wasn’t familiar with the name Zion, so at first I thought Zion was a
person – perhaps one of Jesus’ followers. But one of the psalms that I
read talked about Zion as a mountain, so I was confused. When I looked
it up online, I found that the Hebrew definition of the Daughter of Zion
is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, whereas in the Christian tradition,
the Daughter of Zion is the Church. We are the Daughter of Zion. So
when the Messiah symphony talks about rejoicing greatly, it means that
WE should rejoice greatly. Not just people who were alive in the days
in which the psalms were written and not just people who were
alive
during Handel’s day, but us right here and now.
To state
the obvious, Christmas is coming. Every year I see my mom and dad
going crazy trying to buy gifts and I see all of the commercials on TV
for gadgets, electronics, clothes, even cars. We love giving and
receiving presents, but at the same time we feel guilty about it because
we know that there are lots of better things we could be doing with our
money. We could be helping poor people get the food and clothing they
need. We could give it to the Church. We could be saving it for college or other needs later in life. So we tend to feel really
guilty. But maybe we should give ourselves a little slack. After all,
we give each other presents because we love each other and want to do
nice things for each other. So maybe giving presents is OK as long as
we do what the psalms tell us to do and what Handel reminds us to do
this season – Rejoice!
(Abigail)
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