Creator of the Stars at Night
(Latin Hymn, translated by J.M. Neale)
Three Advents have come and gone since I performed this hymn. Our church had made the collective decision to return to a sense of normalcy with indoor, sung worship services with full choir. It felt like a thawing, a renewal, but also things would never be the same again. We were waiting to see how the world after the pandemic would turn out and everything was still topsy-turvy.
This hymn is about another kind of renewal, the renewal of God’s creation through the redemptive sacrifice of His Son. He had “found the medicine…to save and heal a ruined race”. The universal sickness of humanity has a cure in Jesus but, like that time three years ago, the cure is here but not yet here.
The hymn’s beauty belies its dark and plaintive words, full of trembling for what is to come. As the hymn goes on, Jesus comes not to cure everyone but only those who turn to him for healing. Those who turn away he will “judge and doom.”
This advent I think about all those who have not turned to Christ, who, like those who have caught the virus but not yet shown symptoms, may not even realize they are sick. I pray for healing too for those who are sick at heart to turn to Him too for comfort. Let the Creator of the stars at night hear them “when they call”.
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