[ EDIT: The free MP3 download offered below has expired. However, stay tuned to this blog for more free Christmas music in the coming week, including this song on iTickets.com on Dec 22, 2009! ]
O_Little_Child-Hiram_Ring.mp3 (one week only!)
This Christmas I want to give you a song that is still very close to my heart - newly re-mixed and mastered for 2009. It's a song that I wrote in 2006 as the holiday was approaching. I had just read GK Chesterton's 'Christmas Poem' and was thinking about his last stanza:
"To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home."
Beautiful words from a gifted writer whose thoughts continue to capture us. I began to think about how God left His home to become homeless on the earth, to become a little baby, and began to wonder whether He knew what was happening when He was born, or whether He simply had to rest in the arms of his mother, to be and do what all little babies are and do. The wonder of God growing older from infancy, preparing for the sacrifice of the cross... through which there is full redemption and forgiveness of sins... I picked up my guitar and this song wrote itself that evening.
"O Little Child, o tiny babe, are these your hands that came to save?
Held in your mother's warm embrace, remember me this Christmas day.
O Little Child, your tiny feet will bear the cross toward calvary.
Now tightly wrapped on mother's knee, on Christmas day I think of thee.
That God would come to us on earth, He who Himself did give us birth,
That the Most High would choose to be a simple child like you and me.
O Little Child, you must be fed - you who will give us living bread.
The final Word is said, it's yours to say - do you remember Christmas day?
That God would come to us on earth, He who Himself did give us birth,
that the Most High would choose to be a simple child like you and me.
Join with the angels' heavenly choir, proclaim this wondrous clarion hour!
That God would leave his heaven above to live with us a life of love,
that the Most High would choose to be a simple child like you and me.
Glory to God in the Highest, Peace on Earth, Goodwill to men!
O Little Child, your eyes still sleep, your tiny form a mystery.
Come with the world on bended knee - on Christmas day I think of thee."
(if you would like a PDF chart of the words/music, please let me know - ringrecords AT gmail DOT com)
Musicians:
Hiram Ring - guitar, vocals
Alisha Ring - violin, background vocals
Matthew Monticchio - piano
David Green - bass
John Haughery - drums
Yolanda Mott - cello
