After three: one, two, three...

Last night the wife and I had Christmas dinner with our friend Roger.

It was a traditional meal with all the trimmings.  We had chili, paprika chicken and a pasta dish and to be quite honest it was all delicious.

After dinner we ended up flicking through some tunes off the old computer and somehow began playing the intros game.  You know, the one were you have to be the first to guess the tune.  There was a slight twist as all the tunes were TV themes.

I love stuff like that, I don't care if it doesn't seem very rock 'n' roll.  To me this is the perfect game because if you are good at it - brilliant, if not you can just let on that you have more of a life than the others and what are they watching so much TV for anyway.

One of our number really excelled, suddenly he found his gift.  It seemed almost supernatural, he was guessing TV themes for shows that he had never watched, had never heard of and I'm sure for some of them, didn't even exist.

He was machine gunning the answers out.

"MacGyver"

"The Littlest Hobo"
"Grey's Anatomy"

"Steptoe and Son"

It was endless.  The rest of us just sat is stunned admiration, we were filled with awe and wonder (and after a while maybe even a little fear).

Of course some of the tunes were instantly recognisable and we all were able to join in with the answers and, on occasion, we even sang along.  Now this might sound all very naff to you but lets be honest, who doesn't want to sing along to 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air', or 'Neighbours', or 'Friends'.  It's almost a reflex, an in-build compulsion.

In the midst of all this awesomeness a pattern started to emerge.  We knew a bit of a lot of songs.  We knew the hook or the chorus or the tune, but very few of us new all the words to the songs and on occasion when we were pretty confidently belting out a musically suspect cover version of a popular classic we found ourselves getting the words wrong, words we were convinced we knew perfectly for a couple of decades.

This week we celebrate Christmas and for many it is an intro that we know and love.  We've got this bit of the story down pat.  Little baby born in a manger, Angels, Shepherds, Wise Men, Herod etc etc.  We sing the intro every year, we love to be reminded of happy times when we heard the tune before.

 How many know the rest of the song.  How many know the complete story. A perfect innocent child, born with no sin to live in a world of sin.  A baby born to die.  Born to be punished for the crimes of others, for the crimes of us. Born to save us, born because of His great love for us. God, not somewhere else, not looking on dispassionately; but with us, God with us.

The intro to the Gospel song is a truly beautiful one but the song needs to be heard in full to truly appreciate the beginning. 


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Here's a little treat, something for you to join in with. You know you want too.