We are in the thick of Advent and our preparations for Christmas. At this point, you would have expected most people to put up their Christmas decorations (though, granted, not all) and many of us to have begun singing carols. This Sunday will be the first carol service I lead this season. 

As I have in previous years, I’d like to share with you a few thoughts on a carol that is striking me deeply this year. My carol of 2024 is Once in Royal David’s City by Cecil Francis Alexander. Mrs Alexander initially wrote the words for her Hymns for Little Children, a Sunday school resource she was putting together. She hoped that Once in Royal would help illustrate the story of Jesus’ birth to the Virgin Mary. 

Alexander sets the scene with this contrasting image of a royal city—that of David, Israel’s greatest king—against the backdrop of a lowly cattle shed. A royal city suggests a grand and luxurious palace where you would expect to welcome a king or lord. However, it is in a cold and dirty stable where the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords is born. 

In verse 2, Alexander tells us about Jesus and what happened at the first Christmas. ‘He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all.’ In one sentence, Alexander captures the true miracle and joy of Christmas, where the God and Lord of all came down to earth in heaven for us, his children. As I mentioned earlier, Alexander wrote these words for her Sunday school children. God didn’t come to earth for us as a reward for our human merits, like a manager who comes to greet a good worker. God came to us in love, like a father runs to his children. This is a God who isn’t distant but is intimately near. God comes alongside us. 

Verses 3 and 4 share how Jesus came alongside in his childhood. ‘Day by day like us he grew, he was little, weak and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew. And he feeleth for our sadness, and he shareth in our gladness.’ This God and King, who should have been born in a palace but was born in a stable, became as lowly as an unknown child to come near to us. Jesus did all that so that ‘our eyes at last shall see him.’ For me, this opening line of verse 5 is the most powerful in the whole hymn. It’s the line that completely encapsulates the gospel message and the good news of Christmas. ‘And our eyes at last shall see him through his own redeeming love.’ Jesus came on this humble journey to earth so that he could draw us near to him, and Jesus succeeded in his mission. Through his redeeming love, the redeeming love given and poured out on the cross, the divide between us and God has been removed, the curtain temple has been torn in two, and now we can draw near to God. ‘And our eyes at last shall see him.’  

On Monday night, I was listening to Once In Royal David’s City as I drove home from Oakham late-night shopping and a school governors’ meeting. As I sang through the words again and again, tears started to fall from my eyes. I felt a strong sense of God’s presence with me. My heart felt full with God’s love. I felt full of joy; my spirit was whole. My soul felt triumphant in this moment where the God and Lord of all felt so close to me that my eyes and heart could see him. How is it that the God and Lord of all came to a lowly stable, lived a humble life, then died a criminal’s death so that I could be with him, so that I can see him face to face? I’m lost for words, but my heart rejoices that because of Jesus coming to us at the first Christmas, ‘our eyes at last shall see him.’

I pray this Christmas your eyes, too, shall see him.