A Baby Will Come – Story Behind the Song

From Let’s Worship, Winter 2012

Young adolescent girls often have diaries in which they record the thoughts and actions of their day. I know this because as the annoying younger brother of three adolescent girls growing up, I often found great adventure in seeking out the treasures found within my sisters’ diaries. For young girls, nothing is more precious or private than their diaries.

I wrote “A Baby Will Come” while preparing a sermon on Mary’s Magnificat. As I researched the social climate of Israel in the late first century B.C., I was overcome with how dire the lives of the Israelites had been. Between the brutal conquests of the Roman Empire under Caesar Augustus and the obscene taxation of Herod, King of Judea, the Israelites were enslaved once again, this time in their own backyard.

These were God’s people clinging to God’s promises, and yet life seemed to get harder and harder as the weight of oppression grew heavier and heavier. The Promised Land no longer felt like the Promised Land. Doubt began to set in.

It was into this climate that a young adolescent girl was visited by an angel of God and told that she would give birth to a baby boy. She was told His very name would be “Salvation” for her and for her people.

The First Christmas Song

In a moment of joy and restraint, Mary sat down with her diary and reflected on what the angel had told her as she began to pen this poem. It is the first Christmas song ever written. It is a beautiful song; a poem that is on one hand personal and introspective, but on the other hand, charged with social and politically revolutionary language.

This was not a timid, scared little girl.

As I reached the point in my preparation where I needed to wrap up my sermon, I hit a wall. What can I say that will illuminate Mary’s feelings in this moment better than the poem she penned herself?

I had this phrase in my head, “The kings of the world have torn it apart. But take heart, a baby will be born.” How absurd of a thought is that? A baby? Yet that is the promise Mary was given. That is promise we have been given.

So, I walked away from my computer and picked up my guitar. The song came in an instant.

When we look around we see that the kings of our world haven’t done a much better job than Augustus or Herod. The good news is they don’t get the last word either. God does; and that Word became flesh and took the name Jesus, just as the angel foretold.

You know the best part? Herod’s kingdom faded away. Augustus’ kingdom, the great worldwide empire, is nothing put a pile of rubble in our history books. But the kingdom that came through that young adolescent girl, the one she wrote so eloquently about in her diary, just keeps going and going and going, bringing salvation to a world still desperately in need of it.

Merry Christmas!
____

Bill Wolf is dean of the Chapel at Johnson University in Knoxville, Tenn. Previously, Bill served as a worship/arts pastor at churches in Las Vegas, Denver, Mitchell, Ind., and Knoxville, Tenn. Bill has been writing and leading songs for his local congregations for more than 13 years. Since July 2011 his music has found a wider audience as he signed a publishing contract with Lifeway Worship.

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“A Baby Will Come”
Bill Wolf

Verse 1
The kings of this world
Have torn it apart
But we can take heart
A baby will come

Verse 2
To the hungry and meek
To those who grieve
To the broken in need
A baby will come

Verse 3
We have known pain
We’ve felt death’s sting
God help us believe
This baby will come

Verse 4
The angel appeared
Said do not fear
For peace is here
A baby has come

Verse 5
The advent of life
Let hope arise
We’ve our Savior and Christ
The baby has come

Verse 6
We’ve waited so long
God for Your mighty arm
May our doubts ever calm
For the baby has come

Verse 7
The proud will be low
The humble will know
They’re valued and loved
For the baby has come

Verse 8
Cause the kings of this world
Won’t have the last word
That God is Yours
For the baby has come

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