By Bob Russell
Phillips Brooks was nearly burned out. The man many regarded as the most inspirational preacher of his time had lost his fervor and couldn”t seem to recover.
He requested and was granted a sabbatical from the church and took a trip to the Holy Land. On Christmas Eve in Jerusalem, he and a couple of friends mounted horses and took off riding. It was a wonderful, life-changing afternoon for him. He prayed and spent time alone with God. At dusk, when the first stars came out, he rode into the tiny village of Bethlehem.
The town had changed little since the birth of Jesus. It lifted Brooks”s spirits to be within a few feet of the very spot where Jesus was born. There was singing in the Church of the Nativity, and he felt surrounded by the Spirit of God.
He wrote in his diary, “Again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices I know well, telling each other of the Savior”s birth. Before dark we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the angel. As we passed, shepherds were still keeping watch over their flocks. Somewhere in those fields we rode through the shepherds must have been.”
It grew increasingly dark and Brooks sat up on a hillside, looking back at the flickering lights in the small village of Bethlehem. There was a wonderful stirring within. He later told friends the experience was so overpowering that there would forever “be singing in my soul.”
Renewed Vigor, a Simple Poem
A few weeks later he returned from his sabbatical, with a renewed vigor. But when he tried to explain his experience to the congregation, he couldn”t express it even though he was a great communicator. Three years later, as the Christmas season approached, he reflected on that evening outside Bethlehem and decided not to write it in prose but poetry. A simple poem came easily to mind.
After he wrote it down he took it to Lewis Redner. When the organist read, “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie,” he felt compelled to compose a tune to fit that poem. But no matter how hard he tried, nothing came that suited him.
Redner went to bed on Christmas Eve feeling he had failed. But that night a simple, straightforward tune came to him in bed. He got up, wiped the sleep from his eyes, and discovered that the words of the poem fit perfectly with the tune.
On Christmas morning 1868, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” was complete. It became a Christmas favorite in Philadelphia, and by the time of Phillips Brooks”s death in 1893, had become one of the best-loved Christmas carols in the world. There is a building at Harvard named after the great preacher, but Brooks is remembered more for the song he wrote than for the sermons he preached. It”s the song of a preacher who experienced spiritual renewal and it continues to touch lives today.
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark street shineth, the everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2).
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This article first appeared in The Lookout, December 23, 2007.
Bob Russell is retired senior minister at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky.
I wonder if some of the so-called contemporary songs will still be around as long as “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem” that Brooks wrote. Thanks, Bob, for the story of Brooks that led him to write this beautiful Christmas song we are still singing.