VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, Christopher Ganza, organ, Rebecca Arons, cello

We rode all night through fields of darkness,
Our guiding light the Eastern star;
We came to Bethlehem, we all were weary;
We’d travelled far that night, we’d travelled far.

We heard that here we’d find Messiah,
Foretold by seers from days of old;
We looked for palaces and found a stable,
Could it be here, so bare and cold?

We entered in and there we saw him;
It seemed we’d known him from long before:
A child like any child, yet somehow different:
The face of every child in him we saw.

We’d brought him gifts, and now we offered them;
We knelt down low in silent prayer.
With eyes that seemed to know both joy and sadness
The child looked down as we knelt there.

So long ago, yet I remember
That child who lay at Mary’s knee;
How strange that every child seems so much like him:
His is the face I seem to see.
—John Rutter