Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! On this Christmas morning, I'm playing an Advent hymn called "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus." The lyrics were written by Charles Wesley in 1744, but they have been sung to several different melodies. The melody I'm playing here is a Welsh hymn tune called "Hyfrydol," composed by Rowland Prichard. I hope you like it!


Listen to the song here
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I don't have a lot to say here, but perhaps I should call your attention to an article I read recently about the life of an orchestral musician. The author, Douglas Yeo, points out that playing in a high-tier orchestra is often seen as a "dream job." You get to spend your time on a profession that you have already worked towards with years of practice, rather than being shuffled from one new task to the next. You'll be rewarded with a good salary and the praise of everyone who comes to your concerts. (Or mostly everyone, I should say.)

However, the fact remains that many of these musicians are unsatisfied with their lives. Not everything about their work environment is perfect, and they do what their human nature tells them to do -- complain. Believe that they're entitled to more respect, more money, or a more comfortable environment, and if only they had that, everything would be perfect.

Yeo reminds us of an important truth: individual success isn't going to keep us satisfied forever. Rather than working to collect attention for ourselves as individual players, we should work together to bring people joy with music.

More importantly, we should consider that the ability to make music is a gift from God. Of course there are players, singers, and composers that can create great music, but that is because the Creator of everything gave them the talent and the time to do it. Music is a way to celebrate the things that God has given us (something that I hope many of you are doing today), and that's a purpose greater than the temporary difficulties we run into.

So, on this last week of the year, I will remind you once again to...

keep filling your teacup with music!
~Liya