Then Abraham reached out his hand
And raised the knife to slay,
His only son, he would not spare;
He would his God obey.

Chorus
For God so loved the people
His only Son He gave
All those who put their trust in Him
From sin and death are saved

The Angel of the LORD (referring to the pre-Incarnate Christ) from heav’n
Called out for him to stop;
Jehovah Jireh will provide
On’the mountain of the LORD.

That ‘Angel’ will be lifted up—
The Son will pay the price.
No voice from heaven will restrain
The perfect Sacrifice.

In my possession is an old song book, possibly a century old. It contains duets and trios, some of which were sung by my aunts and uncles in their youth in the 1930s. In 1978, my father, who was conducting the Asian Christian Academy choir in Bangalore made me sing the second voice for one of these songs.

The lead singer was Violet Jesudoss, someone endowed by God with a velvet voice. The whole experience was a nightmare for me and absolutely terrifying. Apparently it sounded OK, thank goodness, but it wasn’t something I wanted to remember.

In recent times, probably because of nostalgia, I wanted to sing it, but did not feel the words had enough depth. So last night, I wrote these words to go with it. Perhaps the idea for these words came from Jirah, the name of my week-old grand daughter, and also because thoughts about the Incarnation are not far away during Christmas time. What a God we have, who did not spare His son. Christmas has no meaning but for the Sacrifice on the cross. (And the cross has no meaning but for the resurrection.)

This morning I recorded the second voice in my phone’s voice recorder, and then used it to sing a duet with myself, sans velvet voice (sorry about that).