From Andrew Peterson...(this album was released in 2004)
"This Christmas will be the fifth consecutive year that I ve performed what I hesitantly call a musical about the birth of Christ. The reason musical doesn t really work is that when we think of a musical we usually think of people dressed like donkeys and evenings full of badly delivered speaking parts.
What I wrote is a concert that tells a story. There s no speaking--only songs, some of which are intimate, some epic, some humorous, all with a purpose, which is to convey the true tall tale of the coming of God into the world.
What makes this bunch of songs unique is that I wanted to remind (or teach) the audience that the story of Christmas doesn t begin with the birth of Jesus. Many people tend to forget or have never even learned that the entire Bible is about Jesus, not just the New Testament. So the musical begins with Moses and the symbolic story of the Passover (Passover Us) and works its way through the kings and the prophets with their many prophecies about the coming Messiah (So Long, Moses) to the awful four hundred years of silence before God told Mary she d be having a baby (Deliver Us). After the song called Matthew s Begats, which lists the genealogy of Jesus, the story picks up in more familiar territory with Mary and Joseph and the actual birth (It Came To Pass, Labor of Love). The final song is called Behold, the Lamb of God, which ties together the Passover and the beauty and scope of the story.
For the past three years the concert has been overwhelming from a spiritual standpoint. I can honestly say that I haven t made it through one performance of the show without crying, which isn t a testimony to the concert as much as it is to the power of the story of Jesus. And it really is that story that s being told, in a new way. The audiences have expressed to me what I most want to hear, which is that they were blown away, that they got goose bumps, that they felt truly prepared to celebrate the Christmas season for what it s really worth. I also heard over and over again that they wanted to take the record home.
Over the past few years, along with the string quartet I ve had numerous guests appear in the concert: Phil Keaggy, Alison Krauss, Phil Madeira, Fernando Ortega, Ron Block (Union Station), Sean and Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek), Jill Phillips, Randall Goodgame, Jonathan and Amanda Noel, Todd Bragg, Silers Bald, Laura Story, Andrew Osenga, Steve Hindalong and others. This year the concert is being held at the Ryman Auditorium." (there is now a DVD available of this concert)
The song listed below is a family favorite.
Labor of Love
It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David's town
And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother's hand to hold
It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David's town
In the middle of the night
So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move
It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love
Bryan
