Faith By Hearing

It’s Christmas Eve in 1906 in a small town outside of Boston, Massachusetts. The predictable clomping sound of horse-drawn carriages, echoing through the streets, is muffled by the snowy surface. It is an unusually white Christmas. Dusk is settling in. The Canadian-American engineer, Reginald Fessenden, is seated inside a building, hunched over one of his prized inventions: an electric device that can transmit sound through radio waves. As he prepares to turn it on, he presses a thumb against his short, dark beard—musing about a song he had recently sung in church—and then he readjusts his thin, circular spectacles.  

Image courtesy of Alex Wolf

“O holy night, the stars are brightly shining…”

Up until this point in history, the primary use of radio wave communication was for Morse Code: a language of monotone pulses, decipherable only to those who had studied it. For several years Reginald had been employed by various companies to develop this new radio technology, including working directly for Thomas Edison at his laboratory in New Jersey. Although he looked up to Edison, Reginald was his own kind of genius, with over 500 patents to his name. 

“…for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.…” 

It’s truly an age of invention. Technological progress is transforming the visible landscape, as well as the invisible spaces in-between. The ringing bells of electric trolleys are becoming normalized in the Boston thoroughfares. A couple of venturesome brothers down the coast, in Kitty Hawk, have just put humans into flight a few Decembers prior. The recent advent of air conditioning, vacuum cleaners, plastic, and other modern-day masterpieces are about to revolutionize the American home. And now, those shrill, redundant tones of the Morse Code are slowly giving way to the crackly timbres of real voices. The whole world is not only competing for who can achieve sheer brilliance… but, more importantly, who can do it first. 

“…sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we…” 

Thus, it’s on this frozen night in December that Reginald decides to try something that no one has ever done before: a radio broadcast of live music. Nearby is a Bible, opened up to the Gospel of Luke. Reginald looks at it and sees the words, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will.” Then he picks up his violin, leans towards the transmitter, and begins to bow the string. The melody of “O Holy Night” stirs the air, resounding in his ears and in the ears of those many, many miles away, seated beside their radios. For those who were listening—hearing live music broadcast for the very first time in human existence—it was as if they had transported across history, to that original moment when the Christ-child was born, the heavens supernaturally resounding: a song of praise appearing out of the dark blue nothing. 

“…let all within us praise His holy name…”

For both the ancient shepherds in the fields and the radio-listeners of 1906, the Christmas anthem arrived in similar fashion: suddenly and splendidly… as it would.

Image courtesy of IMB

The glory of God requires no prelude, no pre-show. It moves invisibly across the earth, awakening the souls of men and women who call upon His name. At once, Heaven is here. 

Reginald would spend his whole life, trying to find new ways to send messages out into the world. It’s something that we all do… we feel compelled to do. We all want to be heard, to be known, to have someone/anyone validate that we are here, that our desires are worthy, our pain is not wasted, our life is seen. Often we transmit what we’ve been taught. Other times, we fashion new ways to be noticed. For thousands and thousands of years, humans have sent out our signals, hoping that there is someone on the other end who is listening. 

…and Christmas is the proof: God has heard us. He is with us. On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. We’ve attempted to manufacture our own healing and redemption—to negotiate the terms whereby we can atone for our past shortcomings and produce a preferred future; we’ve invented a myriad of solutions, patented all our best attempts, applauded our own perceived brilliance…

but God did it first: He made the way. And not only first, but also: forever. Jesus is born, and where all of our imperfect experiments fall short, He arrives in perfection. He is the advent of irremovable hope. 

We don’t have to go on, striving to be heard. Just the opposite: we need to listen. To remember: faith comes by hearing. If only we would tune our hearts, we might hear the song of His majesty—carrying on the waves of radio, the waves of light, the waves of history—a song that arrived on Christmas.

“…O night divine, the night when Christ was born.”