Joyce and I had a blast at Carnegie Hall hearing Dr. John Lennox say some really intelligent things about Christmas... oh, yes, and his niece and her husband, The Gettys, performed there, too. The whole evening was just really wonderful! They sang their own songs and their arrangements of classics. They were backed up by a very talented band, including of former colleague and friend from MasterWorks, Alana Pritchard, who headed up the strings section. There was also some electrifying Irish dancing mixed in! Many of the songs were carols they directed the audience in joining along, making it the third time I got to perform at Carnegie Hall... from the audience. It's breathtaking to be one of thousands of voices filling some of the most acoustically perfect space on earth with songs celebrating God becoming man and dwelling with us.

But the real highlight for me was when Dr. John Lennox spoke. Kristyn Getty's uncle is professor emeritus of mathematics at Oxford University, where he used to take classes from C. S. Lewis. Dr. Lennox read Scripture and shared a brilliant celebration of Christmas. Dr. Lennox has debated Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, among other atheists. One told him Jesus was just as fictional as Santa Claus. Dr. Lennox asked people in that audience to stand if they came to believe that Santa was real as adults. No one stood. Then he asked people to stand who came to believe in Jesus Christ as their real, living Saviour as an adult, and hundreds stood up. He countered that Jesus is very real, and his Life and Life lived through his students is studied by people with doctorates. There are no PhDs who study Santa Claus as a real, living person. He also pointed out that some say Jesus could not have been born of a virgin because it goes against the laws of nature. Dr. Lennox explained that we go against the laws of nature when we catch a falling apple. For the Creator of all things--including the laws of nature--to step into time by way of a Divine Spermatozoa is completely fitting with Who He is and Who He promised.

If you want to know more about the living Jesus Christ, visit www.RichDrama.com/MyPassion.

Click below to see John Lennox remembering C. S. Lewis. If you're receiving this by email, it's at www.Blog.RichDrama.com (12/20).

https://www.youtube.com/embed/che-sGX9t88?start=17


See the rest of Olympic champion Eric Liddell's Chariots of Fire story in Beyond the Chariots. Watch it online and book a live performance.

Some of you will see this in your inbox, but this happened in 2011: Joyce and I attended a Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall, and the choir was led by our friend Arlene Nembhard. She had invited me to perform with her choir, but that season was just too full. Nonetheless it was thrilling to sing from the balcony! Filling some of the best acoustical space in the world with songs celebrating the Lord's birth was just wonderful! 

My friend Liz called to see if we could use some complimentary tickets to a concert of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Joyce couldn't make it, but my friend Fritz was in from Portland to shoot a wedding, for which he used me as his "second shooter." That was great fun!

At any rate, we went to the concert, and upon entering the hall we were given Chinese hand drums with beads on the ends of two strings. They pound each face of the drum simultaneously when you spin it. Everyone was "warming" up before the concert began, which could, at one point, be heard from the lobby according to the NY Times reviewer.

What the reviewer didn't say was that we called for three encores! The first was for the cellist, Trey Lee, the only one to play a Western instrument. There were many erhus (which I reference in Beyond the Chariots) and various other stringed instruments, plus Chinese percussion and wind instruments, all set up in a Western orchestra fashion. Lee's emotional connection to the piece, first performed in Hong Kong by Yo Yo Ma, was exquisite! I recently taught a Graceworks seminar to the music department at the University of Memphis in which I urged them to envision a story as they play a piece. Whatever story Lee was telling was compelling me to the edge of my seat!