Hanukkah Carols

Hanukkah has been over for a week, but before we leave this holiday, I want to share a couple of the carols we sing:

THE SHAMMAS
Eight little candles in a row. See how the candles shine and glow!
Above the rest there stands the Shammas, servant to the others.
One for each night the candles' lit...'til through the days there are all eight.
None would be lit without the Shammas. Darkness alone would then pervade.

Chorus: The Shammas came to serve the small.
The greatest is the Shammas of all.
He came to earth so He might serve
and died for us though not deserved.

Thanks to our God who sent the Shammas, who lights our lives and gives us worth.
So like the other little candles, we might shine forth His light on the earth.


WHY PRAISE THE MACABEES?

Moses, our teacher, gave to us a code.
He said, if we obey it and love the Lord our God,
Then in a land we'd prosper, with peace on every border,
And be filled with the plenty from the land we'd sown.

CHORUS: Why do we praise the Macabees when we forget to
praise the God who sent them? Not to praise our
God has meant our fall. His law demands that we
should love Him and obey Him above anything.
Religion does not honor Him at all.

We've failed to keep our God's command
and failed to keep His law.
Instead of peace and plenty, war, dispersion came along.
And men, like Antiochus, have come, through time, against us
and filled our lives with agony and made us sore.

In mercy, God has come to us so all of us can see...
How great His love is towards us when His Son died on a tree.
It ought to make us love Him...Should we reject His favor,
A new Antiochus we shall ever see.