“O Fortuna” in a Train Station

I have had horrible morning sickness five times. Many months each time seeking to distract myself. Survival mode. 

With my youngest, some days I would read books for eight hours, and then my brain would be tired and ready for a change, so I would watch Pride and Prejudice (Keira Knightley version) every day. Not usually the whole thing, but my favorite scenes. 

And I watched flashmobs. 

My favorite will always be my first, the amazing "Hallelujah Chorus" in a food court.

But my second favorite takes place in a train station in Austria.

The flashmob performs the opening song, “O Fortuna,” from the cantata Carmina Burana, a selection of 24 medieval poems set to music. 

This song is sung to the goddess Fortune, so it’s not at all Christian. 

But I knew this music. After I heard it in one of my humanities classes in college, I bought the album and listened to it again and again. 

So when I heard the thin prelude, hardly there, I knew that was a little teaser. The initial, powerful opening would come soon like a clap of thunder. 

And as the song went on, I knew when a swell in the intensity was approaching, and I leaned in, anticipating. 

I wept and wept, because it was even better than I expected, this explosion of beauty to unsuspecting travelers.

This piece of music that I enjoyed, now experienced in three dimensions.

Abraham called God “the Great God,” El Olam. That means something like “your greatness extends into the past and into the future infinitely in either direction, but without a time element, as one outside time.” 

If I felt overcome with the joy and pleasure of anticipation in this little flashmob in a train station, I cannot imagine the amount of joy that God must feel as his plans come to pass on the earth.

He leans in, anticipating all the threads coming together. He celebrates the graces in our lives, small and large.

Lord God, thank you that you know the end from the beginning, that you orchestrate our days. Thank you that you love creativity and artistic expression and joy and celebration and unexpected moments of grace. Thank you that you give these things to us in our lives.

I ask that we would live ever more out of a sense of joy and gratitude.

Thank you for my brothers and sisters, Lord. I hold them in my heart, since they are partakers of grace with me. Bless them this day and every day, in the name of Jesus, amen.

The king has lavished on us the wealth of his grace,

Amy Joy

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