A Higher View of God

Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger and this is the program for you as a family caregiver. More than 65 million Americans right now are serving as a family caregiver. Maybe, maybe you're one of them. If you are, you're in the right place.

If you are not, you're still in the right place because if you love somebody, you're going to be one. If you live long enough, you're going to need one. That is the general rule of thumb for the family caregiver. How do you help somebody stay strong and healthy as they take care of someone who is not? That question defines the singular purpose of this program which is to strengthen the family caregiver.

To better equip you to deal with the onslaught of what faces you as a family caregiver when you take care of somebody with some type of relentless chronic impairment. You're going to be stretched. There's no question about it. Physically, physically, emotionally, spiritually, professionally, grammatically.

No, not grammatically. But you will be. And those of you who've been doing it for a while, you understand it.

You get it. And the impairments come in many forms. I think when I say the word caregiver, so many people think of taking care of aging parents. And that's certainly a big part of what so many are facing.

But that is not what I'm exclusively talking about. Many, many, many, many, many people have special needs children with all types of different disabilities challenges. Some have Down syndrome. Some have autism. Some have cerebral palsy.

Some are blind. There's just so many different afflictions, but there's always a caregiver. But we're not dealing with nursing homes. We're just dealing with families. Some of you have a loved one who has struggled with the aftermath of trauma, such as myself. That's what we deal with. When Gracie had a traumatic car accident back in 1983, and this accident left her with lifelong consequences, some of you are dealing with somebody who has an addiction, some type of whether dependency on alcohol or drugs, whatever. There's all kinds of different things we can become addicted to as flawed human beings. And some of you are just pulling your hair out, dealing with somebody who their, their mind doesn't reason in a normal way that it's hard to deal with. We're going to talk about that in the next talk. Some of you are dealing with somebody with a disease that requires constant maintenance, not necessarily a mental impairment, just, you know, there's all kinds of things out there.

Crohn's disease. There's so many different things that are involved that serve as an impairment and they will test you. They will push you. They will expose things in you that you're not going to like, but we don't have to despair over this. God rest you merry gentlemen, but nothing you dismay is what we talked about last week. You know, we can learn a lot from these Christmas hymns.

They have what they call compact theology in them, where they take these great truths and texts and put them in a way that's easy to remember and beautiful prose. And I love these old hymns, you know that, and I'm going to keep doing these for you. But this particular one, I think, captures that point of where we are so discouraged by, we see what's going on around us and we're thinking, this is over. It's done.

We don't have any hope. We're messed up. And there's this great hymn, A Christmas Carol. It was a favorite of a former governor of Tennessee and I would play it for him up at the governor's residence, which was not terribly far from our home when we lived in Nashville and I played over there many times. And one night it was just me and Gracie and Governor and Mrs. Sundquist, Don Sundquist and Martha Sundquist, and I was just taking requests for them and just playing, just the four of us. And he loved this hymn, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.

Let me go to the caregiver keyboard. I heard the bells on Christmas Day, their old, familiar carols play. And wild and sweet, the words repeat of peace on earth, good will to men. I thought how as the day had come, the belfries of all Christendom had rung, the unbroken soul of peace on earth, good will to men. Isn't that a great text? You know who wrote that?

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Now the reason I'm bringing this to your attention is because of one of the ensuing verses. And in despair, I bowed my head. There is no peace on earth, I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men. And we look around us and we see, hey, we see this new shooting that's gone on in Wisconsin in the aftermath of this and the heartbreak of this.

We see this young man shooting this healthcare executive and we see antisemitism and we see all these things out there. And we say, and in despair, I bowed my head. There is no peace on earth, I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth and good will to men. But see, Longfellow didn't stop there. He went on and he said, then peeled the bells more loud and deep. God is not dead, nor doth he sleep. He's put in quote, God is not dead. This is the song of the bells, not the song of the bells, the song, not that song. This is what Longfellow is saying that the bells are crying out. God is not dead, nor doth he sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right to prevail with peace on earth, good will to men.

The bells peeled out even louder even though he was in despair. Now what does that make you think of? What scripture comes to your mind with that? And I go back to what Jesus said. Look, if you don't praise him, the very rocks are going to cry out.

All of creation is going to cry out to the glory of God. And I think Wadsworth was taking some great poetic liberties there to drive that point home that in his despair, when he's saying that hate is strong and mocks the song, and the song refers to his peace on earth and good will to men, he said, but the bells peeled out even louder. And I think as we go into the Christmas season, sometimes we see the distress around us. We see the strain and the tension, and we see it in our own lives. And as caregivers, we see this on a regular basis.

It's going to bring stuff to the surface. And when we see things in ourselves, we can easily despair. Do you ever despair? I know I have.

And I've seen myself and I've seen, oh man, I've just made a mess of this. And we are tempted to despair. But in that moment, I would point you back to this great Christmas hymn from Longfellow, who wrote the text many years ago. Now, Johnny Marks wrote the music. That's why you hear those chords in there that were not written when Longfellow was around. They didn't have chords like that then.

Those were more jazzy kind of chords. Johnny Marks, of course, wrote, you know, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and then he wrote Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. And I remember seeing Brenda Lee at Kroger there in Nashville, and she would sing that to me.

I had to get that on my knees cause she's very tiny. She says, well, I digress. And Holly, Johnny, Christmas. But Bing Crosby sang I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. Johnny Marks took this great text from Longfellow, who said the bells peeled even louder. Now, do you know when Longfellow wrote this back in 1864? What was going on then? Well, America was at war with itself.

More American lives were lost in the Civil War than all the other wars combined. Against that backdrop, Longfellow penned this lyric. The bells peeled even louder because he was discouraged. He was dismayed, and he saw things that were unpleasant. We see things in ourselves that are unpleasant, but we can rejoice that the bells are peeling louder. God's not dead, and he's not going to allow this to perpetuate.

He's going to right the wrong. Jesus, who died, will be satisfied, and heaven and earth will be one, as the hymn writer said. This is why we cry out. This is why the very rocks would cry out, as Jesus said. Well, if the very rocks could cry out, if Longfellow said that the bells will peel louder, how about us as caregivers?

Can we peel louder? Can we cry out louder to the glory of God in the midst of our distress? When we do, we find that that is hope for the caregiver. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosberger, and this is the caregiver keyboard. One of my favorite hymns, Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Listen to this beautiful song by Mendelssohn that Charles Wesley wrote. Both the angelic host proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem. And I not only had a really cool chord there, but I added an extra measure because I just want to get to that Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

Glory to the newborn King. I just love this hymn. I'm telling y'all, I just love Christmas music, and I can't get enough of it.

I just love playing it, love doing it. The text of this thing, by the way, that Charles Wesley wrote, we owe such a debt to him for the hymns that he wrote, and this is what lifts my soul. You say, Peter, that's great, that's nice, nice songs, but what does that have to do with caregiving? Well, I don't know that it has to do anything with caregiving, but I know that it lifts this caregiver's soul, and I don't think I'm the only one. I think that there is something about music, music that is written to worship God. Martin Luther said, next to the word of God, music elevates the soul like nothing else. And I could tell you, as a caregiver for four decades, I could use a little soul elevation. How about you? Is your soul cast down within you, as the psalmist said?

If it is, what do you do about it? What lifts it? And when I hear these texts, you know, mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die. Do you know what he's saying there? He's laying his glory aside, he's shelving his divinity.

It's almost unthinkable. If you notice about religion in this world, it's always man's attempt to reach God. But what we have here in this text is a beautiful poetic description of God reaching man. Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die.

Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give us second birth, heart the herald angel seek. I mean, what a spectacular way to say that. And Mendelssohn took this amazing melody. And if you'll allow me, I threw in a few chords that probably Mendelssohn didn't use, but he probably would.

They just didn't do it back then. And you cannot help but just lift, I mean, one of the fondest memories I have of my father. And you know, this is my first Christmas without him. He listened to this program every Saturday morning and he and mom would get up and they would sit there at breakfast table and listen to their son and see if he would embarrass the family or not.

But it's terribly difficult to go through a holiday season like this when somebody has passed away and my whole family is dealing with this. But the way I deal with it is I remember the amazing things about him. And one of them was when he sang songs like this, and dad loved to sing hymns. And when he sang the great hymns of the faith, of which this is one, I remember him, and he wasn't in the congregation, he was standing at the pulpit.

And I would see him standing at the pulpit. And I was over to the side often when I was growing up. That's where the choir sat.

And I started in choir when I was in grade school and kind of worked my way from soprano all the way down to bass. But I would have a great view of dad. And he would literally lift up on his tiptoes to sing. You know, what an extraordinary memory I'm grateful to have of him. That he was singing praise to God with everything in him. Bless all that is within me.

Bless his holy name. He took that literally. And he would just sing out.

It's like I said in the last block, the bells would peel out. He wanted to make sure that the bells weren't louder than him. And he had a good voice. I mean, it wasn't that he was singing off pitch.

And it would have been okay if he had a bit. Psalm 47. Clap your hands all you people. Shout to God with loud songs of joy. James 5 13. Is anyone among you suffering? Well, does that sound like us or not?

That's our crowd. Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. I mean, how many verses can you go through and see about singing? Sing for joy O heavens and exult O earth. Break forth O mountains into singing for the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted. That's Isaiah 49 13. Now think about that as a caregiver.

What does this have to do with caregiving? Well, I just told you. Sing for joy O heavens and exult O earth. Break forth O mountains into singing.

We have lots of mountains out here where I live. And when you look at them and you hear that verse in your head, you're thinking, wow, that's exactly what they're doing. For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted. Well, is that you and me? Are we his people? Are we his afflicted?

I would suggest to you that we are. So that's our verse. Isaiah 49 13. Sing to God. Sing praises to his name.

Lift up a song to him. Psalm 68. Psalm 66 4. All the earth worships you and sings praises to you. They sing praises to your name. You remember that old chorus?

Let me go to caregiver keyboard. We sing praises to your name. We sing praises to your name. Oh Lord, praises to your name. Oh Lord, for your name is great and worthy to be praised. We sing praises to your name. Oh Lord, praises to your name. Oh Lord, for your name is great and greatly to be praised. I can't remember who wrote that, but it's a wonderful tune and a great statement.

I mean, it's a simple song, but boy, it packs a punch because that is what we were designed to do. What is the chief end of man? Shorter catechism, number one, Westminster Confession of Faith. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Now, did it say that we get a free pass to not do that if we're caregivers? Do we get a free pass if we're dealing with grief and sorrow and loss to not praise him? I mean, I don't see any place in scripture where it allows us to have that kind of dispensation to avoid praise.

And so this is what I've learned in all of my years as a caregiver is that when we praise him, that's where the real victory happens with us. Doesn't mean it goes away. Y'all, Gracie's legs still haven't grown back. Her body's still broken.

She still deals with a lot of pain and I still take care of her. What's changed? Well, we've changed.

Why? Because we've seen something greater – we've seen a higher view of God than what I had. I can only praise him when I'm happy or feel good or I've got money in my bank account. That was my low view of God. That wasn't even a good low view of God.

But that's the way so many of us have found ourselves thinking. And scripture says, no, we're going to praise him no matter what. And that's when you hear this great text that Charles Wesley wrote on Hark! The Herald Angels Sing because what he's referring to is this amazing event called the Incarnation. Come, desire of nations, come. Fix in us thy humble home. Rise, the woman's conquering seed.

Bruise in us the serpent's head. Adam's likeness, lord of faith, stamp thine image in its place. Second Adam from above, reinstate us in thy love.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Glory to the newborn king. What, Charles Wesley could write a hymn, couldn't he? Man, that's a lot in that text.

And I'm not going to attempt to be any kind of – I'm a semi-pro theologian, JV theologian. But I will tell you that that is extraordinary what he wrote. And it's what sustains me as a caregiver. And so when you marry that amazing text with that beautiful melody from Mendelssohn and the beautiful song that he wrote, you have something that now is eternal.

I mean, it's not going to go away. Our grandchildren will still sing this song. And even though at Christmastime people sing these songs out of sentiment or tradition, they're still singing them.

And they're still going out with this amazing message of the gospel. And that's the only thing that sustains in this journey of ours because the mortality rate in this world is still 100 percent. None of us are getting out of this thing alive, if you'll pardon the expression.

But that's the truth. I mean, should Jesus tarry we're all going to face the grave. We're all going to get older.

The aging rate is still 100 percent. All of those things are inevitable. They are not going to change until he comes back and sets up his kingdom. So no matter how good we feel today or bad we feel today, what is eternal? And if we don't think on these things, if we don't lift up our heads, lift up our hearts, if we don't have a higher view of God, what hope do we have?

We're down here just slugging it out in a mud pit. But even in our hardship, God says we can praise him. My father, of all the memories I have of my father, him standing on his tiptoes to sing praises to God has to be one of the most defining ones. It's an extraordinary testament that he left to me and to my family and to so many others. But he wasn't doing it for us.

He was doing it for his risen Savior. And that is hope for the caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg and we'll be right back.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg and you're listening to Handel's Messiah, one of my favorite pieces from there, For Unto Us a Child is Born, Unto Us a Son is Given. It's taken from Isaiah 9-6. Charles Jenin, I think Jenin, I think he was a Scottish fellow, assembled all this, brought it to Handel. And this text particularly when they get there, the government shall be and the men come in really strong and then they all come in and wonderful.

Listen to this. Isn't that just extraordinary? Charles Jenin has brought this to Handel. He had the whole thing mapped out as far as the text. Handel did this in I think 24 days, put this together.

And there's some that said, well, he already had some of this written prior, but I don't care if it took him 24 years. It's an exceptional piece of music and it is woven into the fabric of this planet. And I got to tell you, I'm going to be really surprised if we're not singing this in heaven because it is, it's a magnificent work. And he signed it at the end, Sola Dea Gloria, SDG, to God alone for the glory.

That's the way Bach, who was his contemporary, signed his music, SDG. I think a lot of churches have transitioned into more contemporary stuff. And I saw one church's Christmas presentation. They had Santa Claus. This is a big church. And they had Santa Claus and fireworks and people flying through the air and all that kind of stuff. And I thought, you know, I understand what you're trying to accomplish here.

And I get it. I'm not here to criticize it, but I would think you would want to elevate the room by doing something like this that has such skill, such elegance, such poetry. It is the word of God set to exquisite music. You cannot help but be absolutely, well, if you're not moved by it, I don't know what to say. It's just something I never get tired of hearing.

I think we're all better for hearing it. That's just me. So that's my foray into Christmas music and classical music in general.

Thank you for indulging me on that. I do miss that. I don't have access to that kind of performance and music here where we live. And when we were in Nashville, I mean, it was like everywhere.

So many churches did this kind of thing, universities and so forth. And I guess I just took it for granted. So I do miss it. And thank you for indulging me for a few moments. A friend of mine wrote me this week and she's got a friend who is caring for somebody in her family who's got mental health issues.

And I wanted to take a moment on this. I had a guy on the show not too terribly long ago who's a mental health counselor and so forth. And one of the things he mentioned was according to the diagnostic manual, the DSM or whatever they call it, basically everybody has some level of mental health dysfunction. Now it could be very, very minor and it could be almost negligible, but there's nobody that is free from this.

It's on a scale of one to five. And based on those numbers, we all fit into that at some level. And that's a startling statistic.

He rattled it off. I mean, I'll have to go back and source it, but for the purpose of this conversation, let's just say we're all here because we're not all there. And we're dealing with something. We all deal with something, whether it's anxiety or depression or some level. And then some people deal with it on a such a debilitating level due to environmental issues, trauma, disease, some type of affliction. There's so many different scenarios, but a mental health issue is certainly a big one in our society and really worldwide and how we deal with that.

And I want to trace it back to something here that I think might be helpful and insightful that somebody shared with me. Jesus, the only record we have of him as anything other than a baby or an adult stepping into his ministry is when he was a 12 year old, I think, at the temple. And he got separated from his parents and they found him talking to the religious leaders and they were stunned by him.

Now, I've thought about that and a friend of mine shared this with me as a mental health person and so forth. They said, you know, one of the things that most likely stunned them was his clarity of thought. It's not that he memorized all of scripture and they were impressed that he could memorize everything.

It had to be more than just that. It would be the way he was able to reason out because that was very important in that culture, still is in the Jewish culture, being able to reason things out. And Jesus was unencumbered by sin. His mind was not affected by sin in any way, shape or form, which is astonishing.

We can't really relate to that. We have no concept of that because we've never known anything other than our sin nature. But Jesus didn't have that.

He lived a perfect life and sin had no place in him. And so therefore his mind was clear in ways that we can't even really fathom. They say we only use 10% of our brain or something like that.

You've heard that before. I don't know if that's true or not. But I would imagine that we are so impaired by sin that we don't even really, we're not aware of it. And I think one of the things we'll find when we get to heaven is the clarity of thought because we won't have to deal with this body of death, this mind that is besmirched by sin. But so many of our loved ones do in a way that's debilitating. We all have some dysfunction as this one guest said. And I would concur with that.

I think that makes sense. But some are more debilitating than others. How do we deal with that? And I'm not talking about impairment from Alzheimer's. I'm talking about mental illness.

The only thing I can tell you is that we cannot go to this individual and expect them to do more than they can. We meet them where they are just like Christ met us where we are. And we can do it without being condescending. But we also keep boundaries, healthy boundaries, recognizing that they're not going to approach problem solving and life and issues and stress and all that in the same way that we would or that we would hope that they would or that we would hope that we would. They're going to make mistakes. They're going to get it wrong. And if you lean on them, it's like going to a hardware store and trying to buy bread.

They don't have it. And getting treatment and counseling and all those kinds of things, those are important. But why would we treat somebody with mental illness different than somebody with a physical disability? For example, Gracie wears prosthetic legs. We would not expect her to walk without her prosthetic legs. She requires adaptive equipment. She's a double amputee.

She doesn't have feet. Why would we expect her to do anything different? But when it comes to mental illness, we can't see it the same way as we can with the physical disability. And so therefore, we impose a set of values on somebody that may not be able to do this. And I think that if we keep that in mind and whoever we're dealing with, it's not that we're going to accommodate them.

You're not going to go to them for life advice or financial advice and so forth and lean on that if they can't do it, if they're not reasoning sound, if they're not in reality. But at the same time, we can go to them without the high expectations or the condescension. We don't have to go there with the resentment and bitterness. And we don't have to go there with fear. I think compassion can be our greatest asset in that.

Just the way, I mean, that's the whole point. For unto us a child is born, a son is given. He came to us.

We couldn't go to him. And he came to us. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor. And that's probably meant in the Old English version, counselor of being a minister of state or something like that, but maybe not. Maybe it's also meant as somebody who provides counseling. He's the ultimate counselor. That's where wisdom comes from.

And he came to us because we could not go to him. If somebody in your family has mental illness, understand that they are held hostage by a terrible jailer. They are in prison. They don't like it. They don't fit in. They feel so alone, so lonely. Before we start saying, well, it's their own fault or this or this or just snap out of whatever, just recognize the fact that their disability, their amputation may not be visible like somebody who has a physical impairment, but it's just as real and it's just as crippling. I can't make Gracie's legs grow back, but I can be careful to walk with her, to provide an environment where she's not going to have trip hazards, to not build a lot of stairs.

You following me? So when you're dealing with somebody with a mental affliction that is dealing with some type of mental illness, let's don't make a lot of emotional stairs for them to climb. Maybe just smooth the path out a little bit. Talk with them, be with them. You don't have to compromise who you are to make their life possible. You don't keep somebody warm by setting yourself on fire.

That's not the way it works. You keep boundaries, good, healthy boundaries, but let compassion drive us. I love this in Philippians 2, 5 through 11. This is in the King James version, because this is how I memorized it when I was younger. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient even unto death, even the death of the cross.

And I look at it from the message. Think of yourself the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God, but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantage of that status, no matter what, not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, becoming, he became human.

Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. Is the servant greater than the master? I got to ask you, this is what I have to ask myself. I look at what you guys probably can imagine a lot of the things that I do for Gracie. She does. She recognized it.

She told me the other day, I mean, she had big tears in her eyes. She said, you do so much. Yeah, I do.

I'm not going to try to sugarcoat that. I do. Why do I do it? Well, yeah, because I love her and she's extraordinary and she is worthy of doing all this. Without taking away any of that, I keep in my mind higher than all of that is what he did for me. What Christ did for me. Who am I to offer less than all I have? Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.

This is what it says. If you're dealing with somebody with a mental illness, let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus and go to them in their distress and compassionately help them with counseling and all those things. But most importantly, mirror Christ. This is Peter Rosenberger. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. That is my friend Hank Martin singing.

That's when love was born. I've always told Hank and he could do it too. He sounds so much like BJ Thomas, who I think had one of the greatest pop voices ever. Hank would burst into a great impression of BJ Thomas, but that's a beautiful hymn that Hank did. Hank and I have written a lot together and I've loved Hank's voice for a lifetime. He and I are just very close friends. So he's got a great Christmas song. I think Archie Jordan wrote that one and I'll have to verify that one.

If I got it wrong, I'm sorry for that. If you haven't finished your Christmas shopping, how would you like to give the gift that keeps on walking? You can go out to standingwithhope.com slash giving and you could sponsor a leg for someone. You can help us put legs on folks through our prosthetic limb ministry.

This is what Gracie envisioned after giving up both of hers. We have two outreaches, the caregiver outreach, which you're listening to right now, or the prosthetic limb outreach. You can be a part of both or one or the other. Whatever your heart wants to do, we would welcome the help. We love what we get to do.

Hard to do it by yourself. And so we're asking for help and it's the end of the year. And if you want to be a part of that, it's a tax deductible gift. Standing with Hope is a 501c3 nonprofit.

Go out and see what we do at standingwithhope.com. And I also would welcome your help in getting the word out that we collect used prosthetic limbs. You can donate a used limb to us through our recycling program. We can disassemble the whole leg and not use the socket because that's made for the patient.

But we can reuse everything else, the foot, the knee, the pylon, the screws, adapters. It goes to a prison in Tennessee run by a wonderful outfit called CoreCivic out of Nashville. They run this particular prison and a bunch of other facilities around the country.

And they have a lot of faith-based programs and we're one of them at Standing with Hope. And inmates volunteer to disassemble the limbs for us. And then we take all the parts and ship them over to West Africa where they're used to make a brand new custom fit leg. We also purchase resin and carbon fiber and all kinds of things to help make those legs.

And those sockets are made on site and then we assemble them with these parts that we can recycle. So it's an amazing work that came out of Gracie's journey. And then if you want to sponsor the care, if you're getting something out of this program and you want to be a part of that and help other caregivers, we'd welcome the help. I've got a Substack page that I put an excerpt from my book every Monday on.

The book is called A Minute for Caregivers When Every Day Feels Like Monday. So every Monday I put this out. It's a free subscription to that. Now if you want to go behind the paywall, there's some other things I put there that you can subscribe with the monthly fee. It's a small one and you can be a part of that. But I put this out for free and I have this one that I thought you all may enjoy.

It'll post on Monday, but I'm giving you all an advance on it because you're special. But do you know who Walter Kirchhoff was? You know who Walter Kirchhoff was?

Not many people do, but go look him up. His name is an important name. He stepped into history on Christmas Eve 1914. He was an opera singer and a German officer and on the battlefield during World War I. The Great War, the war to end all wars is what they called it. He sang Silent Night in both English and German on the battlefield there.

It was Christmas Eve and they're all out there and all of a sudden he starts in German singing Silent Night and then he sings it in English. And on this beautiful moonlit night, frost is on the ground, Kirchhoff's voice rose from the trenches and touched battle hardened soldiers from Belgium, France, Germany and England. Trench warfare during World War I, it was a horrific thing and you can't imagine how just ghastly this was for so many soldiers.

And they say that Britain sacrificed its future on the altar of war. They lost so many promising young men in this terrible war. And just think about this, they're out on the trenches, it's Christmas Eve, they're dug in those trenches and you hear this voice lift out over the battlefield. It touched these soldiers such a way that they started to sing while laying down their arms.

I mean think through this. Incredulously the battlefield became festive as the soldiers tentatively walked toward one another and they started extending Christmas greetings. Now Pope Benedict the 15th I think had pled for a Christmas truce but the fighting continued until the soldiers chose to sing rather than shoot.

More than likely Kirchhoff had no idea of the resulting impact of his voice echoing over the scarred landscape. He followed his heart and honored the moment. Sadly the truce was temporary. Yet history doesn't record the first soldier to resume firing. It only remembers the one who first sang of peace, reverence and the meaning of Christmas. The teachable moment extends today.

Families remain filled with conflict over caregiving challenges many of which erupt at Christmas gatherings. And this may be the case for many of you all in the past. Yet the precedent stands in the darkest of times one voice lifted heavenward can calm a battlefield. If enough people follow Kirchhoff's example we might not only witness a truce we may just witness peace. St. Francis of Assisi said Lord make me an instrument of that peace where there is hatred let me sow love. That is from my book A Minute for Caregivers when every day feels like Monday. It's not too late to get one before you go into Christmas and the holiday season you get it by digital copy or audio version and you can certainly see this at my Substack page. Go out to PeterRosenberger.com and you'll see all the links to everything Standing with Hope, my books, the Substack page all those things.

But take advantage of what I put out there for you. Let's let our voices be instruments of peace. This is a difficult time for us. The holiday seasons are always hard for caregivers. Last year I told you I was in the hospital with Gracie last year. Christmas Eve was a bit weird and yet we sang and Gracie lifted her voice from a hospital bed and I had a keyboard there in the room. It wasn't the caregiver keyboard but it was a caregiver keyboard and I brought it into her hospital room and we sang Christmas carols and from a hospital bed she lifted her voice. That magnificent voice of hers. I've heard nurses incline their ear to hear.

I've seen it many times. If Walter Kirshoff could do this from a battlefield, if Gracie can do this from a hospital bed, how about you and me as caregivers? Can we do this?

And I say to you yes we can. Carve out some time for you to lift your voice and if you need a little help with this I wanted to close out with Gracie singing Silent Night. That hymn that inspired those soldiers to lay down their weapons and come out and greet one another and give thanks to God for the amazing gift he gave at Christmas time. I wrote this arrangement out for her and I played it for her and that voice that has inspired me for a lifetime.

Well let's just say that's the only Christmas present I need from her is to listen to her sing. You can see more at PeterRosenberger.com. All the stuff with Standing With Hope and everything is all out there. As we close the show today Gracie and I want to thank you all for letting us be a part of your journey and we both wish you a very Merry Christmas. This is Peter Rosenberger and this is Gracie singing Silent Night. Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin, mother and child.

Holy infant, so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Silent night, holy night. Son of God, holy night.

Silent night, holy night. Son of God, love's pure light. Radiant beams from thy holy face.

With the dawn of redeeming grace. Jesus, Lord at thy birth. Jesus, Lord. Jesus, Lord. Jesus, Lord at thy birth. Jesus, Lord at thy birth. Jesus, Lord.