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Last Monday, as I drove home from the grocery store, I was listening to Christmas songs on a popular Christian radio station. Contemporary versions of some of my favorites, in just a span of ten minutes, came through the speakers. The last one, just before I reached home, was a tender rendition of The Little Drummer Boy.
For over five decades of holiday seasons, I’ve listened to this song (often singing along) too many times to count. I’ve also watched my favorite portrayal of the story behind the lyrics on television. The 1968 claymation (stop-motion animation) special about a boy named Aaron first aired when I was only two. The orphan’s difficult journey to Bethlehem to witness the birth of baby Jesus was both heart-grabbing and inspirational. I still remember the first time I saw the scene where young Aaron starts playing his tiny drum for the infant Savior—and the sound his drum makes—the joy it brings.
The lyrics of the song the film was based on are really quite simple, but the message is vastly deep. The song calls us to look at a special and tender part of our relationship with God. Its first verse depicts a calling for us to honor God with the best of ourselves, whatever we have, as an offering: “Come they told me…a newborn King to see…our finest gifts to bring…to lay before the King.” The second verse is about the worry of a poor boy who believes he doesn’t have anything to offer that is “fit for a King.” Could this boy be a mirror of us?
Think about this a bit more. Do you ever feel that you don’t have anything to offer our Lord that is worthy? Or that what you do have may not be good enough to honor and please God?
But this is where the orphan does something both selfless and self-affirming. He offers up the playing of his drum for the Christ child. No, his gift does not have the same worldly, monetary, or symbolic value—the way that frankincense, gold, or myrrh do (it is not a giving of wealth or possessions); it is a simple, heartfelt act—beats of tiny sticks on a tiny (probably handmade) percussion instrument. But, because it is all he has with him, all he has to give at the time, the boy asks, “Shall I play for you?” Then, the baby’s mother, Mary, nods her permission as the animals move in time with the soothing repetitive rhythm: par rum pum pum pum, par rum pum pum pum. The little boy proudly plays his “best” on the drum as an offering to the newborn King; he moves from a place of feeling inadequate in the Lord’s presence to playing proudly—giving of the gift and talent that God gave him.
This moving gesture calls us to look at our own gifts and talents, to discern what our Lord bestowed on us to share with others. Is it music? Is it dance? Is it prayer? Is it testimony and teaching? Is it in serving others? Is it patience and caregiving? Is it loving kindness? Is it one of the millions of other gifts God freely gives His earthly children to use in this world—children who grow to be adults with these same important gifts? As we get older, the gifts we were created and born with are still with us—they are wrapped in the packages of our unique DNA (even if we’ve yet to unwrap them). So, too, are the talents and skills that we collect, or learn, or are gifted along our journey’s way.
Last week, when I pulled into my driveway with my bread and bananas, I was struck by the final declaration of this favorite song. Even though I’d heard it and sung it hundreds of times, I experienced it differently, more personally. I’d never paid much attention to the last line all by itself—its magnitude, its profound message in just five words: “Then, He smiled at me.”
So, I repeated the line over and over to myself. Why? The babe in the manger smiled at the orphan boy, well pleased with the offering—as if to say, "You fulfilled your calling, well done." In the end, isn’t this what we all hope to achieve in this life? To give glory and honor to God in all we do, and have God be pleased? For me, it is. And for me, it is why I may find myself in moments of self-doubt—doubting my own worthiness or gifts, or if what I have to offer this world really does matter.
But the boy in the song had come to the manger, maybe in search of something to heal his heart, his aloneness, something he was missing…maybe holding some disillusionment at the harshness of the humanity he experienced around him—some judgment, some cruelty, some brokenness. And, as he stood before his King, and offered up all that he had, God’s grace smiled on him in the face of a baby.
“Then, He smiled at me,” the boy witnessed. A smile and… I am healed; I know that I am worthy; I am good enough just as I am.
Those lyrics, those five words, we should remember and put on repeat as we head into Christmas this year—reflecting on just how much God loves us through the gift of Jesus. We should be like that humble Drummer Boy, standing at the foot of the manger, and offer ourselves and our unique gifts to God (whatever they might be). And, if we don’t know what our gifts are, ask God to reveal them. Then play our own drums proudly, pa rum pum pum pum, and picture the newborn King, Christ the Lord, smiling up at us.
Amen.
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