God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
I was sitting in a small church in Black Rock, Dundalk, Ireland, staring down at a hymn sheet. It was Christmas Eve and I was looking intently at the lyrics to “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”.
I’m sure I’d looked at the lyrics before (it was always one of my favorite hymns) but, just now, it struck me that I’d always read it as “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” which was wrong but that’s what I’d always remembered and though I ought to have been following the rest of the lyric and letting nothing me dismay, I was, in fact, deeply dismayed, since I’d just found out a short time before that a friend of mine had passed away.