In Christmas 2005 God inspired popular singer/songwriter Todd Agnew to try something new. Known for such thoughtful and hard-driving songs as "Grace Like Rain" and "My Jesus," Agnew assumed he understood everything about the Christmas story. "But that Christmas, God actually made me read it, every day and piece-by-piece," he recalls, "praying through it and asking Him to reveal it to me. I pulled out my Bible and studied, and it came to life for me. Not just true, but real."

He asked himself, What did it look like for those people in the story? Since each perceived Jesus' birth differently, he ended up spending six months poring over those few chapters, "trying to see the Christmas story not the way that I see it now—sitting by my Christmas tree looking back—but as they would have, sitting in a cold barn." His acclaimed 2006 CD, Do You See What I See?, grew out of that study.

As Agnew researched tunes for the album, he was determined to include a favorite, "Do You See What I See?," because throughout the experience he'd been trying to see the Nativity through the witnesses' eyes. Then he made a discovery: "My whole life I thought the song was titled 'Do You See What I See?' but it's actually 'Do You Hear What I Hear?' Still, this concept of looking at things differently, of hearing the same story from a completely different perspective, really captured what we wanted to do with the record."

Long before Agnew's gutsy arrangement, "Do You Hear What I Hear?" was written by French composer Noel Regney and his wife, Shayne, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Imagery from the Nativity scene describes how everyone, including the shepherd boy and even the forces of nature, rejoiced at the birth of Jesus Christ.

While it is commonly considered a Christmas carol, Regney once said, "I'm amazed that people can think they know the song and not know it was a prayer for peace." Originally sung by Bing Crosby, through the years it has been recorded by many artists. But Regney and Shayne's favorite was Robert Goulet's recording in 1963, thanks to his dramatic delivery of the climatic lyric, "Pray for peace, people everywhere."

Linda Owen is a freelance writer and the editor of www.saWorship.com in San Antonio, Texas.

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