How God speaks
God speaks into or out of the thick of our days. He speaks not just through the sounds we hear of course, but through events in all their complexity and variety, through the harmonies and disharmonies and counterpoint of all that happens. As to the meaning of what he says, there are times that we are apt to think we know.
-Frederick Buechner, in The Sacred Journey
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Who then is this?
The disciples of Jesus had planned a night crossing of the Sea of Galilee. But that night the wind rose suddenly, shredding sails and cracking spars, and the waves pounded the hull and washed over the deck. They knew they were in trouble, big trouble.
Jesus ... "rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' Then the wind ceased, and there was dead calm"
(Mark 4:39). I would imagine that the quiet outside the boat was nothing compared with the quiet inside the boat. Mark reports that the disciples were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this?"
Who then is this? It is fundamental in the sense that, if we get the answer to this question wrong, nothing else will matter very much. But if we get the question right, we'll very likely get a lot of other things right as well.
But this question can only be asked properly in the way the disciples asked it: in the company of Jesus. They had already started to follow him, obey him. They were living in his presence. Who is this One, they wondered, who has called us and turned our lives upside down and filled us with awe?
The order of things is important. We don't first get answers to all our questions, and then decide to join the company of Jesus' followers. Instead, we begin by trusting Jesus enough to start down the road of discipleship. Then we try to understand who has taken us by the hand and what has happened to us.
-Donald W. McCullough, from Chimes
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Special Dates
- Winter begins, December 21, 1998
- Christmas Eve, December 24, 1998
- Christmas Day, December 25, 1998
- New Year's Eve/Watch Night, December 31, 1998
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Words of welcome
(Feel free to use these in your worship bulletins.)
As we gather to worship during Advent, we meditate about the coming of Christ. We welcome the living Christ into our midst today. And we also warmly welcome all who have come to join in the celebration of the coming of the One who brought light and life to earth. We invite everyone to linger for fellowship after the service. Joy to the world!
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We joyfully welcome all who have come to celebrate God's best gift to all of humanity, Jesus the Christ, our Lord and Savior. Let every voice be lifted up in singing and praying as we focus upon the Prince of Peace, the Light of the World. And let every hand be extended in fellowship and good will as we greet and share with one another. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
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[For Christmas Sunday:] Welcome! A merry and holy Christmas to one and all! We gather to remember that Christ's "light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5). Therefore we join in gratitude for God's immeasurable love revealed in Christ. With grateful hearts we praise God. With warm and friendly hands let us reach out to one another. May the blessings of Christmas be yours!
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- If we pause to think, we'll have cause to thank.
- Feed your faith and your doubts will starve to death.
- There is no limit to the amount of good people can do if they don't care who gets the credit.
- Faith is not a possession to keep, but a blessing to share, a light to diffuse, and life to communicate.
- How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
-William Shakespeare
- God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- When we go into a new year, it is like sailing on a ship with sealed orders not to be opened until the voyage has begun.
- Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him.
-Mark Twain
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Claiming what is ours
Ben Hooper, who has twice been elected governor of Tennessee, tells this story about his childhood.
"My mother wasn't married [when I was born]. When I started to school my classmates had a name for me, and it wasn't a very nice name. I used to go off by myself both at recess and during lunchtime because of the taunts of my playmates, which cut me deeply. What was worse was going downtown on Saturday afternoon and feeling every eye burning a hole through you. They were all wondering who my real father was.
"When I was about 12, a new preacher came to our church. I would always go in late and slip out early. But one day the preacher said the benediction so fast I got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. I could feel every eye in church on me. Just about the time I got to the door, ... I looked up and the preacher was looking right at me.
"'Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?'
"I felt the old weight come upon me. It was like a big, black cloud. Even the preacher was putting me down, I thought.
"But as the pastor looked down at me, studying my face, he began a big smile of recognition. 'Wait a minute,' he said, 'I know who you are. I see the family resemblance. You are a son of God!
"With that, he slapped me across the back and said, 'Boy, you've got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.' "That," Ben Hooper said, "was the most important single sentence anyone ever said to me."
With Christ's help, Ben Hooper had overcome his sense of rejection and inadequacy and claimed his inheritance as a child of God.
-Jamie Buckingham,
in Power for Living
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Worthy of note
A young boy wrote to his aunt after Christmas: "Dear Aunt Ruth, I want to thank you for all the gifts you have sent me in the past, and all you intend to send me in the future. Love, Eugene." (No doubt, he will grow up to be a diplomat.)
Another child had this to say in a "thank you" letter:
"I love the book you sent me for Christmas. I have been reading it day and night and am now on page 10." (Well, some of us are simply slow readers.)
Then there was the lad who was painfully honest: "Thank you for the fire ingin. It's almost as good as the one I really wanted."
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Yes, it's wonderful!
Toward the end of her life, the gifted singer/actress,
Ethel Waters, wrote a book titled: To Me It's Wonderful. It
is the story of her life before and after meeting Christ, and it is quite touching. Her last words in the book were addressed to other performers whom she thought of as her children. She wrote:
"To you among my precious children out there in the professional world - or anywhere - just in case we don't have a chance to talk before Mom goes home, I would like for you to make me very happy in carrying this thought: Jesus Christ can dry your eyes, and wipe that unhappy look off your faces. He sees it, too, just the way I see it. I miss you. All of you. Jesus misses you. And if you believe in my love for you, just try to think how much he loves you!
"Right now, wherever you are, you can turn around and he'll be there welcoming you. Waiting to prove his love to you as he's proven his love to Ethel Waters.
"A lot of people think the world had the best years of my life. That's not true. With Jesus, every year is the best year of anyone's life. So, therefore, this is the best year of my life."
"Children, Jesus is real. He loves every 'sparrow' best. I know, oh, how I know. And you will make me very happy if you let me know that by faith you now believe with Mom when she sings ... 'To me it's wonderful.'"
-Ethel Waters,
in To Me It's Wonderful
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A new life for the new year
A man approached a woman in a restaurant and gleefully exclaimed, "Dorothy! It's so good to see you! I see you have a new look. I like the new color of your hair. Your new hairstyle becomes you. Your new makeup certainly highlights your loveliest features. And I'm impressed with your new clothes and how well they fit you."
As he finally quit gushing, the woman said, "Sir, I think you have mistaken me for someone else. My name is Helen."
He immediately said, "Oh, so you now have a new name, too. Wonderful! Wonderful!"
The fast approaching new year reminds us of newness of life that comes through Christ. "If anyone is in Christ," St. Paul wrote, "he is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Apostle further says: "put off your old nature ... and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:22 ff). What better advice could Christians heed?
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A Christmas prayer
Dear Lord, in this holy Christmas season may we draw nearer to you. How wise you were to reveal yourself in the presence of a little baby, the Christ child. You demonstrated the power and the depth of your love for each of us. Thank you for showing us that Christmas begins in the heart, and for the love that it teaches. Help us now to keep the light of the Christmas message burning brightly all year through. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.
-Norman Vincent Peale
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Children write to God
Dear God,
Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that ...
or was it an accident?
Norma
Dear God,
Who draws the lines around countries?
Nan
Dear God,
If you watch me in church next Sunday, I'll show you my new shoes.
Mikey
Dear God,
I didn't think orange went with purple until I saw the sunset.
Emily
-From Children's Letters to God
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He's got the idea
During a children's sermon, the pastor asked the children what "Amen" means. A little boy raised his hand and said, "It means, 'Tha-tha-tha-that's all, folks!'"
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The record of kindness
Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close; then let every one of these short lives leave its sure record of some kindly thing done for others, some goodly strength or knowledge gained for yourself.
-John Ruskin
Lighting candles at Christmas
I will light candles this Christmas:
Candles of joy despite all sadness,
Candles of hope where despair
keeps watch,
Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days,
Candles of grace to inspire all my living,
Candles that will burn all year long.
-Howard Thurman
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A Bible reader
When our 9-year-old granddaughter, Janna, transferred
to a new school, she told her mother she thought she was going to like her new science teacher: "Today she told us all about Jacobs and molecules and stuff like that."
Her mother said, "Don't you maybe mean atoms and molecules?"
"Oh," Janna replied, "I knew it was something from the Bible!"
-Dera Keen
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Go tell it on the speed bump
Someone has suggested that hymns contain the theology we ought to believe, but the following titles may reflect what we sometimes wish:
- I Surrender Some
- Fill My Spoon, Lord
- Oh, How I Like Jesus
- He's Quite a Bit to Me
- It Is My Secret What God Can Do
- Where He Leads Me, I Will Consider Following
- Sit Up, Sit Up, for Jesus
- A Comfy Mattress Is Our God
- Self-Esteem to the World, the Lord Is Come!
- Oh, For a Couple of Tongues to Sing
- Amazing Grace, How Interesting the Sound
- Pillow of Ages, Fluffed for Me
Let's strive to make the original words to these hymns the desire of our hearts.
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The seed of good actions
Good intentions are, at least, the seed of good actions; and everyone ought to sow them, and leave it to the soil and the seasons whether he or any other gather the fruit.
-William Temple