The Lord
blessed us with an awesome evening yesterday as we went caroling. The snow on
the ground was sparkling and friendly. The wind was gentle. We had a very
blessed time caroling. Many people came to stand in open doors as we sang. They
were receptive to the music.
We will
meet this evening for a time fellowship and study at 6 PM. We will be looking
at the Song of Simeon, found in Luke 2. followed a by special Choir practice at
7.30PM. We are going to Handel's Messiah Presentation this Friday at 8 PM.
This is our annual pilgrimage to the majestic presentation of the great
oratorio "Messiah".
This
coming Saturday we will gather for our living Nativity at the Oakdale Mall at 4
PM. The Living Nativity will be presented fro 4 to 7 PM. Those of who live in
the area, please join us. We are planning for a "Flash Mob" to be
singing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus at 6:30 PM. Please mark the change of
time. We were planning for this presentation at 5:15 PM ... now it
will be at 6:30 PM. Those who have sung in the Messiah and those who would love
to sing, please join us. Yancey Moore will be at the Grand Piano. This will be
a Holy Roar. This is part of celebration of Christmas at the Public Square.
Please be praying that the Lord would be glorified and the people will be
blessed.
As part of celebrating Christmas I read, "A Christmas
Carol" by Charles Dickens. I love how the Christ of Christmas, the Hound of
Heaven can find us where we are and can transform our lives as we say Yes
to Him. Sometimes we come to Him kicking and screaming, but when we come to the
crib and the cross, He offers us grace upon grace... Salvation so full and so
free.
Ebenezer Scrooge was really
rattled by his visit from the Spirit of Christmas past. He knew there would be
a next visitor -- the Spirit of Christmas Present, and he braced himself. He
would not be surprised. Dickens wrote that, now, "nothing between a baby and a
rhinoceros would have astonished him very much".
What he met was a great robed figure with
a huge holly wreath on his head and all awash in ivy and mistletoe and turkeys
and geese and suckling pigs and sausages and oysters and pies and puddings and
fruit and a steaming punch bowl. "Look at me," the spirit said. "You've never
seen the like of me before!"
"Never" said Scrooge. "What
have you to teach me?"
"And in a flash they were off
looking at sailors on the seas and miners who dug in the earth, and each one in
some way celebrating Christmas -- the advent of hope. In sick-beds and foreign
lands and jails and hospitals, they saw people who recalled that it was
Christmas and marked it in some modest fashion. They looked in on Ebenezer's
nephew, Fred, with his family and friends playing children's games after dinner
-- Blind Man's Bluff and other games -- "for it is good to be children
sometimes," wrote Dickens, "and never better than at Christmas.
And, finally, at the end of the
journey, from under his great green robe, the Spirit of Christmas Present
produced two children -- two ragged, malnourished children, pinched and
shriveled by monstrous need. "The boy is Ignorance ... the girl is Want" said
the spirit. "But where do they belong?"
"They belong to humanity"
was the answer.
And Scrooge recalled how,
that very day when they came to his business to ask for a donation to help the
poor, he had run them off with words like, "Are there no prisons? Are there no
workhouses?" Now he understood. These gaunt children will wind up there --
ignorance and want will put them there -- unless somebody comes to help at the
front end of their lifetime. That pattern is with us yet, and not to be
forgotten.
But the heart of this
part of the story, to me, is the visit to the Cratchitt home. "They were not a
handsome family," says Dickens, "not well-dressed; their shoes were far from
being waterproof; their clothes were sooty -- but they were happy, grateful, and
contented with the time." For the Cratchitt family,
reality was pretty harsh: five children in a four-room
house, surviving on Bob's meager wages.
And
on Christmas Day, Mrs. Cratchitt dressed in her best, twice-turned gown,
bedecked with ribbons. Ribbons are cheap and they dress up an old
gown.
The
goose was pretty scrawny, but everyone agreed, "Oh, such a goose!" Nobody says
that the pudding is much too small for a large family.
But the Cratchitts
celebrate Christmas!
"God bless us," said Bob.
"Everyone," added Tiny Tim. They even toast Ebenezer Scrooge, the founder of
their meager feast (although Mrs. Cratchitt has to be coaxed into that!). But
the Cratchitts look reality squarely in the eye and see
blessing.
And Tiny Tim, coming home from
church on Christmas Day, told his father that "he hoped the people saw him in
that church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to
remember ... who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.
That's our story for Advent
-- that whatever our present moment looks like, if we look by faith to Jesus
Christ, we can find some strength, we will discover grace upon grace, blessings
upon blessings... We will dicover the faithfulness and mercies of our Lord
God.
From the outside, the
Gospel looks weak and under qualified. It's as vulnerable as a baby in a
cave-barn ... The power of Christmas is not
brute force meeting the brute force of our world -- that sort of strength
doesn't change anything much. The Christ who enters our history as a fragile
baby. He enters silently yet with meekness and majesty. He comes to the dung
hills of our lives and transforms them in to the hills of beauty. He walks into
deserts of homes and by Him they blossom again. He makes all rough places
plain. Joy to the world the Savior is born.
Joy to the world.
In Jesus.
Brown
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