It has been famously said, "Where words fail, music speaks." (Hans Christian Andersen) Maybe that's why Christmas music holds such a special place in our hearts. Our hopes for the season are so deep and so profound that words often fail us. But the music we sing gives voice to those hopes and wishes... giving life to the deepest desires of our hearts. As we sing of that "holy night" when "the stars are brightly shining," we reflect not only on the beauty of the Christmas event, we also pray that "the gospel of peace" will reign in the world and that "all oppression shall cease." This year in both word and song, we celebrate the Prince of Peace, come to us in the infant Jesus. Worship Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igDaWRsrc5I

Forward Focus

It was the famous baseball player Satchel Paige who once said, "don't look back, something might be gaining on you!" Without realizing it, we often carry something around with us wherever we go. We bring it out in our conversations and through our actions and attitudes. Those things from our past may never have really existed, or been experienced by us personally, yet their power lives within us, paralyzing us from moving forward and causing us to look backward. What would keep us from perceiving what God is doing? Maybe it is expecting things to look exactly like what was done in the past. Are you copying patterns of the past or do you have a forward focus to the future with great expectation that God is working a new thing? Scripture: Isaiah 43:18-19 18 Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. 19 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Worship link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5zuRlTaFAc

The Shepherds

In 1865, an Englishman named William Chatterton Dix penned the words to a poem entitled "The Manger Throne." A few years later the first three stanzas of that poem were set to the music of an English traditional folk song called "Greensleeves." That song soon became known as the beloved Christmas carol "What Child Is This?" This combination of poetry and music first was published in the United Kingdom in 1871. For close to a century and a half the question found in the title of this carol has become an annual reminder that something significant happened on that night in Bethlehem as someone special lay wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. This child would change the world forever; but what child is this? In the biblical Christmas story, the shepherds are among the first to learn of the birth of the baby Jesus. During the night the angels visited the shepherds and told them of Jesus' birth. A shepherd's job stretches on day and night without much to break up the monotony. No doubt it is difficult to stay awake through the night to watch for thieves and wolves. But had they been asleep, they would have missed the angels' message and the birth altogether. Staying awake, though, they were able to know about and meet the Christ child. What threatens your experience of Christmas? Will you miss the visit from the divine because you are too busy, too distracted, too stressed, or too tired? Stay awake this season so that you can discover for yourself, "What child is this?" Worship link: https://youtu.be/uTgIZ-bdk0g

“An Opening to the Light.” Vulnerability, as a means of encountering Jesus.