Songs of the Season

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“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors!” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever had one of those albums where every single song on it is your favorite song? For me, around this time of year, it is Meredith Andrews’ Christmas album, Receive Our King. Last year around this time I introduced you to the first track on the album, Andrews’ version of Come Thou Long Expected Jesus. This morning as we continue in our Advent series, I want to share with you another from the same album (and, spoiler alert, I’m going to offer you one more from it next Friday which is going to be instrumental in our Christmas Eve service). What was it like being a shepherd in the fields around Bethlehem on the night Jesus was born? What was the song of the angels really like? Let’s ponder that together.

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Morning Musing: Luke 1:43-45

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“How could this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For you see, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped for joy inside me. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill what he has spoken to her!” (CSB – Read the chapter)

How trusting of a person would you say you are? That depends on a number of different factors, doesn’t it? It could be that your parents weren’t so good about keeping their word to you, and so you default to believing everyone around you is lying. Maybe you’re a very trusting person by nature, but that trust runs along the edge of naiveté and has gotten you in trouble a time or two. There’s a balance point here. You don’t want to be blindly trusting because people do lie, but if you don’t trust anyone, you can’t have any relationships. There is one person, though, who should always have our trust.

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Morning Musing: Matthew 1:21

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“She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The first Christmas involved faith. A lot of faith. It involved a great deal of individuals no different from you and me being willing to trust God on a series of adventures they didn’t plan on, and which – if they were being honest – they didn’t even want at first. But in the end, they were all willing to take their plans, hopes, dreams, desires, and set them aside in favor of His. The result was nothing less than the world being irrevocably changed. We talked about one of these stories yesterday in Mary. Today, let’s take a look at Joseph’s story.

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Digging in Deeper: Luke 1:34-38

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“Mary asked the angel, ‘How can this be, since I have not had sexual relations with a man?’ The angel replied to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. And consider your relative Elizabeth – even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ ‘See, I am the Lord’s servant,’ said Mary. ‘May it happen to me as you have said.’ Then the angel left her.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been asked to do something that seemed impossible? How about this: Have you ever been asked to do something that was going to cause serious disruption to your life? The first you can’t do. The second you perhaps can, but you don’t want to. It is not impossible for you to accomplish, but rather is impossible for you to consider. Mary was asked to do both. What the angel asked of her on God’s behalf was both impossible as far as she knew, and the furthest thing from what she would have wanted to do given the plans she no doubt had for her life. How she responded has something powerful to say when God calls us to do hard things in our own lives. Let’s continue our Advent journey this morning by looking at what Mary was called to do, and what she did about it.

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Sidelined

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Have you ever felt like you’re sitting on the sidelines when you want nothing more than to be in the game? Sometimes life does that to us. As we continue forward in our Advent series, The World Turned Upside Down, this week we are looking at some characters who spent a lot of time on the sidelines before their moment came. Let’s see together how they handled it and talk about how we should.

Sidelined

I played basketball when I was in school for three years. Fourth through sixth grades. I remember when my folks got me a basketball goal for our driveway at the house where I grew up. We had a friend come over and help pour the cement foundation for it. We even got to put our handprints in it. And I dominated the driveway games for a while. So when I finally reached the age I could play a sport other than baseball (which I was generally pretty awful at), I was as excited as I could be to join the school’s basketball team. 

Then I got on the court. 

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