Reaching out from Grand Lake Community Chapel
Wednesday, December 6, 2023
Greetings in Christ!
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it! Let us rejoice in the joys of the season and let us be glad that we have more than two weeks left to finish preparing the way of the Lord in our hearts and souls! We know that the last-minute shopping push is well underway, with stores and on-line retailers urging us to hurry up and buy, but there’s no last-minute push to get ready for that which truly matters; we will celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th, and we’re confident that we will be ready to receive him.
Have you ever wondered what Advent and Christmas would look like if the holidays hadn’t become so heavily commercialized? If, in the words of Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas hadn’t become a “humbug – a waste of time and money. A false and commercial festival, devoutly to be ignored.” Even during the 19th Century, when Charles Dickens penned “A Christmas Carol,” there was some sentiment that the true meaning of Christmas, the reason for the season, if you will, had been lost to a flurry of buying and selling; it’s only been magnified in the centuries that have followed. It would be an interesting exercise to try to identify just when it was that this profoundly religious festival began to turn into the “false and commercial festival” that old Ebenezer described, but that is a task for a different day. Today, our task is to embrace Advent, to embrace the true meaning of the candles on the Advent wreath; to embrace the little child that is to be born to us; and to make hope, peace, joy, and love the touchstones of our lives from this day forward.
Blessings to you during this holy season.
Karen and Greg
Home: (989) 474-9116, Cell: (734) 502-5969
revgregrc@yahoo.com / revgreggl@yahoo.com
revkarenrc@yahoo.com / revkarengl@yahoo.com
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
1 John 4:16b
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