CHRISTMAS DAY IS HERE! Day 26 CHRISTMAS DAY

As Christmas Day begins and the daily posting of my Christmas verses comes to an end, I want to wish you all a truly wonderful Christmas and a New Year full of joy and peace and blessing.

Bournemouth Christmas

__________________________

A couple come to Bethlehem

With nowhere else to stay,

They take a humble cattle shed,

In time for Christmas Day.

Their child is born within that place,

Half-hidden in the hay;

His cot, the cattle’s eating trough,

On that first Christmas Day.

Some shepherds come in from the cold

To where the baby lay,

And kneel before the One whose birth

Created Christmas Day.

Years later, with expensive gifts,

Some wise men homage pay,

And find it’s not their gifts, but he

Who makes their Christmas Day.

You wish that Christmas time could last?

You wish that it could stay?

Then seek the only One who can

Make each day Christmas Day.

HPW ©

God bless you all,

Howard Webber

Christmas Morning –

Bournemouth, England

O Little Town of Bethlehem Sung by SA leaders in Japan

Christmas Eve Feelings 2014

For fifty years I have sought to find the words that would stretch the minds and touch the hearts of those gathered on Christmas Eve, and always, I discovered there was something about the service that no words could express.  Sunday morning we would think about what Christmas means, on Christmas Eve we would feel it.  There was no attempt to explain it, analyze it, or even understand it.  We were taking it in; or more accurately, we were letting it take us in. We entered into it and let it warm our hearts and cleanse our minds.

There are times when we analyze a piece of music.  We go through it line by line.  We see where one theme begins, where the development ends, and where another theme begins in another key.  But there other times when we just listen to it, enjoy it, lose ourselves in it.  Christmas Eve is like that, it does something to us.  It fills our world, if only for a little while with beauty.  There is something indestructible about it, something that none of the vulgarity or the ugliness of our times can destroy. Some of the beauty brushes off on us and makes our life less bare than it ordinarily is.

Also, Christmas Eve takes us back to our childhood, back to the days before the wonder of life had worn off; back to the days when we took life more naturally, less tightly, less self-consciously, less suspiciously, more easily, and asked fewer questions.  At my age, I realize that it can also lead us into the second childhood, the mature life to which we are all aspiring, in which innocence is wiser for experience, and yet none the less innocent for that experience. A child is innocent because he or she doesn’t know about the risks and dangers; an adult does know and therefore is no longer innocent; cautious, canny – but not innocent.

I wonder this Christmas Eve if I have arrived at the point where innocence and knowledge are joined together as in a marriage.  I am beginning to feel that there is nothing about life that I haven’t seen; nothing someone could tell me that could shock me.  I feel like I’ve been through almost everything that life could offer: sadness, loneliness, pain, misunderstanding, all these things have at one time or another knocked at my door.  I’ve tasted every drop of sadness, and yet still can sing for joy. I’ve been pushed around by life, and yet never cease to wonder at its amazing possibilities.  This I believe is the second childhood into which every Christian hopes to grow.

This Christmas Eve, even though I have not yet arrived at Bethlehem, I felt again what it’s like. My eyes surveyed one last time the sanctuary where I have preached for the past fourteen years.  I looked at the walls and the floor that I had spent six weeks painting.  I sat down at the pipe pump organ and for one last time played Silent Night.  I could see the faces of the people who sat in the pews, not one without some problem in his or her life. The pulpit, no longer there, nor the communion table where I celebrated the Lord’s Supper, nor the piano that I had played every Sunday; and I found myself kneeling at the altar rail, thanking God for sending Jesus into the dark night of the first Christmas Eve, and for the manger in my heart where he has reigned as Lord for all these years, and asked for strength to follow the star wherever it would lead in the future.  With tears in my eyes, I had as it were, a preview, a foretaste of what mature childhood is like, as one more Christmas Eve I move steadily, though perhaps slowly toward it, as Christmas moves quickly toward me.

Dr. John Sullivan
Canada

ADVENT IS HERE! Day 25 CHRIST IS BORN IN BETHLEHEM

Christ is born in Bethlehem,


Bringing peace and joy to men.


Why not let the Christ-child bring


That peace and joy to you?

Angels celebrate his birth,

Shepherds leave their sheep to search.

Why delay discovering

The One who’s seeking you?

Magi travel far to see

In a manger – Majesty!

Why hold back from seeking him

When you could find him too?

This, God’s Son, will one day die

On a cross of wood, hung high.

Why ignore his suffering?

He did it all for you!

HPW ©

God bless you all,

Howard Webber

Bournemouth, UK

ADVENT IS HERE! Day 24 THE BABY

I’m elated at seeing this beautiful baby,


This bubbly, gurgling bundle of joy,


Amazed at the grip that he has on my heart strings,


My soul’s deeply stirred at the sight of this boy.

What a gift is this child God has sent us from heaven;

What a risk he has taken to send us his Son;

What a start, to be laid in some hay in a manger;

What on earth will become of this dear little one?

HPW ©

God bless you all,

Howard Webber

Bournemouth, UK