Announcements
SYMPATHY: to David and Nadine Roberts at the home-going of David’s father, LCDR George L. Roberts, Jr., USN, Ret., on Saturday, December 4. A service will be held at Arlington National Cemetery in a few weeks.
THANK YOU: for your prayers. Thank you, Pastor Holbrook, for your visits and prayers. Jane Lippy (Ps. 103:2)
NURSERY WORKERS: We are in need of nursery workers for the Christmas Cantata service next Sunday, December 19, at 6:00 p.m. A sign-up sheet is located at the Welcome Desk. Please consider helping out with this important ministry!
TITHING ENVELOPES: You may now pick up your 2022 offering envelopes located on the table in the church hallway.
BUSINESS MEETING: All items voted on at the Annual Church Business Meeting on December 1, were passed.
POINSETTIAS LIST: The list displaying the names of loved ones for whom poinsettias were purchased, “in memory” or “in honor” of, is located on the table in the foyer.
From My Heart
We will be having our Christmas Cantata next Sunday at 6:00 p.m. I trust you will plan to be here and even invite some folks to come with you. After the Cantata, I will give a brief Gospel message and offer folks the opportunity to trust the Lord as their Savior. You will enjoy the service and it will surely get you in the Christmas spirit.
Back in 1819, high up in the Austrian Alps is a region known as the Tyrol - “the land in the mountains.” In those mountains are found two little villages called Oberndorf and Arnsdorf. In Oberndorf, there lived a priest named Joseph Mohr. Mohr had a close friend who lived in Arnsdorf, named Franz Gruber, who was the church organist and village schoolmaster.
Mohr’s church always had a big service in the evening hours of Christmas Day. He and Gruber had previously discussed how they wished they could find the “perfect Christmas song” for that year’s Christmas Day service. On Christmas Eve Mohr got word about a man in the community, a lowly woodcutter, whose wife had just given birth to a son. The woodcutter and his wife wanted him to come to their house to pray a blessing for their newborn child.
Mr. Mohr went to the home of the woodcutter to fulfill his duties and left on foot to walk a few miles across the mountain ridge to the home of a wealthy church member for a Christmas party. As he approached the summit of the mountain, he paused to look over into the valley below. As he stood in the cold night to take in the beauty of that evening, he noticed the starry splendor of the night sky, the twinkling of the village lights below him, the murmur of the Salzack River, and especially the silence of that beautiful evening.
The memory of that summit view stayed in Mohr’s mind, and he went home after the party and stayed up all night putting the words on paper to a poem he called, “Silent Night.” As the sun came up, he quickly ran over his friend’s house to share with him the words he had written. Gruber read the poem and said, “My friend Joseph, you have found it! This is the song we have been looking for!” Gruber picked up his guitar and composed the melody to what would become what was said to be “the perfect Christmas song.”
Let’s thank God today for the wonderful gift of His only begotten Son! Have a great day!
Pastor Norris