Peacechild

This is a version of this fantastic video on Youtube. We have used this at Christmas services for the past few years and it is very well received.

More details of the video and higher quality copies are available here:
http://www.familyworship.org.uk/peacechild.htm

A beautiful original animated video, to the song "Peace Child", written by Mike Burn at the start of the new milennium. Features a children's choir, and lovely orchestral arrangement.

He came for – you! [Christmas Eve]

He came for – you! [Christmas Eve]


"…GOD WAS MANIFEST IN THE FLESH…" 1 TIMOTHY 3:16

He was born in abject poverty, yet a choir of angels filled the heavens with songs of His greatness. A star that astronomers still can’t explain to this day became the compass that brought world leaders to worship at His crib.

His birth defied the laws of biology and His death defied the laws of mortality. No miracle is greater than His life and teaching. He owned no cornfields or fisheries, yet He spread a table for 5,000 and had bread and fish left over. He never walked on expensive carpeting, yet when He walked on water it supported Him; when He spoke the wind and the seas obeyed Him.

His crucifixion was the crime of all crimes, yet in God’s eyes no less a price could have made your redemption possible. When He died, few mourned, yet God hung black crepe over the sun. Those who crucified Him never once trembled at what they’d done, yet the earth shook beneath them. Sin couldn’t touch Him. Decay couldn’t claim His body. The soil that was reddened with His blood couldn’t claim His dust.

For over three years He preached the gospel, yet He wrote no books, built no cathedrals, and seemingly had no great financial resources. Yet 2,000 years later, He’s still the central character of human history, the perpetual theme of Christian preaching, the pivot around which the ages revolve – and the only Redeemer of the human race!

For every other job, God sent a man. But in order to rescue and recycle you, God became a man. Aren’t you glad?

From Word fro Today 24th December 2003

The Unspeakable Gift

Long ago, there ruled in Persia a wise and good king. He loved his people. He wanted to know how they lived. He wanted to know about their hardships. Often he dressed in the clothes of a working man or a beggar, and went to the homes of the poor. No one whom he visited thought that he was their ruler. One time he visited a very poor man who lived in a cellar. He ate the coarse food the poor man ate. He spoke cheerful, kind words to him. Then he left.

Later he visited the poor man again and disclosed his identity by saying, "I am your king!" The king thought the man would surely ask for some gift or favor, but he didn't. Instead he said, "You left your palace and your glory to visit me in this dark, dreary place. You ate the coarse food I ate. You brought gladness to my heart! To others you have given your rich gifts. To me you have given yourself!"

The King of glory, the Lord Jesus Christ, gave himself to you and me. The Bible calls Him, "the unspeakable gift!"

Another Version:

Many years ago the land of Persia was ruled by a wise and beloved Shah who cared greatly for his people and desired only what was best for them. One day he disguised himself as a poor man and went to visit the public baths. The water for the baths was heated by a furnace in the cellar, so the Shah made his way to the dark place to sit with the man who was in charge of the fire. The two men shared a meagre meal, and the Shah befriended him in his loneliness, and day after day the ruler came to visit the man.

Eventually the Shah revealed his true identity, and he expected the man to ask for him for money or a gift. Instead he looked long into his leader's face and with love and wonder in his voice said, "You left your palace and your glory to sit with me in this dark place, to eat my coarse food, and to care about what happens to me. On others you bestow riches and gifts, but to me you have given yourself."

This version quoted from www.itsaboy.org.uk website

The Geese

There was once a man who didn't believe in the incarnation or the spiritual meaning of Christmas, and was skeptical about God. He and his family lived in a farm community. His wife was a devout be

One snowy Christmas eve she was taking the kids to the Christmas eve service at church. She plea ded with him to come, but he firmly refused. He ridiculed the idea of the incarnation of Christ and After they left, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a blizzard. As he looked out the window, all he saw was a blinding snowstorm. He sat down to relax before the fire for the evening.

He had compassion for them and wanted to help them. He thought to himself, "The barn would be a great place for them to stay! It's warm and safe; surely they could spend the night and wait out the Starting to get frustrated, he went over and tried to shoo them, run after them, and chase them toward the barn. They only got scared and scattered into every direction except toward the barn. Not

Feeling totally frustrated, he exclaimed, "Why don't they follow me! Can't they see this is the only place where they can survive the storm! How can I possibly get them into the one place to save.

He stood silently for a moment as the words that he just said reverberated back to himself in his mind: "If only I could become like one of them -- then I could save them." He thought about his As the winds and blinding snow abated, his heart became quiet and pondered this thought. He understood what Christmas was all about. He knew why Christ had come.

- Unknown

The Birth

Whether he was born in 4 B.C. or A.D. 6, in Bethlehem or Nazareth, whether there were multitudes of the heavenly host to hymn the glory of it or just Mary and her husband--when the child was born, the whole course of human history was changed. That is a truth as unassailable as any truth. Art, music, literature, Western culture itself with all its institutions and Western man's whole understanding of himself and his world--it is impossible to conceive how differently things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did. And there is a truth beyond that: for millions of people who have believed since, the birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it

Frederick Buechner in Listening to Your Life. Christianity Today, Vol. 37, no. 15

The humility of the Incarnation

In his best-selling book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey contrasts the humility that characterized Jesus’ royal visit to planet earth with the prestigious image associated with world rulers today:

In London, looking toward the auditorium’s royal box where the queen and her family sat, I caught glimpses of the…way rulers stride through the world: with bodyguards, and a trumpet fanfare and a flourish of bright clothes and flashing jewelry.

Queen Elizabeth II had recently visited the United States, and reporters delighted in spelling out the logistics involved: her four thousand pounds of luggage included two outfits for every occasion, a mourning outfit in case someone died, forty pints of plasma, and white kid-leather toilet seat covers. She brought along her own hairdresser, two valets, and a host of other attendants. A brief visit of royalty to a foreign country can easily cost twenty million dollars.

In meek contrast, God’s visit to earth took place in an animal shelter with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn king but a feed trough. Indeed, the event that divided history, and even our calendars, into two parts may have had more animal than human witnesses. A mule could have stepped on him.

Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995)

The stairs of heaven

Christmas is when God came down the stairs of heaven with a baby in His arms.

R. Eugene Sterner in Vital Christianity (Dec 14, 1975). Christianity Today, Vol. 34, no. 18.

He Became

He became what we are that he might make us what he is.

Saint Athanasius

A prince who wanted to find a wife

Soren Kiekegard, the great Danish theologian of another century tells a story of a prince who wanted to find a maiden suitable to be his queen. One day while running an errand in the local village for his father he passed through a poor section. As he glanced out the windows of the carriage his eyes fell upon a beautiful peasant maiden. During the ensuing days he often passed by the young lady and soon fell in love. But he had a problem. How would he seek her hand?

He could order her to marry him. But even a prince wants his bride to marry him freely and voluntarily and not through coercion. He could put on his most splendid uniform and drive up to her front door in a carriage drawn by six horses. But if he did this he would never be certain that the maiden loved him or was simply overwhelmed with all of the splendor. The prince came up with another solution. He would give up his kingly robe. He moved, into the village, entering not with a crown but in the garb of a peasant. He lived among the people, shared their interests and concerns, and talked their language. In time the maiden grew to love him for who he was and because he had first loved her.