“God’s Time Had Come”

"God’s Time Had Come”
Exodus 12:41

God’s time had come,
And just like He said it would be.
Though four hundred and thirty years would pass,
Yet the children of Israel would see
God’s time had come
And no longer in bondage shall be.
I will take you out of Egypt,
And My people shall be free.
Yet, it seemed so long
To wait for God’s eternal plan,
But God would keep His word
And take them to their promised land.
So may we not faint,
But by faith, ever look to Him
For God cannot and will not fail.
He is the beginning and the end.

- Poetic Parson
Pastor Frank Moore

A Candy Maker’s Witness

A candymaker in Indiana in the late 1880’s wanted to make a candy that would be a witness so he made the Christmas Candy Cane. 
He incorporated several symbols for the birth, ministry, and death of Jesus Christ. He began with a stick of pure white, hard candy:
white to symbolize the Virgin Birth and the sinless nature of Jesus, and hard to symbolize the Solid Rock, the foundation of the Church, and firmness of the promises of God. The candymaker made the candy in the form of a “J” to represent the precious name of Jesus, who came to earth as our Savior. 
It could also represent the staff of the “Good Shepherd” with which He reaches down into the ditches of the world to lift out the fallen lambs who, like all sheep, have gone astray. Thinking that the candy was somewhat plain, the candymaker stained it with red stripes. He used three small stripes to show the stripes of the scourging Jesus received by which we are healed. The large red stripe was for the blood shed by Christ on the cross so that we could have the promise of eternal life. Unfortunately, the candy became known as a Candy Cane - a meaningless decoration seen at Christmas time. But the meaning is still there for those who “have eyes to see and ears to hear.” I pray that this symbol will again be used to witness To the Wonder of Jesus and His Great Love that came down at Christmas and remains the ultimate and dominate force in the universe today.

Town of Bethlehem

Episcopal Bishop Phillips Brooks was such a remarkable man that when he died, a five-year-old girl said to her mother, “Oh, mama, how happy the angels will be.” Only a radiantly angelic character could merit such a reward. But his life was not always crowded with such honor and deserved praise.
As a Latin teacher in Boston he was a miserable and conspicuous failure. It was only when he entered the Christian ministry that he found himself, and became the hero among men, the saint among sages and the prince of American preachers.
In 1865, while he was rector of Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia, the thirty-year-old minister made a trip to the Holy Land.
His congregation was so devoted to him that they were loath to give him up even for such an eventful trip, and one Church paper wrote,
“He will go accompanied with the prayers of thousands for his happy journeying and his safe return.”
On December 24, Christmas Eve, he made the trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem on horseback. He noted in his diary,
“Before dark we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it, in which strangely enough, they put the shepherds.” Later that night he attended religious services in an ancient basilica said to have been built by Emperor Constantine early in the fourth century. The service lasted five hours and made clergyman. He returned home with “Palestine singing in his soul,” little dreaming that three years would pass before the seed planted on that trip would bear fruit.
As he planned his services for Christmas 1868, the pastor thought again of the Holy Land and the inspiring visit he had enjoyed there many months before.  Combining preparation with memory, looking forward and backward at the same time, he was moved to express his feelings in a beautiful Christmas carol, written especially with the children of his flock in mind. The new hymn he wanted them to sing that Advent contained these lovely lines:

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
For Christ is born of Mary, and gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars together, proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing to God the King, and peace to men on earth!
How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is giv’n;
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.
Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child,
Where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild;
Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.
O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

The following day, when Lewis Redner, Church organist as well as Sunday School Superintendent, came into the pastor’s study,
Brooks handed him a sheet of paper on which he had written the five stanzas on his new hymn.
“Lewis,” he said, “why not write a new tune for my hymn? If it turns out to be a good tune, I’ll name it ‘St. Lewis’ after you.”
The organist looked at the stanzas and replied, “I’ll do what I can, but if it is a success, why not name the tune ‘St. Phillip’ after you?”
Although he had ample time in which to compose the new tune, Redner delayed writing anything down until it was almost too late. 
“No inspiration,” he complained. The night before the minister planned for the children to sing his new song, Redner had not come up with any music whatsoever. On Christmas Eve, at the very last minute, the inspiration came. He fell asleep worrying about the music, and woke up suddenly in the middle of the night with a new tune ringing in his ears. He wrote down the melody as quickly as he could on a piece of paper close by, and went back to sleep. 
Early the next morning he harmonized the melody and the children sang it for the first time on December 27, 1868.
Brooks later paid tribute to his organist-friend without embarrassing him by naming the tune after him, with a different spelling of the name, calling it
“St. Louis.” The music had thus no connection whatsoever with the city of the same name, though some have tried in vain to establish one.
While Brooks (1835-1893) and Render (1831-1908) remained bachelors all their lives,
they lived to see the Christmas carol in which they collaborated become one of the favorites of children the world over.

A Manger Scene of Love

In 1994, two Americans answered an invitation from the Russian Department of Education to teach morals and ethics (based on biblical principles) in the public schools. They were invited to teach at prisons, businesses, the fire and police departments and a large orphanage.
About 100 boys and girls who had been abandoned, abused, and left in the care of a government-run program were in the orphanage.
They relate the following story in their own words:

It was nearing the holiday season, 1994, time for our orphans to hear, for the first time, the traditional story of Christmas.
We told them about Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem. Finding no room in the inn, the couple went to a stable, where the baby Jesus was born and placed in a manger. Throughout the story, the children and orphanage staff sat in amazement as they listened.
Some sat on the edges of their stools, trying to grasp every word. Completing the story, we gave the children three small pieces of cardboard to make a crude manger. Each child was given a small paper square, cut from yellow napkins I had brought with me.  No colored paper was available in the city.
Following instructions, the children tore the paper and carefully laid strips in the manger for straw. Small squares of flannel, cut from a worn-out nightgown an American lady was throwing away as she left Russia, were used for the baby’s blanket. A doll-like baby was cut from tan felt we had brought from the United States. The orphans were busy assembling their manger as I walked among them to see if they needed any help.
All went well until I got to one table where little Misha sat. He looked to be about 6 years old and had finished his project.
As I looked at the little boy’s manger, I was startled to see not one, but two babies in the manger. Quickly, I called for the translator to ask the lad why there were two babies in the manger. Crossing his arms in front of him and looking at this completed manger scene, the child began to repeat the story very seriously. For such a young boy, who had only heard the Christmas story once, he related the happenings accurately-until he came to the part where Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger. Then Misha started to ad-lib. He made up his own ending to the story as he said,
“And when Maria laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. 
I told him I have no mamma and I have no papa, so I don’t have any place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with him.
But I told him I couldn’t, because I didn’t have a gift to give him like everybody else did.
But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that maybe I could use for a gift.
I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would be a good gift. So I asked Jesus, ‘If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift?’
And Jesus told me, ‘If you keep me warm, that will be the best gift anybody ever gave me.’
So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and he told me I could stay with him---for always.”
As little Misha finished his story, his eyes brimmed full of tears that splashed down his little cheeks.
Putting his hand over his face, his head dropped to the table and his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed. 
The little orphan was looking for someone who would never abandon nor abuse him, someone who would stay with him- FOR ALWAYS. 

Very Best Gift

The very best gift that we can receive
Was given to us from above.
No other gift can ever measure up,
Though they were given in love.
This very best gift is eternal and from God,
And no other gift can ever take its place.
It was the gift of God’s beloved Son
Given to us in abundant grace.
May each of us in this Christmas season
Receive God’s gift of His love -
The blessed Christ of Calvary
God’s precious gift from above.
- Poetic Parson
Pastor Frank Moore

Hymn History: Silent Night, Holy Night

If the Church organ had not broken down and if the organist had not been able to strum a few chords on a guitar in an emergency, the loveliest Christmas carol of them might never have been written. Twenty-six-year-old Father Joseoh Mohr, assistant priest at the newly erected Church of ST. Micholas in Oberndorf, in the Austrian Alps, was far from happy when his organist friend, Franz Gruber, told him that the pipe organ could not be used for the special Christmas Eve Mass scheduled for December 24, 1818.  Altough he trained the choir and played the organ at Arnsdorf as well as at Oberndorf, thirty-one-year-old Gruber had neither the talent nor the time to repair broken connections, restore shattered pipes or replace worn-out bellows. 
While Father Mohr was not desperate, he was a bit peeved at the prospects of a Midnight Mass without the traditional organ music.
To relieve his tension, he bundled himself up in his warmest winter clothes and went visiting among his humble people.
Shortly after arriving at the home of one of his faithful families, a new baby was born to the poor laborer and his wife.
The pastor compared that event with the birth of the Christ Child centuries earlier, and, upon arriving home a few hours later, conquered his fatigue and weariness long enough to pen four stanzas describing the wonder and the majesty of the first Christmas.  His initial contained these beautiful lines:

Silent night, Holy night!  All is calm, All is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child, Holy Infant, so tender and mild;
Sleep in heavenly peace! Sleep in heavenly peace!

When Gruber burst onto the room a few moments later with the news that the organ was hopelessly beyond repair, Father Mohr handed him the slip of paper on which he had written the new stanzas. While the choir-master read them, the priest picked up a guitar in an adjoining room, and handed it to him, saying, “If we can’t have the organ, at least we can have a new song. Try your hand at this..”
The more Gruber protested, the stronger Mohr insisted. To quiet his friend, Gruber strummed a few simple cords on the guitar, and soon was humming an original melody that seemed to express the sentiments of the poem perfectly. At midnight the new carol was sung for the first time.
It might have remained there at Oberndorf had not Karl Mauracher come from the valley of the Zillertal to repair the organ early in 1819. 
Mohr asked Gruber to play the new carol for the famous organ builder and repairman, when the job was a finally completed, and Mauracher fell in love with it right away. About ten years later he felt that the four gifted Strasser children, Caroline, Joseph, Andereas and Amalie, were just the ones to give the new song to the world. They renamed the carol “The Song from Heaven” and sang it wherever they went.
On Christmas Eve, 1832, they were invited to introduce it in the Royal Saxon Court Chapel in Pleissenburg Castle for the King and Queen of Saxony. 
The Director General of Music, Mr. Pohlenz, had heard the children singing at one of the great fairs in Leipzig where their parents went every year to sell their famous gloves. The unusual music had created an immediate sensation, the word spreading rapidly that “the four Strasser children sang like nightingales.” It was at his request that the four were invited to sing for the Royal family at this special Christmas Eve celebration. Shortly thereafter, “Silent Night” took its rightful place among the most beautiful Christmas carols of the Christian world, and the passing of time has only added to its luster.

The Blessings of Thorns

Sandra felt as low as the heels of her shoes as she pushed against a November gust and the florist shop door.
Her life had been easy, like a spring breeze. Then, in the fourth month of her second pregnancy, a minor automobile accident stole that from her.
During this Thanksgiving week she would have delivered a son. She grieved over her loss. As if that weren’t enough, her husband’s company
threatened a transfer. Then her sister, whose holiday visit she coveted, called saying she could not come for the holiday.
Then Sandra’s friend infuriated her by suggesting her grief was a God-given path to maturity that would allow her to empathize with others who suffer.
She has no idea what I’m feeling, thought Sandra with a shudder. Thanksgiving? Thankful for what? She wondered.
For a careless driver whose truck was hardly scratched when he hit her? For an airbag that saved her life but took that of her child?
“Good afternoon, can I help you?” The shop clerk’s approach startled her.  “I...I need an arrangement,” stammered Sandra.
“For Thanksgiving? Do you want beautiful but ordinary, or would you like to challenge the day with a customer favorite I call the Thanksgiving Special?” asked the shop clerk.  “I’m convinced that flowers tell stories,” she continued.
“Are you looking for something that conveys ‘gratitude’ this Thanksgiving?”
“Not exactly!” Sandra blurted out. “In the last five months, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.”
Sandra regretted her outburst, and was surprised when the shop clerk said, “I have the perfect arrangement for you.”
Just then the shop door’s small bell rang, and the shop clerk said, “Hi, Barbara...let me get your order.”
She politely excused herself and walked toward a small workroom, then quickly reappeared, carrying an arrangement of greenery, bows, and long-stemmed thorny roses. Except the ends of the rose stems were neatly snipped: there were no flowers. Want this in a box?” asked the clerk.
Sandra watched for the customer’s response. Was this a joke? Who would want rose stems with no flowers!
She waited for laughter, but neither woman laughed. “Yes, please,” Barbara, replied with an appreciative smile.
“You’d think after three years of getting the ‘special’, I wouldn’t be so moved by its significance, but I can feel it right here, all over again,”
she said as she gently tapped her chest. And she left with her order.
“Uh,” stammered Sandra, “that lady just left with, uh...she just left with no flowers!”
“Right,” said the clerk, “I cut off the flowers. That’s the ‘Special’. I call it the Thanksgiving Thorns Bouquet.”
“Oh, come on, you can’t tell me someone is willing to pay for that!” exclaimed Sandra.
“Barbara came into the shop three years ago feeling much like you feel today,” explained the clerk. “She thought she had very little to be thankful for. She had lost her father to cancer, the family business was failing, her son was into drugs, and she was facing major surgery.
That same year I had lost my husband,” continued the clerk, “and for the first time in my life, had just spent the holidays alone.
I had no children, no husband, no family nearby, and too great a debt to allow any travel.”
“So what did you do?” asked Sandra.
“I learned to be thankful for thorns,” answered the clerk quietly. “I’ve always thanked God for the good things in my life and never questioned the good things that happened to me, but when bad stuff hit, did I ever ask questions! It took time for me to learn that dark times are important.
I have always enjoyed the ‘flowers’ of life, but it took thorns to show me the beauty of God’s comfort. You know, the Bible says that God comforts us when we’re afflicted, and from His consolation we learn to comfort others.”
Sandra sucked in her breath as she thought about the very thing her friend had tried to tell her.
“I guess the truth is I don’t want comfort. I’ve lost a baby and I’m angry with God.”
Just then someone else walked in the shop. “Hey, Phil!” shouted the clerk to the balding, rotund man.
“My wife sent me in to get our usual Thanksgiving Special....12 thorny, long-stemmed stems!”
laughed Phil as the clerk handed him a tissue-wrapped arrangement from the refrigerator.
“Those are for your wife?” asked Sandra incredulously. “Do you mind me asking why she wants something that looks like that?”
“No...I’m glad you asked,” Phil replied. “Four years ago my wife and I nearly divorced. After forty years, we were in a real mess, but with the Lord’s grace and guidance, we slogged through problem after problem. He rescued our marriage.
Jenny here (the clerk) told me she kept a vase of rose stems to remind her of what she learned from ‘thorny’ times, and that was good enough for me.
I took home some of those stems. My wife and I decided to label each one for a specific ‘problem’ and give thanks for what that problem taught us.”
As Phil paid the clerk, he said to Sandra, “I highly recommend the Special!”
“I don’t know if I can be thankful for the thorns in my life.” Sandra said. “It’s all too...fresh.”
“Well,” the clerk replied carefully, “my experience has shown me that thorns make roses more precious.
We treasure God’s providential care more during trouble than at any other time.
Remember, it was a crown of thorns that Jesus wore so we might know His love. Don’t resent the thorns.”
Tears rolled down Sandra’s cheeks. For the first time since the accident, she loosened her grip on resentment.
“I’ll take those twelve long-stemmed thorns, please,” she managed to choke out.
“I hoped you would,” said the clerk gently. “I’ll have them ready in a minute.”
“Thank you. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Nothing but a promise to allow God to heal your heart. The first year’s arrangement is always on me.”
The clerk smiled and handed a card to Sandra. “I’ll attach this card to your arrangement, but maybe you would like to read it first.”
It read: “My God, I have never thanked You for my thorns. I have thanked You a thousand times for my roses, but never once for my thorns.
Teach me the glory of the difficulties I bear; teach me the value of my thorns. Show me that I have drawn closer to You along the path of pain.
Show me that, through my tears, the colors of Your rainbow look much more brilliant.”
Praise Him for your roses. Thank Him for your thorns!
~Author Unknown

”In every thing give thanks:
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”
- 1 Thessalonians 5:18

(From The Wake-Up Herald;
published by Robert McCurry.)