Dear Family and Friends,
Christmas! Celebrating our God who came close, right into our midst, forever. To love and save.
What gift do you really need this Christmas? Maybe you need help in knowing what to do in this stretch of your life, the strength to do that next right thing, a loving protector, or courage in place of anxiety?
All are the gift of Christmas:
And His name shall be called:
- Wonderful Counselor,
- The Mighty God,
- The Everlasting Father,
- The Prince of Peace.
Last week we began to meet the supporting cast of Christmas in our services through the story of Zachariah and Elizabeth. This week we encounter a man named Joseph, chosen to protect the Messiah and his mother. In the weeks ahead we will see Jesus through the eyes of the shepherds and Mary, all circling in on the Gift Himself during our last Advent worship service on December 23. Come travel toward Bethlehem with us this Christmas.
This Christmas Eve we will have a simple, acoustic service of carols and readings, December 24, 5:00-6:00 p.m. Come for one hour to the Damascus High School Cafeteria and celebrate the coming of God’s true Manna.
The day is coming closer when we will not be camping in a High School cafeteria, but planning celebrations in our own sanctuary, followed by time together in our own atrium-foyer, each time we gather serving as a visible Light on a Hill to hundreds driving down Barthalows Road.
Thank you to all who have committed to that dream through your pledges, after making a sacrificial pledge to do your part in following God’s heart to our future. If you’re new to the family and haven’t made a pledge, we hope you will. We are approaching the one-year mark in a three-year capital campaign and Debbie Lawrence, our Church Administrator, just shared that we have crossed the one million dollar mark in pledges. Keep it up—or join up on this God-adventure.
Aware that any press is good press, still let me share a bit about the new release film: The Golden Compass, which is based on the first volume in a literary trilogy called “His Dark Materials.” This is not a sweet children’s fantasy. Like C. S. Lewis (“Chronicles of Narnia”), J. R. R. Tolkien (“The Lord of the Rings”), and J. K. Rowlings (“Harry Potter”) the author, Philip Pullman, is British. But unlike them, Pullman is a committed atheist, an excellent writer whose express and admitted purpose is to destroy Christianity.
In 2001, with the completion of his trilogy, Pullman won the Whitbread Prize, Britain’s top book award, the first time the author of a children’s book was ever so honored. He was introduced this way: “This year’s Whitbread prize-winner Philip Pullman is, as you might expect, a fine writer and he’s a fine writer with a cause. His cause, as he himself has made clear, is to destroy Christianity and to liberate the world from the Christian God.” Pullman went on to say: “I hate the Narnia books and I hate them with a deep and bitter passion. They are one of the most ugly and poisonous things I have ever read.” Pullman’s trilogy is loosely based on John Milton’s Christian classic: Paradise Lost, but Pullman comes down on the side of Satan as the true hero and his message is that the Christian God (whom he names “the Authority”) is cruel and tyrannical, wanting to limit every kind of freedom, knowledge and joy. His heroine, Mary Malone, says: “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.” Atheistic materialism is bleak, no God, no hope, no truth, death as the sure end, so Pullman jumps from atheism into a Hindu view of death as a great merging of the individual into the vast expanse of the universe; and into spiritism by giving everyone a protecting, guiding daemon (take out the ‘a’ and I believe you can see where this is steering people). Be aware and consider what you feed your mind.
The words of the angel in Luke 2 are a wonderful place to camp mentally this Christmas season: “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ the Lord.”
Love,
Richard
