Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2020-12-23
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Dear Friends,
I’ve enjoyed your Christmas stories. Thank you for sharing them. (Please keep sending them to me, and I’ll share them until Epiphany on January 6th.) I have many favorite personal stories, and I’m working on the story I want to share with you in tomorrow’s emailer. Stay tuned.
Here is one from Diane Mortensen…
My Christmas memories include the years of growing up in central Wisconsin where sandy soil supports the growth of potatoes and pine trees. There tree farms are open in December for cutting your own tree, which is what my dad did every year. When my brother and I were young, we didn’t see the tree until Christmas morning. When we came downstairs, we saw the tree lighted with candles and the star on top. It was still dark outside and I remember squinting and seeing the flames quiver. After the candles were extinguished, the colorful tree lights were turned on. Our Methodist church service was held on Christmas morning, just a block from our home. I remember wearing a little, white fur muff that had been under the Christmas tree.
Twenty-five years later, Paul and I went to my parent’s home on Christmas Eve. It was his first time to see lighted candles on a tree. He looked worried so my dad gave him a packet of matches and sent him to the kitchen sink with the challenge to light a piece of pine. When he failed, he relaxed and returned to the living room to enjoy the candlelight.
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TONIGHT, December 23 at 7 pm we will stream “Musical Christmas Treats and a Family Carol Sing.” This will be highlighted by three anthems selected from recent Christmas Music Sunday services and a number of traditional carols recorded by our current choral quartet.
Please invite your family, loved ones and especially the kids to Zoom in with us to sing along on the carols.
I hope to see you there.
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Two important Christmas Eve announcements (please pay attention, dear readers):
1.) Our prerecorded service will be available at 4 pm on Christmas Eve (Thursday) at firstpres.live. Please enjoy it at that time or later in the evening whenever you’d like. Would you please consider sharing the link far and wide with everybody on your mailing list, Facebook pages, etc? We all worked hard on it.
2.) Our friends at First United Methodist Church have invited us to an in-person Christmas Eve service beginning at 7 pm at the northeast corner of West Side Park. This brief service will include listening to the carillon at First Methodist and hearing the nativity story from Luke’s gospel. If you feel well, wear your mask, dress warmly, and keep your distance as we gather at the park to bear God’s light to the world!
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Advent Daily Devotion Wednesday I Thessalonians 2:9-12
Paul tells the Thessalonian Christians that they, along
with God, are witnesses to Paul’s “holy and righteous and
blameless” conduct toward them. How we treat others reflects
our relationship to God. Our means and ends must match,
our behavior commensurate with the gospel we share. Who
have you witnessed being holy, righteous and blameless?
What about the opposite?
As we draw near to Christ’s birth, we wish to reflect the
One we profess to follow. We pray, God of grace and glory, to
be holy and righteous and blameless in our conduct toward
others. When we fail to meet this standard, forgive us and
send your Spirit to help us to do better and be a closer likeness
of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
News
The 2020 Angel Tree: Food insecurity is the dry technical term for American households going hungry at least some of the time. It is at crisis levels all over America and very much so in Champaign County. According to Census Bureaudata, currently, over 1 in 10 American adults did not have enough to eat last week. And, worse, for families with children, approximately 1 in 4 such families did not have enough food for their children last week! In Champaign County, rates are similar, and Food Stamps, Eastern Illinois Food Bank, and others are unable to meet the increasing need. For people of color the statistics are considerably worse. Help is desperately needed now.
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During the holiday season, these emails will become simpler and will NOT include daily zoom notifications and other information that takes Marcia a long time to gather. We’re going slower from Christmas to New Years.
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Humor (Hard times really need godly laughter):
Prayer for Judy Gamble in a nursing center in Paxton, and for Bill. I am grateful that he shares this tale, which is neither quite a joke nor quite a tall tale.
Bill Gamble’s dad, Leo, encountered way too many rattlesnakes in his many years working on and patrolling track for the Santa Fe Railroad, in SW Kansas, SE Colorado, and the Oklahoma Panhandle. A way of dealing with the snakes evolved:
- Beat snake to death with a long-handled pitch-fork.
- Cut off the head with a sharp shovel, and bury the head.
- Cut off the rattles to save to give to someone.
- Straighten out the tines of the pitch-fork.
Good Word: (Luke’s story…)
Luke 2
8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah,[a] the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,[b] praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”[
LET US PRAY:
We are getting even closer, Holy God.
Most of us aren’t children anymore. So, it’s no wonder that approaching the manger no longer makes us most of giddy—though a few of us still, still are, and a few more of us still remember. We take the news for granted—at least the sugar-coated, fa-la-la-la-la part of it that we have shoehorned into our idea of a gum drop Christmas.
You dropped in out of the sky into a manger, from heaven’s holy high to earth’s lowly low. Mary and Joseph found themselves homeless in a crowded Bethlehem, and, soon, refugees, on the run from Herod. The baby Jesus was already a victim of the politics of Palestine and Rome in the first century that would, eventually, land him on a cross. But we don’t want to think about crosses right now. And that’s okay. We are right to find our kneeling place at the manger, silence, reverent, open. May we join in on the angel song.
You crashed into our lives with your son, O God. And, giddy or not, our world turns nearly upside down in the wake of that dramatic splash.
Thank you.
AMEN.
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Much, much love to you all.
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
