Weekday Email to Members and Friends – 2021-01-13
Wednesday, January 13th, 2020
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
To Members and Friends of
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
Friends,
Don’t forget our Wednesday night “Mission Trip” at 7 PM. For the link, email zoom@firstpres.church.
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I know Christmas is over, but Don Hollis shared this with me last week and I didn’t read it in my email until this week. It’s beautiful. As we get busy with the “work of Christmas” may this encourage us.
From Don: Reading your post yesterday reminded me of recently coming across a German writer and poet from the mid-1800s named Friedrich Ruckert. In 1834, Ruckert wrote his own version of “O Tannenbaum [O Fir Tree].” In David Bannon’s “Wounded in Spirit—Advent Art and Meditations,” Bannon says of Ruckert:
“On Christmas Day, 1833, Friedrich Ruckert and his family decorated their tree. The next day Friedrich’s 3-year-old daughter fell ill with Scarlet fever and died a week later. Within days Ruckert’s 5-year-old son contracted Scarlet fever and, like his 3-year-old sister, died just days later.” After such a devastating loss just days following Christmas, the grieving Ruckert wrote his version of “O Tannenbaum,” calling it “O Christmas Tree”:
—–
O Christmas tree,
O Christmas dream.
how dark is your brilliance,
how broken is the dance that,
cut short, scattered your garland.
O Christmas tree,
O Christmas dream.
The candles on each
branch burned but halfway before,
mid-celebration, we snuffed them out.
O Christmas tree,
O Christmas dream.
The candies on each twig
are uneaten, untouched.
Ah, that you survived the ravages of revelry.
O Christmas tree,
O Christmas dream,
With your virgin fruit,
your unburnt candles,
stand until Christmas returns,
until their memorial day.
O Christmas tree,
O Christmas dream.
when we light you again, we need buy no angel:
our pair will be here,
celebrating with us.
I can only imagine what the 12 Days of Christmas might have been like the year Ruckert lost his 3 and 5-year old back to back.
Luise Ruckert — 25 June 1830 – 31 December 1833
Ernst Ruckert — 1 January 1829 – 16 January 1834
News
ESL Café Time
First Pres members are invited to join us for our monthly Zoom café time on January 14th at 10am. This would be a great time for you to get to know some of our students and tutors. If you’ve ever wondered what the ESL program is like, this is a great place to find out. We will be split into small groups so that we can discuss with each other. Bring your favorite hot drink and a snack to our Zoom Café Time.
We will have a Zoom Café Time every second Thursday of the month.
Email esl@firstpres.church for the link.
If you have any questions, please email the ESL Director, Jeanette Pyne, at jeanette@firstpres.church.
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Our nation is having a deep, contentious conversation right now. Here are some ways to deepen the conversation:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/
Humor (Hard times really need godly laughter):
Sports humor in anticipation of the Super Bowl…
Why do vampires love baseball? They like to play with bats.
Why couldn’t the strings ever win? They could only tie.
What did the team think about their stadium being covered? It was a dome idea.
(Help! I need jokes. Seriously!)
Good Word:
1 Corinthians 13 The Message (MSG)
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. 3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
11 When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
LET US PRAY:
Oh Lord Christ,
Son of God who takest away the sins of the world:
Have mercy on us for we have sinned . . .
In a world filled with much faithlessness,
and lovelessness,
and vindictiveness,
forgive us, O Master of the Universe,
for joining the crowd.
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Much, much love to you all.
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church
