Christmas Peace

Christmas Peace

December 1983

  In this season which the church calls Advent, the time of anticipation and preparation for Christmas, many christian observances, national customs and family traditions are re-enacted.  Because they are time-honored, they have much meaning to us and often are the tie between the past and the present which is so essential in an ever-changing world where there is a constant searching for security and serenity.

Jesus still offers His peace to the world. The real Christmas, and its true christian observance, is the only hope for the world. The promise of peace which Jesus gives is not for a few fleeting moments of time, but for eternity.  He is the Prince of Peace, the changeless One. When we have Jesus, we have Christmas, and its gifts of peace, joy, and love.

  The good news of Christmas, like a star, still guides men to Christ. Only through personal participation in His saving merits can we receive the true peace of which the Bible speaks, and which is the central theme of Christmas. When men are at peace with God, they they also will live at peace with one another.

  The christian church has an important ministry–that of  being ambassadors for  Christ, and we have been given the word and the  ministry of reconciliation. (II Corinthians  5: 18-20) As bearers of the only  message of lasting hope for this world,  we say of  Christ, our Messiah, that  He  has  come to bind up  the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Isaiah  61)

“Come, ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths, for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people, and they shall beat their swords into plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.  0 house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” (Isaiah 2: 3-5)

From the archives of the late Pastor Alvin Holmgren

Submitted by Pastor Stan

“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.” (Hebrews 13: 5-9)