Tag Archives: Christmas

The Ignored Part of the Christmas Message

Posted on December 23, 2023 by Alyssa Sonnenburg
No one likes to talk about cancer.  I lost both my parents to the killer as well as numerous friends. My wife and I are now praying for several who are fighting for their lives against it. We hate it, but we talk about it virtually every time we get together with those who are dealing with it, partly because you can’t ignore the “elephant in the room” and partly because you will never defeat it by ignoring it! 
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The Missing Peace

Posted on December 22, 2023 by Alyssa Sonnenburg
Even the most secular of Christmas season greeting cards can be found promoting the idea of peace. Often seemingly quoting the angels message to the shepherds announcing the arrival of the Messiah found in Luke 2. That message in brief proclaims, “Peace on earth. Goodwill to men.”
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The Irony of Contemporary Christmas

Posted on December 20, 2023 by Alyssa Sonnenburg
As a Christian and a pastor, I have spent a lot of time getting to know God. It goes with the territory! But the more I understand the goodness of God, the more difficult it is to understand the hatred so many have for God, especially as we consider that Christmas, “the most wonderful time of the year” is rooted in a knowledge of God’s grace.
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Help Resurrect Easter

Posted on April 6, 2023 by Alyssa Sonnenburg
So the grandest of all Christian celebrations is upon us. This year, Friday April 7th is Good Friday. Sunday April 9th is Easter. Or Resurrection Day as some prefer to call it. The two dates vary from year to year. Why? It’s, well, complicated. Why do these two occasions give us the grandest of our faith celebrations as Christ followers? Because we get to color Easter eggs? Uh…wrong answer.
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“The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!”

Posted on December 24, 2022 by David E Smith
Next to Jesus Christ and “love,” Christmas is probably the most popular theme for music.  For most Americans, Christmas has been, as the song says, “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!”  But why is this so?
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May God Have Mercy Upon Us and Our Troubled Country

Posted on December 7, 2020 by David E Smith
With our nation on a razor’s edge, the days are getting shorter — and darker.

In fact, the winter solstice is coming in a couple of weeks on Dec. 21, marking the shortest day on the calendar and thus the darkest time of the year.
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So Much More Than Glitter and Gifts

Posted on December 18, 2019 by David E Smith
My wife and I recently took our four children to see the Festival of Lights in East Peoria. If you’ve never been, it’s said to be one of the Midwest’s “largest lighted holiday events.” Some individual displays (such as the steam train) are comprised of tens of thousands of lights, with the total number of lights running into the millions.
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Merry Christmas!

Posted on December 25, 2018 by David E Smith
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  May the peace and love of “the baby born in Bethlehem” be in your heart this season and throughout the year. It is an amazing gift to be able to freely celebrate our faith and to proclaim the birth of our Savior who came to give life and give it abundantly (John 10:10).
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Celebrating the Birth of Christ!

Posted on December 24, 2018 by David E Smith

More than 2,000 years ago He was born in Bethlehem. This Baby, born of a virgin, of the lineage of King David, was the long-awaited savior, the Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace — the Word of God in flesh (John 1:14).

The prophet Isaiah wrote:

The Lord himself will choose [a] sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel — ‘God is with us.’

The prophet Micah foretold:

You, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village in Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come

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AFA Identifies the Combatants in the ‘War on Christmas’

Posted on December 10, 2016 by David E Smith

Last month a Woolworth store in Germany made headlines in the UK and in the U.S. for proclaiming itself to be a “Muslim” store, and therefore it would no longer carry Christmas items. There’s more to the story – as the local management of the store defended itself by saying that there was such little demand for the Christmas products, they decided the shelf space was better used with other items. You can read about it here, here and here and decide for yourself what to believe.

Christmas as controversy is not new, of course, as the debate over …

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