12/23/2024
Christmas Eve Service at The Shepherd’s Church building in Baker, Fl. at 6:00pm.
Join us as we worship and celebrate the ‘feast’ of Christmas! We will sing, pray and read the Word in observance of this special night. One beloved carol to be sung, that will help us ‘hear’ the message of Christmas, is “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”
Originally a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on December 25, 1863. The poem was set to music, titled ‘Waltham’ by John Baptiste Calkin, published in The Hymnary in 1872. **see more below
We hope you will join us at 6:00pm at TSC building in Baker, Fl for a brief Christmas Eve Service.
**On July 9, 1861, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an American poet and educator, awakened from a nap to the screams of his beloved wife F***y. In a mishap her dress caught on fire engulfing her body in flames. Severely burned she died the next morning, July 10, 1861, leaving behind two sons, three living daughters and a grieving husband.
On November 27, 1863, a Union officer, Longfellow’s oldest son Charley, was shot through the left shoulder, during a battle of the Civil War, and lay seemingly dying in the war-torn New Hope Church. The name would not be lost on Charley or his father. The bullet exited under his right shoulder blade having traveled across his back, miraculously only nicking his spine. Charley avoided being paralyzed by less than an inch.
On Friday, December 25, 1863, Longfellow—still grieving the loss of his beloved F***y and now caring for his son Charley, as well as his four other children, heard the church bells ringing. Knowing, from Luke’s account of the Christmas Story, that the angels proclaimed “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,” he wrote a poem seeking to capture ‘the dissonance in his own heart’ and the world he observed around him; one of injustice and violence that seemed, on this Christmas Day, to mock the truthfulness of this tiding.
Throughout the poem the theme of ‘listening’ recurs, eventually leading Longfellow and his readers from bleak despair to recognizing and professing that God is not dead, that righteousness shall prevail and mankind will one day live in a world of peace.
For many, like Longfellow, this Christmas Season does not ‘feel’ like The Most Wonderful Time of the Year! Yet as believers we find ourselves quoting our brother Paul: we are “afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed…2 Cor. 4:8-9
Why? Why can we as followers of Christ most ardently agree with the apostle Paul? Well…Pastor Jeff gave us an amazing quote in his sermon from Sunday, December 22 (‘God With Us All…Everyone”) from the 4th century to remind us WHAT this time is about and WHY we can celebrate during times of bleak despair, injustice or whatever else it is that has befallen us:
“A feast is approaching which is the most solemn and awe-inspiring of all feasts…What is it? The birth of Christ according to the flesh. In this feast namely Epiphany, holy Easter, Ascension and Pentecost have their beginning and their purpose. For if Christ hadn’t been born according to the flesh, He wouldn’t have been baptized, which is Epiphany. He wouldn’t have been crucified, which is Easter. He wouldn’t have sent the Spirit, which is Pentecost. So from this event, as from some spring, different rivers flow—these feasts of ours are born.”—John Chrysostom, December 25th, 386, Antioch, Syria
The saints of The Shepherd’s Church Wish You a Merry Christmas!
