Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Christmas Call to Worship

We gather to celebrate anew the advent of our Savior in our world.
We welcome the Christ with great gladness!
Let the Lord enter again into our lives and shape our souls to his likeness.
In the Nativity God was made flesh and became one in whom we place our whole trust.
For our Lord was born of a woman as we are and was adopted by her husband into the family of humankind.
In that manner, we are born again by God’s Spirit and are adopted by God into his family.
We thank our redeeming God for that Marvelous Exchange!
We pledge in our worship to be reborn in his image. We promise in our Christmas to keep Christ in us. We vow in our lives to be his presence in this world.
We keep Christ in this Christmas, remembering with gladness the reason for this day!
We shall keep Christ from this Nativity day until the next, remembering with thankfulness that we are his body in this world. Come, holy Jesus, come, and dwell with us!

The praises of Hannah and Mary

The story of a woman named Hannah is related in First Samuel. Hannah was married to Elkanah, a Levite and a priest. For many years Hannah wa...