The 2nd Sunday of Advent ~Peace and the Shepherds

Today is the 2nd Sunday of Advent, and in most places of worship today they will be lighting the candle of "Peace".  

But I have always liked to share the Shepherd's story on this Sunday as well.  They certainly played a significant role in spreading the Good News of Jesus' Birth...let's read on and see...

Luke 2:8-20 NKV

8 Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 

9 And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. 10 Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. 11 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 

12 And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, 

lying in a manger.”

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:
14 “Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

15 So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. 

17 Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child. 18 And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. 19 But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.

 

20 Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.

Our part in this story is to be like the shepherds and go and tell everyone the good news about Jesus Christ, our Savior, Who came to bring us His peace and save us from our sins and show us the way to heaven for eternity with Him.  This is truly Good News!!!

I hope this day finds you rejoicing in this Good News as we continue our journey to Bethlehem to see the new born King!  May our hearts be filled with the awesome wonder that the God of the universe would stoop down to earth to reach out to us with such amazing love. There is no greater love than this.

Amen.

Today I am not at church for our Advent service, as I am still recuperating from the pneumonia that I had. I am much better, but still have a little bit of a cough and today is actually very wet and chilly/damp, and not a good day for a recovering pneumonia patient to be out in the weather...but very thankful that it IS raining finally, and I am enjoying watching it right here from home:

It's a great day to stay inside and enjoy the peace and quiet of a gently rain falling (sorry, the video is loud because I was standing on the back porch where we have a metal roof, and the rain was VERY loud!) and just rest.  

I've been enjoying a lot of hot tea with lemon.  I actually bought 3 lemons to use for Thanksgiving, and totally forgot about them, and so I've been using them regularly in my hot tea and it is very soothing for a cough and scratchy throat.  I guess my mistake turned out to be a blessing in disguise!

I've added a bunch of links to previous years' 2nd Sunday of Advent posts, mainly so I can find them again when I want to refer to them. But you are welcome to read them if you wish. You may find some of them enjoyable as well.

 https://pamelasopenwindow.blogspot.com/2015/12/o-little-town-of-bethlehem.html

https://pamelasopenwindow.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-2nd-sunday-of-advent-peace.html

https://pamelasopenwindow.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-second-sunday-of-advent.html

https://pamelasopenwindow.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-second-sunday-of-adventpeace.html

https://pamelasopenwindow.blogspot.com/2023/12/advent-sunday-2.html

https://pamelasopenwindow.blogspot.com/2024/12/advent-week-two.html

I will say good day for now. May your day be filled with peace and much joy in the Good News of Christmas! Amen.

Advent Week Two

Yesterday was the 2nd Sunday of Advent, and the role of the Shepherds at the birth of Christ was remembered:

"In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.'" Luke 2:8-10

Today we remember the shepherds, workers for the common good, steadfast watchmen isolated and alone, far from the warmth of home, doing the job no one wants. And yet God saw them, God valued them, and God declared the greatest news of all to them alone.

People: Today we give thanks for the shepherds among us, back-breaking laborers on whom our economy stands, those we overlook or rarely see, yet rely on for our very survival, the ones who have much to teach us about watching for God in the darkness.

On this second Sunday of Advent, we light the second candle as a symbol of the shepherds, agents of the gospel and redeemers of the world.

(picture taken in church following the service)

Our choir sang a beautiful song entitled "Gesu Bambino".  This was recorded at our rehearsal, and although it's pretty good, I think we did better on Sunday morning. It was a difficult song to sing for our little choir, but I pray the message was clear.  Following the song, our pastor preached an excellent message from Matthew 1:18-25, "What Dreams May Come", the story of Joseph, the betrothed husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Gesu Bambino

When blossoms flower e'er 'mid the snows

Upon a winter night

Was born the Child, the Christmas Rose

The King of Love and Light

The angels sang, the shepherds sang

The grateful earth rejoiced;

And at His blessed birth the stars

Their exultation voiced

Chorus:

O come let us adore Him

O come let us adore Him

O come let us adore Him

Christ the Lord

Again the heart with rapture glows

To greet the holy night

That gave the world its Christmas Rose

Its King of Love and Light

Let ev'ry voice acclaim His name

The grateful chorus swell

From paradise to earth He came

That we with Him might dwell

Chorus:

O come let us adore Him

O come let us adore Him

O come let us adore Him

Christ the Lord

Was born the Child, the Christmas Rose

The King of Love and Light

It was a wonderful service. I love this Advent season...

Wow! That speaks volumes! Jesus came with one mission in mind...to save us from our sins! Pure and simple. All we have to do is accept His free gift of salvation and we will be saved! It's really that simple...but we tend to make it so hard. He did the hard work for us. We just need to believe. 

When we got home from church we were pleased to find that our son Scott had arrived.  Benton also came over and had lunch with us, as Rose had to go to work.  So the boys had fun figuring out the problem with the train, and Scott finally got it running again!

Here's a video of it in action! Yay!

I'm adding this old picture from 1980 of our three sons playing with that same train set and village. There may be a few extra buildings there, and I think they had just had a major crash when this picture was taken, but that's what they loved to do the most. It's a miracle there are any train cars left in one piece! LOL.

L to R: Matthew, Scott, and Benton

These are precious memories especially since our son Matthew is no longer with us, but if there are trains in heaven, I imagine he and his Grandpa are having a good time.

My Dad "Grandpa "Choo-Choo", Matthew, and his son Noah, our grandson, who is now 25 years old. This was my dad's train collection,  but I've shared this before. I wanted to add it here, just because...

Moving on to a different subject, I know you all love to see The Sand Hill Crane Family.  So do I.  Here they are finding something good to eat in the pond...

When I see them lined up like this together at this time of year, I always think of them as being the Three Wise Men riding on their camels. If you watched them walking along, you'd see what I mean...

They ended up in our front yard...

And sure enough, they headed straight for the Nativity:

"We Three Kings of Orient Are...bearing gifts, we traverse afar...field and fountain, moor and mountain,

Following yonder star...O-Oh, Star of wonder, star of light, star with royal beauty bright, westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to that perfect Light..."

I just thought that was pretty cool!! They seemed pretty curious about what all this new stuff was in our front yard!  

Speaking of the front yard, here's the sunrise from this morning...

And this is the sunset tonight over Still Waters Pond:

These last two pictures were taken from the back yard of that new house next door, which is still available, in case you are interested...BTW, I believe they have recently reduced the price too! What a great Christmas present this could be to yourselves!  (and me too, if you became my neighbor!)

This week is going to be a bit busy...we already had Bible study today, tomorrow morning we hope to go do some Christmas shopping, tomorrow night is choir practice, Wednesday is our church ladies' Christmas luncheon, which is always very nice and fun, Thursday night we are going to a church in a nearby community for a Candlelight and Carols service, which is always nice. Our choir will sing a couple of songs.  Friday...I don't think we have anything planned YET, and I hope we can keep it that way, at least not anything too time or energy consuming...maybe just play catch-up here at home.  There is a monthly "Agape" luncheon at church on Saturday, which is a pot luck luncheon just for fellowship with anyone who wants to come. I'm not sure yet if we will do that or not. And that brings us to Sunday, which is always a busy, but wonderful day. 

I still haven't started on my Christmas cards...although I did buy Christmas postage stamps today, so that was a start (and a shock at how much postage is now!) I'm not promising that I will be sending a LOT of cards this year...I usually try to send to people that I don't communicate with as much during the year on Facebook or otherwise...relatives that we try to stay in touch with at least once a year, and old friends we only catch up with at Christmas...and then after that we will see. 

I love all of you who are so good about getting your cards out already and to so many of us fellow bloggers. You are the best group of friends ever!  I hope you won't be hurt if I don't manage to send cards to everyone. Time will tell what I can and can't do, but please know that I love you all and enjoy reading about your activities here all the time.  I feel like I know many of you better than I know a lot of my "old friends" and "family".  They just don't communicate as well as we do here in blogland.

Well friends, I guess I need to wrap this up. Tomorrow is the Tuesday 4 meme, and I need to look at that and see what I haven't already told you. LOL. But that will be another post...if I can find the time to get it done!  One thing about the Christmas season, we sure do stay busy!

Closing with a few pictures from the Christmas angels and small nativities...

(porch tree)

"Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o'er the plains...

And the mountains in reply, echo back their joyous strains...

Gloria in excelsis deo

Gloria in excelsis deo!

Gloria in excelsis De-e-o!

Amen!

Advent Sunday #2

 Today was the 2nd Sunday of Advent...and it was a very special day for our family! I was so pleased that our pastor asked our son Benton and wife Rose to do the reading and candle lighting for the Advent Wreath today.  I had a good vantage point from the choir loft, so of course I snuck a few pictures...

Benton did the readings while Rose lit the two purple candles.

Today's readings came from Luke 2:8-10...the story of the Shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night....and then "an Angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people'"...  

 Verse 11 and 12 says: "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

"Today we remember the shepherds, workers for the common good, steadfast watchmen isolated and alone, far from the warmth of home, doing the job no one wants.  And yet God saw them, God valued them, and God declared the greatest news of all to them alone."

There is just something very special to a parent to see their adult children participating in the worship service. This was a blessing to my heart, and a beautiful way to start this Advent Sunday.

Then after church the "kids" offered to bring over cold cuts, etc. for lunch so they could come over and help with the train set up and also watch some football with hubby. Benton is a big Cleveland Browns fan, going back to when he was a child and we lived in Ohio near Cleveland.  And they won today! That was really special!

Anyway, when we got home Scott had arrived and so after lunch we all got to work on setting up the train and village.  What a fun time we had, even if it was physically demanding for this old gal to get up and down on the floor to set things in place. We still had fun!

Here's Scott, putting the tracks together...

and here's Rose, finding all the boxes of the Village buildings so we can start putting them together. Sugar and Spice are very curious about these activities:

Rose and I were busily putting the "Plasticville" village buildings together. If you've ever had these vintage plastic buildings before, you may understand how frustrating this task can be.  The buildings are meant to just be "snapped together", but because these are all at least fifty years old they have lost their snap-ability, and they end up needing extra help to stay together. Many little pieces have broken over the years and we've had to glue them back together...and then after being stored again in a hot storage shed they seem to develop other issues and need to be reglued.  It was a rather tedious job, and I think I said more than once that I'd be happy to get rid of all of these old buildings for some nice new ceramic buildings that don't need to be assembled...but of course that just wouldn't be the same and wouldn't have the memories attached, etc., etc. , not to mention new buildings are expensive. 

So we persevered and finally got them all put back together, and then came the fun of transporting them to be placed under the tree:

I'm glad there are no pictures of me trying to get back up off the floor. It was NOT a pretty sight! LOL.

Again, Sugar and Spice were very curious about that train going around the track, and they wanted to chase it and bark at it and came very near to wrecking the whole village...

Sugar is standing watch over that train engine, just daring it to take off again.  It was really comical.

But finally all is calm and all is bright...

The people are going about their business in the little town...getting things ready for Christmas...

And once again we put aside the hustle bustle of getting ready for Christmas and drift away into a Silent Night...

Time to "sleep in heavenly peace"....Good Night dear ones.