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.  

The Second Sunday of Advent=Peace

This morning I was in a rush to get ready for church...haven't been there for two Sundays, and I was anxious to get back to some kind of "normal" routine again!  Also, my hubby was going to be preaching today since our pastor has been on vacation this past week.  So anyway, hubby and I were discussing which Advent Candle would be lit this week...Last week was "Hope".  Some churches use different scriptures and passages about Advent each week, so no two are exactly alike. But I was thinking today would be about Peace...and so hubby was actually preparing his message to include thoughts about how to find peace in a world of turmoil...and of course there is only one answer...through faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord...by putting our trust in God and not in kings or governments or things of this world...by not being deceived by the things of the world...that is the only way to find peace...put Jesus first in everything, and we will have peace. That's it in a nutshell pretty much.

This is our church's Nativity Scene. 

And this morning in church I was wishing I had taken a picture of our lovely Advent Wreath and candles. But I was in the choir and didn't think to do it. So here is a picture that I did take last year at the lighting of the 2nd candle, and my hubby was the one doing the lighting last year.  It was a special time, and is a special time each week as we light the new candles in anticipation of the Advent of our Lord at Christmas.

Now, I am doing the lazy thing here tonight and am attaching some links to the past few years of posts that I wrote on the second Sunday of Advent.  I hope you will take the time to open these links and read them at your leisure this week...and I pray they will hopefully be a special kind of Advent devotional for you as you read them.  I am also going to go back and re-read them and let God speak to me through His Word.  I hope you will enjoy these...

Link to Previous Post about PEACE=Bethlehem's Candle

Another post about PEACE

Advent Post about the Shepherds

Oh, another wonderful Advent Post!

On another note, yesterday our son Scott came home and he did finally get the many bins of Christmas decorations out of the shed.  Now the house is in a bit of a mess as I start opening the bins and going through them and determining what to set out and what not to display this year. We will probably set up the Christmas tree tomorrow.  We did, however, put out the outdoor Christmas tree and other special decorations for our yard:

It made me happy to come home last evening after spending some time at Dixie Cottage after hours so we could be open during the town's Christmas parade and to see this all lit up in our yard.

Speaking of Dixie Cottage and the parade, oh, you just gotta love a small town! It seems like the whole town came out for the evening parade and the lighting of the Christmas tree and other activities in the old downtown village. 

 Thankfully our store sits right on the edge of all this activity, and so we figured it would be worth our while to have the store open last night...and oh, we are so glad we did!

The store looked so pretty with all the lights on in the windows. That's Ben on the front porch, waiting for the parade to begin!

The High School Marching Band came right by our store on their way to the parade. The young man with the reindeer antlers is a grandson of one of our church friends, so I was happy to get his picture.

Then when it got dark the parade began. It's kind of too dark to make out what most of these floats were about, but it was still a lot of fun.

This one was Smokey the Bear...and all of our fire department trucks were in the parade with lots of lights and sirens...

I think one of these floats had our State Champion High School football team riding! Our little town high school hasn't had a winning year in football in many many years, and this year they went all the way to the top and won the state championship for their division!  So our town was pretty proud of our team!

Anyway, I said it was worth our staying open late for the store...and yes it was!  It had been a rather lackluster week in sales after our big Sip and Shop event a couple of weekends ago. People seemed to be dragging after Thanksgiving and not even bothering to come visit, let alone buy anything. But then last night it seemed like they were coming out of the woodwork! Several big items sold right off the bat...and we ended up with more sales in a couple of hours than we'd had in a week! So yes, it was well worth the staying late and having fun too! 

So, all in all, it's been a good weekend. Thankfully I am finally feeling much much better...I was able to go to church and even out to lunch afterwards...we got some decorating done, and things are looking up at the store.

And it's been a week to watch for and pray for peace...The Prince of Peace...to reign and rule in our lives.

I keep repeating these verses:

Isaiah 9:6-7

6"For unto us a Child is born,

Unto us a Son is given;

And the government will be upon His shoulder.

And His name will be called

Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

7 Of the increase of His government and peace

There will be no end,

Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom,

To order it and establish it with judgment and justice

From that time forward, even forever.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this."

Luke 2:14 

14 “Glory to God in the highest,

And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”