Today we’re playing the top 10 Christmas songs from our holiday music survey – these are the songs YOU told us are your favorites!
10. Frank Sinatra – Let It Snow! 9. Danny Gokey – Mary, Did You Know? 8. Arthur Fiedler and The Boston Pops – Sleigh Ride 7. Bing Crosby – White Christmas 6. Burl Ives – Holly Jolly Christmas 5. Trans-Siberian Orchestra – Christmas Canon 4. Bing Crosby – It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas 3. Vince Guaraldi Trio – Linus and Lucy 2. David Foster – Carol of the Bells 1. Trans-Siberian Orchestra – Christmas Eve, Sarajevo
One of the first indications of the Christmas season is LIGHT. The appearance of lights seemingly everywhere – on trees, with candles, above streets; there is radiance all around us.
Lights are not just for decoration of course, they are symbolic.
In his book, Hidden Christmas, Pastor Timothy Keller says one of the most important spiritual truths at Christmas is this: the world is a dark place, and we will never find our way or see reality unless Jesus IS our light.
Keller writes that the word ‘darkness’ in the Bible refers to evil and ignorance. The world has evil and untold suffering. The world also has no one who can cure the evil and suffering. We look towards the earth and our human resources to try to fix the world. We think we can end darkness with intellect and innovation. That’s the ignorance.
So the message of Christmas is NOT, “we will be able to put together a world of unity and peace.” The message, instead, is a humble one: “Things really are this bad and we can’t heal or save ourselves. Nevertheless, THERE IS HOPE.”
Notice the verse in Isaiah doesn’t say the light comes from the world…it says that upon the world a light has dawned. It has come from the outside, and Jesus has brought that light to save us! Because, as John 8:12 says, He IS that light!
Dylan shared a Christmas thought from Amy Boucher Pye in ‘Our Daily Bread’…
When John’s cold turned into pneumonia, he ended up in the hospital. At the same time, his mother was being treated for cancer a few floors above him, and he felt overwhelmed with worries about her and about his own health. Then on Christmas Eve, when the radio played the carol “O Holy Night,” John was flooded with a deep sense of God’s peace. He listened to the words about it being the night of the dear Savior’s birth: “A thrill of hope the weary soul rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!” In that moment, his worries about himself and his mother vanished.
This “dear Savior” born to us, Jesus, is the “Prince of Peace,” as Isaiah prophesied (Isaiah 9:6). Jesus fulfilled this prophecy when He came to earth as a baby, bringing light and salvation to “those living in the land of the shadow of death” (Matthew 4:16; see Isaiah 9:2). He embodies and gives peace to those He loves, even when they face hardship and death.
There in the hospital, John experienced the peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7) as he pondered the birth of Jesus. This encounter with God strengthened his faith and sense of gratitude as he lay in that sterile room away from his family at Christmas. May we too receive God’s gift of peace and hope.
Q: Of the four gospels, only one does not mention Christ’s birth or beginning. Which gospel is that?
A: Mark
Congratulations to Rebecca from Butler, who guessed correctly and wins the $5 gift card to Everlasting Cup!
Today on the show we read the last two Christmas Devotionals from Our Daily Bread. We also had our weekly Bible trivia where one lucky person has a chance to win a $5 gift card to Everlasting Cup.
Here are the two Christmas Devotionals from Our Daily Bread:
Through The Tears
I dreaded facing another Christmas hundreds of miles away from family. Loneliness and disappointment stirred into discontent, spewing out of my mouth as complaints when my husband suggested we unpack the holiday decorations. How could I be joyful when my heart ached?
Sipping a cup of hot chocolate, I glanced at the glass-front cabinet in our dining room. An overhead light shone on the nativity set I display year-round. A figurine of porcelain with Isaiah 9:6 carved on the front sits next to a wooden shepherd. “Wonderful Counselor. Mighty God. Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace.” As I whispered each name, I grew more and more confident that my tear-filled season could never smother the joy of knowing my Savior.
The prophet Isaiah announced the coming of the Messiah more than seven hundred years before Christ’s birth in Bethlehem (Isaiah 9:6). Jesus is Wonderful Counselor—trustworthy and able to guide us. He is Mighty God, who always was and always will be the one true God with limitless power. He is Everlasting Father, the eternal Maker of time. He is Prince of Peace, the one who restored man’s relationship with the Father.
Though believers in Jesus can’t avoid the darkness of this world, we can fix our eyes on Him—the greatest light of the world. We can rejoice in knowing Christ even through the tears.
By: Xochitl E. Dixon
O Come Emmanuel
It seems we seldom go beyond the first or second verses of our beloved Christmas carols. But, buried deep in the lyrics of one Christmas hymn—in verse seven!—are words that seem uniquely in tune with our times. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” written in the twelfth century, pleads:
O Come, O King of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind.
Bid all our sad divisions cease
And be yourself our King of Peace.
I can’t imagine a more appropriate prayer for our fractious, splintered generation. With the tone of public debate and private disagreement at what seems to be an all-time high for anger and aggression, how desperately we need the King of Peace to come to our help. The “sad divisions” we exhibit in our communities, churches, workplaces, relationships, and families can only be overcome with the help of the One who came to forgive, heal, and restore. No wonder Isaiah anticipated the coming Jesus by calling Him “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).
The apostle Paul urged us to put this into practice. “Let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts; he wrote. “For as members of one body you are called to live in peace” (Colossians 3:15). As we allow this peaceful Prince to restore our relationships, we ourselves become agents of His peace.
By: Bill Crowder
Question: Before Jesus started preaching, what was his job? Answer: Carpenter
Congratulations to Rachel of Gambier for guessing the correct answer! She wins a $5 gift card to Everlasting Cup!
Today our focus is on the Knox County Park District and the Millwood Church of Christ, who have teamed again to bring a new activity to the popular Fire and Ice event that benefits Food For The Hungry. Fire and Ice 2021 will be held as two drive-through events, one at Wolf Run Park and one at Millwood Church of Christ. The drive-through events are scheduled for Saturday, December 11 from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. at both locations.
Luminaria will magically guide you through the Wolf Run Regional Park parking lot located at 17621 Yauger Road in Mount Vernon. There, Park District staff will be on hand to retrieve boxed and canned food items from your vehicle and accept monetary donations for Food For The Hungry. No need to park and leave your car as the drive-through luminaria will guide you to the drop-off point in the parking lot.
Across the county, the Millwood Church of Christ located at 10900 Millersburg Road in Howard also has luminaria to guide you through the church parking lot at a drive-through event. At this location church personnel and volunteers will be on-hand to accept canned and boxed food items and monetary donations for Food For The Hungry.
– I was born December 8, 1925 in New York City – My parents were vaudeville dancers and I started dancing as a child – I was drafted into the US Army in 1943 and put on performances for troops – My father, godfather and I made up the Will Mastin Trio – In 1956 I starred in the Broadway musical, Mr. Wonderful – I became part of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack in 1959 and starred in Ocean’s 11 – I died of throat cancer in 1990
I am…Sammy Davis, Jr.
Congratulations to Bob from Howard, who guessed correctly and wins the $5 gift card to Everlasting Cup!
Today we shared from the Our Daily BreadChristmas devotional book, ‘Celebrating Jesus.’
Jonathon shared ‘Mary Knew’ from Dave Branon:
Four-year-old Kaitlyn was oblivious to everything else in the room. There were no thoughts of stockings hung and wrapped presents. She was simply content to play with our manger scene and its nativity characters. What piqued my interest was something else she was doing as she moved Mary, Joseph, and the Babe around: She was singing “Mary, did you know?” over and over-words she had heard sung by others. As she held Mary, she poignantly asked her if she knew who her precious baby boy was. Kaitlyn’s question for Mary is the vital one everyone needs to answer. Do we know that Jesus is the One predicted in Genesis 3 to strike Satan’s heel (v. 15)-to gain victory over Satan, sin, and death by His death on the cross? Do we know that He’s the Messiah promised in Isaiah 53 and the One Micah prophesied would be born in Bethlehem hundreds of years later? (5:2). We know that His name-Jesus-means that He will save His people from their sins (MATTHEW 1:21). We also know that Mary’s baby grew up and chose to die on the cross as the Savior of the world (LUKE 1:31; 2:30-32). The “Son of the Most High” (1:32) has invited us to know Him and be loved by Him. May we choose to know Jesus, our precious Savior, more and more each day!
Joe shared ‘Captain of a Motley Crew’ from Glenn Packham:
As a child, I always found Christmas Eve one of the most A exciting days of the year. I knew there would be presents in the morning, a feast that night, and a candlelight service at church. But it was also exciting because I never knew who was going to end up at our house for dinner. My parents loved inviting people who were alone or had nowhere to go to come share a meal with us. Folks from church, from their places of work, our friends from school-it was always a motley crew. David was on the run from King Saul and in need of good friends to surround him (1 SAMUEL 22:1-2). He needed the right community to help him in his crisis. Instead, what he found were hundreds of men who were also in trouble-those “in trouble or in debt or… discontented” (v. 2). Yet, David became captain over the motley crew and they trusted him. Jesus-the true and better David-is exactly the kind of person who gathered those around Him that society had discarded. Throughout the gospels, it’s often the sick and the disabled, the outcast, and the sinner who find belonging and healing in Jesus. The church is meant to be a kind of cave of Adullam (v. 1). It’s not a perfect community, but a ragtag group in need of a loving, healing Captain.
Name a place that’s open on Christmas Day: 1. Grocery store/Walmart/Kroger (23 votes) 2. Gas stations (20) 3. Fast Food restaurants (19) 4. Waffle House/Denny’s (12) 5. Movie theaters (8) 6. Airports (5) 7. Hospitals (3) 8. Hotels (2)
Congratulations to Tysha from Mount Vernon, who guessed correctly and wins the $5 gift card to Everlasting Cup.
This week we are bringing you (in no particular order) 10 of the top NEW Christmas songs for 2021! Click the songs for links to lyric videos and audio.
Today’s Monday Motivation continues with a Christmas theme:
The word Immanuel means, as we learn in Matthew 1:23, “God with us.” The coming of the Christ child fulfilled what Isaiah wrote in chapter 7, verse 14: “the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
In his book Hidden Christmas, Pastor Timothy Keller shares that for centuries, the Jewish religious leaders and scholars had known that prophecy, but did not think that it should be taken literally. They thought it was simply predicting the coming or arrival of some great leader through whose work, God would be present with his people.
However, Matthew writes that this promise is greater than anyone imagined! It did not come true figuratively, but literally. Jesus Christ is “God with us,” because the human life in Mary’s womb was a miracle performed by God himself. Then Jesus, with his life, his claims and his resurrection, convinced his closest followers that he was not just a prophet telling them how to find God, but God himself coming to find us.
Keller writes that this claim, that Jesus is God, gives us the greatest possible hope. Why? Because it means this world is not all that there is…it means that there is life and love after death and it means that evil and suffering will one day end.
And it is not just hope for the world, but hope for you and me personally. A God who was only holy would have not come to us in Jesus. He would have just demanded that we pull ourselves together and be moral and holy enough to be worthy of relationship with him. But our God is fully holy and fully human – so he doesn’t send someone else – he comes himself! Jesus is one of us – and that should give us all hope!
Christmas Gift Exchange winners today: Becky from Howard and Krista from Howard! Remember the grand prize drawing is Thursday morning on The Morning Thing!
Today’s focus is on Advent, provided to us from the writings of Rob Staples, professor of theology emeritus at Nazarene Theological Seminary:
Advent is preparation for Christmas, not Christmas itself. It is only in commercial advertising that the Christmas season begins the first of December (or the first of October!). In the Christian calendar, Advent is the season including the four Sundays preceding Christmas. Christmas Day is December 25, and the Christmas Season itself is the 12 days from Christmas to Epiphany. Remember the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” with “a partridge in a pear tree?”
Epiphany, which celebrates the coming of the Magi, the first Gentiles to acknowledge Jesus as King, is January 6. Epiphany means “showing” or “unveiling” and thus “unveils” the truth that salvation was for Gentiles as well as Jews.
Advent differs from Christmas in the same way Lent differs from Easter. Both Advent and Lent are times of preparation—Advent for Christmas and Lent for Easter.
The Christian calendar, unlike the calendar on our walls or desks, does not begin January 1. It begins the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is that season when the Church turns its gaze in two directions—past and future. It looks backward as it prepares to celebrate the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, and it looks forward as it engages in self-examination in preparation for Christ’s Second Coming in glory.
The word “advent” comes from the Latin adventus, which means “coming” or “arrival.” Thus in certain contexts it means the same as the Greek parousia. However, the latter term occurs in the New Testament only with reference to the Second Coming. During the Advent season, both these “comings” of Christ are embraced in the Church’s worship—His coming in the Incarnation and His coming at the end of the age.
Advent emphasizes hope, and it is this hope that makes Advent a proper preparation for Christmas.
Today’s Monday Motivation comes from Isaiah 9:2, 5-7 (NIV)
2The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
5 Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire. 6 For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
One of the first indications of the Christmas season is LIGHT. The appearance of lights seemingly everywhere – on trees, with candles, above streets; there is radiance all around us.
Lights are not just for decoration of course, they are symbolic.
In his book, Hidden Christmas, Pastor Timothy Keller says one of the most important spiritual truths at Christmas is this: the world is a dark place, and we will never find our way or see reality unless Jesus IS our light.
Keller writes that the word ‘darkness’ in the Bible refers to evil and ignorance. The world has evil and untold suffering. The world also has no one who can cure the evil and suffering. We look towards the earth and our human resources to try to fix the world. We think we can end darkness with intellect and innovation. That’s the ignorance.
So the message of Christmas is NOT, “we will be able to put together a world of unity and peace.” The message, instead, is a humble one: “Things really are this bad and we can’t heal or save ourselves. Nevertheless, THERE IS HOPE.”
Notice the verse in Isaiah doesn’t say the light comes from the world…it says that upon the world a light has dawned. It has come from the outside, and Jesus has brought that light to save us! Because, as John 8:12 says, He IS that light!
Today’s Christmas Gift Exchange winners were Pam from Fredericktown and James, also from Fredericktown.
Driving Notes 