the christian calendar from galatians 4

Pastor: Father, in this holy night Your Son our Savior was born in human flesh. Renew Your Church as the Body of Christ. People: Holy God, hear our prayer. Pastor: In this holy night...

Pastor: Gracious God, with joy and thanksgiving we gather as Your people to ponder anew the timeless story of Christ’s birth. For at just the right time, You worked in the most unlikely ways to fulf...

Pastor: On this holy night we come to worship and adore the One we have been waiting for – Christ the Lord! As we prepare to hear once again the story of that first Christmas, let us come to the light...

Pastor: In the dark and quiet of this holy night, we gather to worship in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. People: Amen. Pastor: We celebrate that when the fullness of time...

Faithful One Your covenant is steadfast Your promises are true Your Son, our Savior, is born. Hallelujah! How great is your heart! Making us children and heirs of your grace. Making our home together...

Loving God: Abba—our Father; Jesus—our Savior; Spirit—our Comforter. As Advent begins ... we take a deep breath, we grit our teeth and steel our nerves anticipating the fast pace of the next few week...

O God, who looked on us when we had fallen down into death, and resolved to redeem us by the Advent of your only begotten Son; grant, we beg you, that those who confess his glorious Incarnation may al...

Hear the Good News. God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem us, free us, and make us children of God. In the Name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. Glory to God! Amen.

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you a...

Christ came to earth in the past, but Christ comes to us now in prayer and sacrament and human need, and he will come again at the end of the world.

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes... and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.

It is the very essence of a festival that it breaks upon one brilliantly and abruptly, that at one moment the great day is not and the next moment the great day is.

The promised Messiah, whose voice sounds like rushing waters, who holds the key to death and Hades, also grew in secret in Mary’s womb. He kicked and elbowed as all babies do, and came at the appointe...

By stating that Jesus is “born of woman”—this Mary (as both St. Matthew and St. Luke attest)—St. Paul insists that Jesus is most emphatically human, the “firstborn of all creation. That this Mary is a...

How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss could be seen as a story of adoption. In the end, the Grinch leaves his cave, takes off his disguise, makes restitution, and opens himself to a new place an...

We venture to assert, that if there be any day in the year, of which we may be pretty sure that it was not the day on which the Savior was born, it is the 25th of December. Regarding not the day, let ...

When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?

The Christian faith can never be separated from the soil of sacred events, from the choice made by God, who wanted to speak to us, to become man, to die and rise again, in a particular place and at a ...

The hinge of history is on the door of a Bethlehem stable.

Only with great care. For thousands, carols will be their only link with a church. At the same time, sentimentality is perhaps the single most dangerous feature of our Church and culture-and the senti...

What we celebrate at Christmas is not so much the birth of a baby, but the incarnation of God Himself.

Christmas is fast approaching. And now that Christ has aroused our seasonal expectations, he’ll soon fulfill them all!