Fireworks over the Hungarian Parliament Building. -Pixaby
The Work of Christmas Begins by Michael Dougherty link
When the carols have been stilled,
When the star-topped tree is taken down,
When family and friends are gone home,
When we are back to our schedules
The work of Christmas begins:
To welcome the refugee,
To heal a broken planet,
To feed the hungry,
To build bridges of trust, not walls of fear,
To share our gifts,
To seek justice and peace for all people,
To bring Christ’s light to the world.
Amen
Be Our Light for the New Year: author unknown link
Come, Holy Spirit,
Spirit of the Risen Christ, be with us today and always.
Be our Light, our Guide, and our Comforter.
Be our Strength, our Courage, and our Sanctifier.
May this new year be a time of deep spiritual growth for us,
A time of welcoming your graces and gifts,
A time for forgiving freely and unconditionally,
A time for growing in virtue and goodness.
Come, Holy Spirit,
Be with us today and always.
Amen
Prayer for the New Year from the Northumbria Community: Minnie Haskins (1875-1957) link
Lord Jesus, You are the man who stands at the gate of the year.
Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.
As I go into the darkness, I put my hand into Yours,
for that is better to me than any earthly light and safer than a known way!
Amen.
Go to the 37 min. mark.
Benediction from the Iona Community link
At the turning of the year,
turn our ache into action.
At the turning of the year,
turn our fear towards love.
At the turning of the year,
re-turn our hearts to you,
loving, living God. Amen
Beth Moore … Southern Baptists lost one of the greatest preachers it ever had when they would not receive her God-granted spiritual gifting because of her gender. God distributes His gifts to each member of the Body of Christ, specifically and as He wills (1 Corinthians 12). For men to exclude His gifts to His Church based on the jots and tittles of aberrant theology is to reject His will for the whole Body of Christ … He gifts believers without distinction of race, class or gender. Churches which will not receive them are less gifted than He intended them to be; believers in such places will not be equipped as they ought to be when individual gifts are missing.
^ What Max said.
Happy New Year, Wartburgers. Thank you, Dee, for all you do
Ms. Moore’s presentation is from about minute 36 to minute 56, approx. 20 minutes for her homily.
Happy New Year to you, too. And, yes, thx Dee for all you do, or we wouldn’t all be here.
How long can they continue on like this (gender-based nonsense)?
Like ultra-orthodox Jews with Torah, except that Paul’s writings are their ‘Torah’ so to speak, which must be followed to the letter.
As long as SBC’s female membership put up with it. The good women of SBC need to rise up en masse, declare “Enough is enough!”, and start dragging their sorry menfolk out of the mess! The “beauty of complementary” (aka, female bondage) gets old after awhile. It was never in God’s plan no matter how hard you squeeze the jots and tittles of Scripture.
FreshGrace,
Happy New Year, FreshGrace! May we all experience Fresh Grace in 2024!
PSA: It’s still Christmas. Until Epiphany at the earliest, Candlemas at the latest. The tree stays up at least until Epiphany. See the recent WSJ article, “Make Christmas Medieval Again.” That’s the idea. The Incarnation is far too big for one day.
Welcome to my TED Talk. 😀
Agree.
Catholic Gate-Crasher,
We always leave our tree up until Epiphany, but rarely until Candlemas: we need the space!
Duke is so cool: it looks just like Hogwarts, except for the location. My brother went there for one year, 1982-83, but it didn’t work out. Later, he joined the Air Force and turned out fine, will be 60 this year.
As long as their wimmenfolk let them get away with it.