Posts from December 2021

Posts from December 2021

Daily Bread

Robert Murray M’Cheyne was a 19th century minister in the Church of Scotland. He died before he reached his thirtieth birthday, and he only spent 7 and a half years in vocational ministry. But in that brief time, he made such a strong impression that he was known throughout Scotland as “the saintly M’Cheyne.” As one contemporary wrote on his death: “Indolence and levity and unfaithfulness are sins that beset me; and his living presence was a rebuke to all…

Merry Christmas (One More Time)

I have printed this article, written by Reuel Lemmons and published in the Firm Foundation several decades ago, more than once at this Sunday closest to Christmas Day. But seeing as how we did not print a bulletin last year, and we continue to have new faces in our number, I thought it good to repeat it yet again. This editorial powerfully addresses the mixed feelings some of us have about the Christmas season, and it does so in such…

Why Arguments About Christmas Are Counterproductive

I know that several of us have mixed emotions about Christmas. Many of us probably heard lessons— lectures, really—at this time of year when we were growing up to the effect that Jesus was not born on December 25th. That’s true. But what a terrible message to leave in people’s hearts at a time when they are thinking about Christ! The important thing is that, whenever he came, he came; that has made all the difference. The following article from…

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. – Isaiah 7:14 This is one of the oldest hymns that is in current use if we trace it all the way to its roots. To do that, we need to go back to at least the 8th century, when we have our first certain references to it in the monasteries. But some scholars have discerned…

What Child is This?

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9:6 Unlike most British hymn writers in the 18th and early 19th centuries, William Chatterton Dix was not a minister. His father was a surgeon, and he was a businessman, the manager of the Maritime Insurance Company in Glasgow, Scotland. But in…