Blessings to you, loved ones.  Here’s what’s happening.

It was good to be with you all last Sunday.  It felt comfortable, like being at home.  That’s the way church should feel and i hope you all feel the same.  We welcomed two visitors that Pris brought from Brentwood and they joined right in.  Pris talked about waiting on the Lord and trusting in Him, and I wrapped up our study of Romans chapters 12-13.

There was a little excitement before service though.  When I got to the church, Cathy was out front talking to a policeman.  It seems we had an attempted break-in the night before, but nothing else inside the building was disturbed or stolen.  We don’t know what happened, but we thank the Lord for His protection.

Keep praying for each other.  We have quite a few facing major health challenges who could use a miracle.  We know someone who does those!  Cathy wrote in from our Facebook page with another request, but thanks to Facebook not labeling everything properly for screen readers I accidentally made it disappear before I could capture the text.

We’ve officially entered the Christmas season now, so for the next few weeks I will offer some observations about events surrounding the birth of our Lord.  This week’s message didn’t originate with me, but in fact it’s highly unlikely that I or anyone else is going to come up with idea from this text that hasn’t been thought of in 2,000 years.  I heard someone point this one out and it stuck with me.

The Gospel of Luke gives us two accounts of angelic visitations in the first chapter.  The first is to Zacharias, a priest serving in the temple.  The second is to Mary, a young lady engaged to be married who learns she’s about to be pregnant!  Both receive news of a miracle, but their responses differ in one very important detail.  They both ask questions, but one asks from doubt, the other from faith.

Few if any of us can expect a visit from an angel, but we are confronted with the same choice that Zacharias and Mary had.  Will we choose to believe God even when what He says doesn’t seem possible, or will we question him in doubt.  Mary’s question was one of curiosity.  In other words, “How are You going to do that?”  Zacharias’ question was one of skepticism, “prove to me that You can do that.”  We all have questions, and that’s OK.  Let them be questions from faith and not from doubt.

Love y’all!  See you Sunday!

Larry