A Christmas Carol

"Mankind was my business!"

As we come to the close of this Christmas Day, I give thanks to Jesus Christ -- Emmanuel, God with Us -- had he not made mankind his business there would be no Christmas Past, no Christmas Present, and no Christmas Yet To Come.


God bless Us, Every One!

The Purpose and Use of Comforts

"Blessed be the God of comfort, who comforts us that we may be able to comfort them that are in tribulation."

"The truth is that we are at our best when we try to be it not for ourselves alone, but for our brethren; and that we take God's gifts most completely for oursevles when we realize that He sends them to use for the benefit of other men, who stand beyond us needing them...I am sure that you or I could be strengthened to meet some great experience of pain if we really believed that by our suffering we were made luminous with help to other men. They are to get from us painlessly what we have got most painfully from God."

--Philips Brooks (author of O Little Town of Bethlehem), Sermon on The Purpose and Use of Comforts

May we follow the example of the good Samaritan, even more so that of Jesus Christ, and help those in distress. Lord give us grace and strength to give our best for the benefit of others.

Be Not Dismayed

"If your Lord call you to suffering, be not dismayed; there shall be a new allowance of the King for you when you come to it. One of the softest pillows Christ has is laid under his witnesses' head, though often they must set their bare feet among thorns."

Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ (Banner of Truth)

"I give you joy, my darling."

Ice breaks many a branch, and so I see a great many persons bowed down and crushed by their afflictions. But now and then I meet one that sings in affliction, and then I thank God for my own sake as well as his. There is no such sweet singing as a song in the night. You recollect the story of the woman who, when her only child died, in rapture looking up, as with the face of an angel, said, "I give you joy, my darling." That single sentence has gone with me years and years down through my life, quickening me and comforting me.

-- Henry Ward Beecher (as quoted in, Streams in the Desert, Dec. 3rd reading)