Word

A Month from Matthew – 21

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.  6.21

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Old poem/card

CHRISTMAS COLORS (20^th card)

Color Christmas red.

For bright young cheeks on Suzie and Fred,

For dogwood seed pods as they shed,

For flying, feathery cardinals bred.

And He who was Bethlehem born

Was also red – bloodily torn.

Christmas was the beginning,

Calvary the sad ending.

Color Christmas red.

 

Color Christmas white.

For mistletoe berries and their rite,

For snow that fell from the realm of kite,

For icicles’ unique snappy bite.

Whitish was the symbolic dove

That descended then from above,

White the sand on which He walked,

Purer still, the way He talked.

Color Christmas white.

 

Color Christmas green.

For pointed holly leaves with their sheen,

For blue spruce and white spruce, oh so keen,

For every evergreen ever seen.

The fish and bread Breaker did pass

Fifty by fifty on the grass

While fig found it did not suit

To be full but without fruit.

Color Christmas green.

 

Color Christmas gold.

For all the shiny tinsel that’s sold,

For candle flame, regardless of mold,

For merchant’s profit in crispy fold.

The old temple He did replace,

A golden prayer-house in disgrace.

King He was; deserved the crown

In spite of religion’s frown.

Color Christmas gold.

 

Color Christmas dark.

For wintery trees in “formal” bark

For gray-to-brown mountains, unclad, stark

For snow clouds’ own horizontal mark.

Dark was the world before His gift,

The veil did rend! Sin’s night did lift!

Its no longer dark – He came.

Since; things haven’t been the same.

Hark, angels, men hark.   

– eab Dec. ‘85

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Which are you?

Some Christians are Nuclear – they react,

Some are Electrical – they are shocking!

Others are Solar – Bright and Shining.

– eab, 8/78

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Hope to Hopeless

 

Thank God for Redemption’s plan

Which came down this time of year

Giving hope to hopeless man

Caught in trouble and in fear.

– eab, 12/21/06

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Roger Williams – born

ON THIS DATE

Roger Williams was born 12/21/1603 in London.  He graduated from Cambridge & became Chaplain to a wealthy family.  On 12/15/1629 he married Mary Barnard.  He tutored John Milton in Dutch in exchange for (refresher) lessons in Hebrew.  His ideas on freedom (mainly correct, BTW) were expressed before he left England.  He & Mary arrived at Boston 5/2/1631.  Their 4 daughters & 2 sons were all born in America.

After conflicts with the pilgrims Williams fled south, purchased land from 2 Narragansett Chiefs, and named it Providence in thanks to God.  Williams made two trips back to England during one of those he wrote his best-known literary work Key into the Languages of America, which when published in London in 1643, made him “the authority on American Indians.” He also wrote Bloody Tenent of Persecution.

Williams quotes:

No man ever did, nor ever shall, truly go forth to convert the nations, nor to prophesy in the present state of witnesses against Antichrist, but by the gracious inspiration & instigation of the Holy Spirit of God…I know no other True Sender but the most Holy Spirit.

…the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience, is most evidently & lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace.

Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility.  No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will.

God needeth not the help of a material sword of steel to assist the sword of the Spirit in the affairs of conscience.

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