Holiday Greetings!

Christmas Eve worship will be as follows:

3:00PM – An outdoor service will be held at Christ’s United Lutheran (Four Bells).  There will be parking available if you wish to remain in your vehicle for the service.

Please remember to maintain social distancing guidelines and wear a mask

7:00PM – There will be a “live stream” from First Lutheran.  The link to the stream can be found on the Facebook site:  First Evangelical Lutheran Church Mifflinburg PA.

CLICK HERE for the bulletin for the service.

Also, CLICK HERE to read the annoucment regarding “ringing the bells” on Christmas Eve.

Daily Briefing (12/14)

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

As Christmas approaches, may our senses be sharpened and our hearts opened to become keenly aware and alert to the manner by which God directs God's activity in our time and place. So much of the time, we seem to focus on our human perspectives and perceptions that revolve around human experience and ingenuity and are drawn from an evaluation, good and bad, of human effort. Such preoccupations dull us to the evidence of the divine at work in our world, the divine spark and Spirit of God that makes possib;le that which we often see as impossible or improbable.

As we approach Christmas of 2020, a time of perplexing thoughts and actions. often fueled with fear and doubt, rage and anger, may we pause long enough to "see" the presence and promise of God at work in our homes and communities, and throughout the nations. To be sure, there will be those who balk at such suggestions, for they "see" the world broken beyond repair and hope or they seek resolve or solution through the means of human power and wisdom apart from any acknowledgement of the divine. We seem to live in a time when "politics" is asserted above religious faith. 

Such was the case as Luke recorded the birth of Jesus by introducing the narrative of God's coming into our world and taking on human flesh in and around the political machinations of King Herod of Judea, Governor Quirinius, and Emperor Augustus. Then the angels began to speak, at the Jerusalem temple and a little rural outpost in Galilee. May we be able to "see" and "hear" the real word of God today, lest we remain callous and indifferent to what is at stake.

The angelic message presented to Mary bore the weight of God's favor and God's possibility for a world in need, a world that bore the marks of injustice and fear, division and discord. Mary listened and she pondered, and she responded with faithful hope- "Let it be with me according to your word." Mary, beyond the trappings of fear and doubt, became alert to and a faithful witness of the possibility of God. Her child Jesus "will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

God's promise, God's way, God's flesh into our world today and into the forever, a possibility beyond anything the Herod's and the Augustus' of the world ever contrived or imagined.

Amen! Come, Lord Jesus.   Pastor John