It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like CHRISTMAS

Is everyone ready? Do you know which list you're on?  It's almost Christmas. We hope all your stockings are hung by the chimney with care, St. Nick will soon be here. But lets not forget the 

"Reason For The Season"

Dr. James Allan Francis wrote this sermon back in 1926. It wasn't a long sermon. Just 245 words. It wasn't a flowery sermon. It told a story of one simple man who has made a huge impact on all of mankind for over 2000 years. His sermon has been re-written, added to, and para phrased over the years.  Dr. Francis died in 1928. I’ve often wondered if he had any idea that his 245 words would  be quoted for the next 89 years. There's little information about the author. Not what denomination he was, or in what church he first gave this sermon, other than it was somewhere in Los Angles. I finally found a copy of the original sermon Dr. Francis gave 89 years ago on Christmas Eve and would like to share it with you.

Let us turn now to the story. A child is born in an obscure village. He is brought up in another obscure village. He works in a carpenter shop until he is thirty, and then for three brief years is an itinerant preacher, proclaiming a message and living a life. He never writes a book. He never holds an office. He never raises an army. He never has a family of his own. He never owns a home. He never goes to college. He never travels two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He gathers a little group of friends about him and teaches them his way of life. While still a young man, the tide of popular feeling turns against him. One denies him; another betrays him. He is turned over to his enemies. He goes through the mockery of a trial; he is nailed to a cross between two thieves, and when dead is laid in a borrowed grave by the kindness of a friend.

Those are the facts of his human life. He rises from the dead. Today we look back across nineteen hundred years and ask, What kind of trail has he left across the centuries? When we try to sum up his influence, all the armies that ever marched, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned are absolutely picayune in their influence on mankind compared with that of this one solitary life… 

Happy Birthday Jesus! 

Love Grenville & Beatrice