The year 2016 has been a very encouraging one, indeed, with lots of new groups produced and finishing up with our new website. We hope you'll check it out - especially the new "You Can Do This" videos we produced for those wanting practical, refresher guidelines for running our More! groups.
We wanted to leave you this year with a short passage from the oft-quoted compilation of Advent writings, Watch for the Light. The theme - God's gift to humanity arriving through the humblest and smallest of means, a baby - is echoed in the YouTube link we've provided below. It is a delightful video of the Nativity produced by Southland Christian Church in Kentucky, acted out by adults lip-syncing little kids recalling the birth of Jesus. Priceless and precious as only children's versions (babes themselves) can be. Enjoy! [Note: The video has an ad before it that can be skipped after 4 secs.]
From The Light of the World by Evelyn Underhill, Dec. 18th entry:
And then the heavens open and what is disclosed? A baby, God manifest in flesh. The stable, the manger, the straw; poverty, cold, darkness - these form the setting of the divine gift. In this child God gives his supreme message to the soul - Spirit to spirit - but in a human way. Outside in the fields the heavens open and the shepherds look up astonished to find the music and radiance of reality all around them. But inside, our closest contact with that same reality is being offered to us in the very simplest, homeliest way - emerging right in our ordinary life. A baby - just that. We are not told that the blessed, virgin Mary saw the angels or heard the
Gloria in the air. Her initiation had been quite different, like the quiet voice speaking in our deepest prayer - "The Lord is with thee!" "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." Humble self-abandonment is quite enough to give us God.
God's blessings and peace to you,
All of us at Embracing Life Ministries
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