"All We Really Need To Do Is Worship"

Pastor Laura Guy

November 29, 2009

Here's an instant replay of what happened in worship:

Pastor Laura invited everyone to join her in using a daily online Advent devotion at www.followingthestar.org.
We watched a video about the Advent Conspiracy - the basis of our "Simply Christmas" series.
We thought about people who get "Christmas hangover" from too much of everything. They look around on Dec. 26 and see too much stuff and wonder, "Is this all there is?"
We remembered the story "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." Even when the people of Whoville lost everything that symbolizes Christmas, they still rejoiced, welcoming Christmas as a special day. Honestly, would we do that? If we woke up and all the presents, food and decorations were gone, would we still praise God for Christmas?
We realized that to get to the heart of Christmas, we needed to answer the question, "So what?" There is a commercial on TV that has a bunch of dancing people chanting, "Go Christmas, Go Hanukah, Go Kwanzaa, Go Solstice" as if they were all equally important winter holidays. But the claim of Christianity is that Christmas - the birth of Jesus Christ - is the most significant event in human history. Period. Christmas is unlike any other day because it is the day when the God who created the universe came to earth to live as one of us so He could teach us, love us, die for us and offer us eternal life. We see this in John 1:10-18.
We heard the story of young girls in Cambodia who were sold into slavery, the sex trade. Dateline NBC did a story on them, and showed a sting operation led by a man named Gary Haugen to get the pimps arrested and the girls to a safe location. Several years later the reporters went back to see how the girls were doing. They were beautiful teenagers, living in a safe house, going to school, dancing, learning martial arts. They were free to be young women, free from fear. We imaged what would happen if those girls were invited to a birthday party for Gary Haugen. While others might be eating too much cake, giving gag gifts and making jokes, the girls would truly celebrate the birth of the man who who would grow up to save them.
We prayed that we would start our Christmas celebration with worship, giving thanks for the birth of the man who would grow up to save us.
We celebrated communion at the table of love.