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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Christ in the Temple</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">There
is a famous oil painting called "Christ Teaching in The Temple." The
painting gets it wrong. It comes from an era when religious people were
still uneasy with the notion that Jesus was like the rest of us. In this
picture he is standing in the midst of the elders looking very wise,
obviously delivering a lecture. He is talking and pointing and they are
listening. He had, no doubt, appeared to instruct them in the law, as if
he knew what they didn't. But that's not what the text says. They found
him, says Luke, "listening to (the teachers) and asking them
questions." He was not the authority; he was the student. He was there
to listen and learn. Now it is true that the religious leaders were
impressed by how much he knew, and by how he answered their questions.
But there is nothing in this text which indicates he was a precocious
know it all.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Adapted from When It Is Dark Enough, Charles H. Bayer, CSS Publishing Lima, Ohio.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">___________________ </span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Truth springs from argument amongst friends.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Scottish philosopher David Hume</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">__________________</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Significance of Things Eternal</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Parish ministers will tell you that people come to them speaking with regrets like these:</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">When I was young, my mother was going to read me a story, but she had to wax the bathroom floor and there wasn't time.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">When
I was young, my grandparents were going to come for Christmas, but they
couldn't get someone to feed the dogs and my grandfather did not like
the cold weather and besides they didn't have time.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">When
I was young, my father was going to listen to me read my essay on "What
I Want To Be When I Grow Up," but there was Monday Night Football and
there wasn't time.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">When
I was young, my father and I were going to go hiking in the Sierras,
but at the last minute he had to fertilize the lawn and there wasn't
time.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">When
I grew up and left home to be married, I was going to sit down with Mom
and Dad and tell them I love them and would miss them, but my best man
was honking the horn in front of my house so there wasn't time.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Into
our hectic world, Jesus comes, and still invites us to exercise the
spirit as well as the mind and the body. The best way we exercise the
spirit is by giving attention to things of eternal significance, such as
listening, loving, and learning from the least expected places.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Richard A. Wing, Deep Joy For a Shallow World, CSS Publishing Company</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">_____________________</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Humor: School Is a Part of Life</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">A
young woman named Donna who got good grades in high school was in her
first year of college. She had done poorly on one of her courses. In an
attempt to prepare her parents she wrote her mother, "If you see an
unfamiliar letter on my report card, remember it's just my first
initial. Signed, Donna." As the time neared for grades to be sent home,
Donna began to worry. Her worst fears were confirmed one evening when
her mother called her. Donna said, "Hi, Mom." Her mother replied coldly,
"Hello, Frank." <br>
<br>
School is part of life. For the Christian there are two kinds of
education. There is education at school and on the job. And there is
religious education about our faith. We have just celebrated Christmas.
Unfortunately, we don't know much about the next few years in Jesus'
life. We can imagine he lived in a home filled with love. We can imagine
as a boy he worked with his father Joseph in the carpenter shop,
learning a trade although Jesus' real vocation would surface in our
lesson for today.<br>
<br>
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt"><a target="_blank" __removedlink__1417504970__href="http://mail.churchmail.com/lists/lt.php?id=Kk8AAQUECQ9aDUkNAwVKDAtXUVw%3D"><span style="font-size: small"><span style="color: purple">www.Sermons.com</span></span></a></span><span style="font-size: small"><br>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Growing Up Fast</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Kids
grow up awfully fast these days. It seems like one minute you are
trying to encourage your child to go faster on his bicycle, to get up
enough speed to stay balanced, and the next you are pleading with the
same boy now at the wheel of a car, pleading with him to slow down and
live. One minute you're urging a shy daughter to say hello to strangers,
and the very next, you're trying to discourage her from responding to
strangers on the Internet.<br>
<br>
Jesus is growing up fast too. Here we are, less than a week from
Christmas, from the baby lying in a manger. Now Jesus is already an
adolescent wandering off on his own. Last week Jesus was "prophecy
miraculously fulfilled." This week he is questioning the teachers of
that very tradition.<br>
<br>
The classical confessions of the church hold that Jesus is "fully human,
fully God," and in today's familiar story from Luke, we can see both
sides. Jesus, fully human, is growing up as all mortals must. In the
process, Jesus has scared his parents half to death as all teen-agers
do. Jesus is asking questions, as should we all, and he is listening to
learn, as all we must. And in this story, we see the twelve-year old
Jesus fully divine with everyone amazed at his understanding and his
answers. We hear Jesus declaring his unique relationship with God the
Father as only the Son can do.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Sid Burgess, Question Time<br>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Small Things to Be Done with Great Love</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">It
took me a long while to hear this truth from Mother Teresa: "There are
no big deals anymore, just small things to be done with great love." </span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Most
of this coming year will be spent in ordinary time. We enter into the
season on the church calendar marked as "ordinary time." What a good
prophetic note for the New Year: most of the good that will be done will
be done in ordinary time, when no one is looking and no one will report
it to the paper. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small"> </span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Here
comes the New Year, full of ordinary time. We will enter it ready to
slug it out for the common good while no one is looking. In the middle
of ordinary time, God comes with extraordinary moments that make all
others bearable, believable, and worthwhile. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">I
have always thought that while our nation works out negotiations with
other countries, like with North Korea, we only see the leaders in the
news. But, if the whole story were revealed, we would see nameless
people on both sides of the issue tirelessly speaking to each other
through the night in order to work out an agreement. Leaders sit down
and sign documents that were slugged out by unknowns in the night during
ordinary time. <br>
<br>
Richard A. Wing, Deep Joy for a Shallow World, CSS Publishing <br>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Our Children Can Teach Us</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Some
years ago in a midwestern town a little boy was born blind. His mother
and father were heartsick, but they struggled with his blindness the
best they could. Like all such parents, they prayed and hoped for some
miracle. They wanted so much for their son to be able to see. Then one
day when the little boy was 5 years old, the community doctor told them
that he had heard about a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital who
was specializing in a new surgical procedure that might just work for
their son… that might just give their little boy his eyesight.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">The
parents became excited at the prospect, but when they investigated
further and discovered the cost of the surgery and the travel and the
hospital expense involved, they became deflated because they were not
people of means at all. In fact, some would call them poor. But word got
out in the community and their church rallied to help them. In a short
period of time, the money was raised to send them to Boston for the
surgery.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">On
the morning they were to leave for Boston, the little boy gathered his
things together including his tattered little teddy bear. It had an ear
chewed off, was missing an eye, and was bursting at the seams. His
mother said, “Son, why don’t you leave that old teddy bear at home? He’s
about worn out. Maybe we can buy you a new one in Boston or when we get
back.” But he said, “No, I need it.”</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">So
off to Boston they went. He held tightly to that teddy bear all the
way. The surgeon sensed how important the teddy bear was to the little
boy, so he allowed the boy to keep the bear with him throughout all the
many examinations prior to surgery. On the morning of the surgery, the
hospital staff brought in two surgical gowns – one for the little boy
and a smaller version for the teddy bear – and off to the operating room
they went… a little blind boy on a stretcher holding on dearly to his
beloved teddy bear.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">The
surgery went well. The doctor felt good about what they were able to
accomplish. “I think he will be able to see,” said the surgeon, “but we
won’t know for sure until we remove the bandages in a few days.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small"> </span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Finally
the day came for the doctor to remove the bandages. The nurses and
interns stood with the parents as the surgeon slowly unwound the gauze
from the boy’s eyes. Miracle of miracles! The little boy could see! For
the first time in his life… he saw his mother’s face, he saw his dad and
his doctor, he saw flowers and candy and balloons and the people who
had cared for him. For the first time in his life, he saw his teddy
bear. It was a joyous celebration!</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">When
it came time for the boy to leave the hospital, his surgeon came into
the room. The doctor had grown so attached to the little boy that he had
to busy himself with those insignificant gestures that we… when we are
trying to surmount a great wall of emotion. They said their good-byes
with tears of joy all around… and then the doctor turned to leave. The
little boy called him back…</span></div>
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<div><span style="font-size: small"><span style="color: black">The rest
of this illustration, as well as many additional illustrations and
sermons for this week, New Year’s, and the rest of the year can be
accessed at <a __removedlink__1417504970__href="http://www.Sermons.com" target="_blank">www.Sermons.com</a>.<br>
<br>
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