The Poems of Helen Steiner Rice, Part #1

This Christmas Eve 2010 I'm going to take a few blog posts and devote them to the poems of Helen Steiner Rice, who was a prolific Christian writer. Here is the first one:

Someone Cares
-----------------

Someone care and always will,
The world forgets but God loves you still,
You cannot go beyond His love,
No matter what you're guilty of---
For God forgives until the end,
He is your faithful, loyal friend,
And though you try to hide your face,
There is no shelter any place
That can escape His watchful eye,
For on the earth and in the sky
HE'S EVER PRESENT and ALWAYS THERE
to take you in His tender care
and bind the wounds and mend the breaks
When all the world around forsakes. . . . . . . .
SOMEONE CARES and LOVES YOU STILL
and GOD is THE SOMEONE who always will.

So, after reader Mrs. Steiner's words, remember that God does indeed care, and you should "cast all your cares on him, for He cares for you." (1 Peter 5:7)

*From the book the Collected Poems of Helen Steiner Rice, 1972: Fleming H. Revell Company.

The Importance of Christmas

Have you ever stopped to wonder why Christmas is just so important and why it is so important? To some, Christmas is a good time of year for the family; to others it is the time of year that helps their retail business stay afloat and keep them in the black for the rest of the year, but for others, the real meaning of Christmas is the fact of "Immanuel" or "God with us". The reason that we as Christians celebrate Christmas is because of the seemingly inconceivable miracle of the fact that God saw our sinful condition and decided to enter time and space in the form of a baby boy named Jesus born to Mary in the Roman backwater of First-Century Palestine.

Think about it this way, with this illustration:

Many years ago, there was a middle-aged farmer with a wife and two kids. The farmer was a loyal Christian and church-goer for most of his life, but that particular year he was feeling disheartened. His church had went through a very painful split and the pastor that he had grew fond of ending up having to resign. As a result, he felt that most Christians were hypocrites, and he was beginning to doubt his faith altogether. The church had their usual Christmas-eve service, and his family went as they always did, except this time he decided not to go. His wife and kids left him alone, and now he contemplated his life. As he walked to the barn he noticed some birds huddled together on the ground, apparently having missed the migration. The birds were freezing, he knew, and would likely die if they stayed where they were. If only he could get them to the safety of the warm barn....he tried everything he could think of, but the birds were scared to death of him. He even tried shooing them into the barn, but with no luck whatsoever. He finally had an epiphany. The birds are afraid of me. If only I could become one of them, then I could guide them into the safety of the warm barn. He then realized that Immanuel, or "God with us", had done just that on that cold evening thousands of years ago in early Palestine. That, my friends, is the purpose of Christmas. To remember that God in all his majesty entered time and space to be our Savior is the most important way to view the Christmas holidays.

God Story #10

It seems some time ago there was an Iranian Christian minister that was driving through the Iranian countryside with his wife. They stopped in a small town on the way to their destination to get some water. As they went into their equivalent of a grocery store to purchase the water, the man and his wife noticed an individual standing against the wall holding a machine gun. The wife pulled her husband aside and told her that he needed to give him the Bible that they had in the car. The husband prayed about it as they continued shopping in the store but ultimately decided against it. As they went back to the car and were putting their items away, the wife asked him once again to give him the Bible. The man refused because he was afraid. They drove away and made it out of town, and the wife continued to pray, and finally the man relented. "All right," he said, "I will go back and give him the Bible. If he shoots me, then he shoots me." They drove back to the store and the man with the machine gun was still standing there. The minister walked up to him and placed the Bible into his free hand. The man with the machine gun immediately began crying. "I don't live here," he said. "I had to walk for three days in order to get to this village. But three days ago an angel appeared to me and told me to walk to this village and wait until someone had given me the Book of Life. Thank you for giving me this book."

Because of this event, the minister became a courageous witness for Christ. Eventually, along with many other co-workers in the Iranian church, he was martyred for his faith.