Christians around East Cobb attended Christmas Eve services Saturday, hearing messages about hope, peace, love and eternal light as they celebrated the birth of Jesus.
Pastors at several churches cited current events, as they urged their congregations to live out the meaning of Christ’s arrival.
“We ought to look out for one another,” said Rev. Dr. Ike Reighard of Piedmont Church. “That’s what being part of family of God is all about. It’s about love.
“God reached down to the world and did something that’s an absolute mystery,” he continued. “Love is from God,” and is manifested in humans through the life of Jesus.
Reighard, who is also the CEO of Marietta-based MUST Ministries, spoke of tragedy in his own life. His first wife died in childbirth with their first child.
“A troubled faith is better than no faith at all,” he said.
Mt. Bethel Church observed its first Christmas since breaking from the United Methodist Church following a court settlement earlier this year.
Rev. Dr. Jody Ray spoke of the first Christmas—the time of Jesus’ birth—as a “dark time . . . under the iron fist of Rome.”
The darkness of contemporary times—death, divorce, addiction and other maladies—continues, Ray said, but the Bible says “there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Reading from the book of Isaiah, he said that “the light of Christmas shines in the midst of the darkness” and
“gives us the hope that we can keep going forward.”
Ray said that “the darkness never overtakes the light . . . . never ever ever . . . Light always always always always overtakes the darkness.”
At Mt. Paran Church of God North, the subject of senior pastor Dr. Kirk Walters’ sermon was about how to find peace.
“We are divided over everything—politics, religion, race, gender—everything,” he said.
But we don’t “understand what Biblical peace is.” It’s not an absence of problems, said Walters, whose wife died in August after battling cancer.
“Peace is available to those with whom God is pleased, those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and savior.
“Jesus has to be Lord of your life to have that kind of peace.”
Several East Cobb churches will be having Christmas Day services on Sunday. For more information, click here.
Related:
- PHOTOS, VIDEOS: Menorah Lighting at The Avenue East Cobb
- Cobb Library System holiday book sale continues through December
- Family-oriented holiday activities in the East Cobb area
- East Cobb’s Fox Family holiday lights display marks 15th year
- PHOTOS, VIDEOS: Holiday Lights go on at East Cobb Park
- PHOTOS: Johnson Ferry Christmas Party celebrates the season
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