SUNDAY: Bible Study - 9:00 AM | Worship - 10:00 AM | PM Worship - 6:00 PM WEDNESDAY: Bible Class - 7:00 PM ~ 8110 Signal Hill Road Manassas, Virginia | Office Phone: 703.368.2622

     The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies….  So begins the decree of a national day of thanksgiving, given by Abraham Lincoln on October 3, 1863.  We read this every Thanksgiving’s Eve at the beginning of our devotional.  Those times are especially sweet as they represent several homecomings.  It is wonderful to have friends and family back home for the holiday – and to sit down and worship together.  Thanksgiving is the theme that transitions the oranges and browns of turkey day to the reds and greens of December’s holiday season.  Even before the last Thursday of November, some radio stations were already playing the Yuletide songs – and so on Thanksgiving eve I heard Bing Crosby sing “Count your Blessings” on the car radio. “Just think about a nursery, and then picture curly heads…” his inimitable baritone crooned, and so I did.  We don’t have a nursery, or curly heads at our house anymore – but we did once, and thinking about them was a blessing to count.
This is the last bulletin of the year 2011.  We always forego our mass mailings for the last three weeks of December as a courtesy to the USPS.  We will continue to publish announcement sheets, and update the news online, but we will not be arriving in your snail-mail-box again until 2012.  On behalf of the office staff at the Manassas Church of Christ, I would like to wish you all God’s blessings, as you have been a constant blessing to us.  And before we say goodbye for the year, let us remember God’s greatest gift.


 THE_PROBLEM_WE_LIVE_WITH           I was reading the other day about Lynda Gunn.*  When she 8 years old, back in 1960, she was asked by her grandfather, the athletic director at a private school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, if she would agree to pose for a painting his friend was working on.  She agreed.  The friend of her grandpa was Norman Rockwell, and the painting (perhaps his masterpiece) was “The Problem We All Live With” – his famous, wall-sized painting of Ruby Bridges being escorted to Mrs. Henry’s first grade class at the William Frantz Elementary School by four Federal Marshalls.  Lynda is the model for Ruby in it.  I’ve seen the original painting, and it is powerful - prophetic in its condemnation of a bigotry so hateful that it vents itself on one little wisp of a girl.  Ruby was escorted to school each day in New Orleans through mobs throwing tomatoes, and threatening to kill her.  Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.  Her experience has been documented by many fine writers and thinkers, including John Steinbeck, and the great Robert Coles.  I think the best is Ruby’s own 61 page children’s book for Scholastic, Through My Eyes.


            Like Ruby Bridges, Lynda Gunn was the only black child in her elementary school, in Stockbridge.  But unlike Ruby, (and unlike W.E.B. Du Bois who did feel isolated as the only black child in a New England elementary school) she didn’t feel isolated or excluded in any way.  Her family had been prominent in Stockbridge for generations.  Her grandfather was a well-known local figure.  She was at home in Stockbridge.  She belonged

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            And so when we look at that Norman Rockwell painting we can see hatred and bigotry.  Or we can look beyond and think about a little girl in Stockbridge, posing for her grandpa’s close friend, and otherwise enjoying a happy, idyllic childhood.


            Those two little girls in two different towns in 1960 are who we are without God, and who we can be in God.  Without God there is no light, no love, no compassion – there is only hate, violence, and evil.  But we may have God as our father, we may belong to light and love and security.  The writer of Hebrews emphasizes this contrast in 12.18-28.  He contrasts the experience of the Christian with that of the Hebrew at Mount Sinai - contrasts the shuddering fear they had with the love and light we enjoy.  We have been called to: Mount Zion, the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels…and to Jesus (vv.22-24).  We belong.  We belong to God.  This is his greatest blessing.


            And this is the blessing we wish (we pray) for you.  May all mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors be brothers and sisters in Christ, through his blood, on account of the Grace of God. 

May all accept his greatest blessing.  Amen.
                                                   Happy Holidays!
                                    Barry Bryson               Deb Binkley

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