For the week ending December 26, 2025

On behalf of all your church staff, I want to express our deep gratitude and appreciation for the very generous staff gifts we have received. It is a privilege and a pleasure to serve alongside all of you as your share your numerous talents, give your precious time, and support one another as members and friends of the Priest Lake Presbyterian Church. 2025 has been a year with many changes. We are so thankful that those essential and amazing things about PLPC – love, caring, welcome, hospitality, helping and supporting persons who are vulnerable or in need, vibrant worship of God, table fellowship, generosity, commitment to serving Christ – have not changed. You are a good and faithful church!

We pray that the light of Jesus Christ may shine brightly for you and your family this Christmas season. May the old, familiar story of the birth of Jesus be illuminated in new ways, showing that it is very real, still powerful, and always hopeful, both now and in the year to come. I, personally, am extremely grateful to have been adopted into the PLPC family this Christmas; you bless me with so much joy and love. The light of Jesus is shining on you and through you, on December 24 and all year long. All thanks be to God, in Jesus Christ our Savior.

Volunteerism can be likened to a local community band playing music or a youth group being successful in a project or maybe the Habitat home project. George S Patton in World War II, described battlefield orchestration success in the same way that music is played, he called it the Musicians of Mars. For example: If just the violin plays you have violin music. If just the oboe plays you have oboe music. If just the flute plays you have flute music. Only when all the instruments are played together, in a coordinated, directed, orchestrated manner do you truly have music or a symphony.

An individual person might be viewed in the same manner. As individuals we are only as effective as a single individual can be. The individual has certain skills or abilities, and time and community service capabilities. These individual skills may be needed or even required but can be better focused when several individuals work together as a team. The electrician does not build the house, but as a larger team, he is part of a coordinated, sequenced flow that allows great things to be built.
Jesus’s birth represents the conductor. He has defined the sheet music in the Bible. Lets be members of band and follow the conductor.

It’s one thing to demonstrate what one knows about Jesus. It is quite another to discover who one is in relation to that Jesus every day. That matter requires regular, daily examination over a lifetime of exploration. It can even expand and change over time.