Angel's Candle

Peace

This morning we lit the Angel’s candle.

What is peace?

peace:

1. The nonwarring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world.

2. A state of mutual harmony between people or groups, especially in personal relations.

Another simplified definition I read was that peace is the absence of conflict.

Have you ever been part of a conflict? With family member’s friends? Maybe even your church family? I know I have. But you can even have conflict in your own heart. I know I have stirred up conflict by talking behind someones back or by selfishly looking at my own interests instead of others. I think it is safe to say that we have all been part of conflicts in our lives and i am confident that you will be involved in more conflict again. So what should our goal be in conflict? Should our aim be to win the argument because we all know that you are right and you are justified to act and feel the way you do right?

What do I mean when I say conflict in our own hearts? I know in the past I have talked about having Jesus in your heart what do we mean by heart? We know from

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 ESV

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

What does it mean to love The Lord with all of your heart?

I want to show you a video that explains it.

As we look at the Bible Projects explanation of the heart it completely changes our concept of asking Jesus into our heart doesn’t it. We are not asking Him to come into our physical heart and we are not asking for Jesus to come into our center of emotions and feel good are we? Look at the diagram on the screen. What are we asking Jesus to do when we encourage someone to ask Jesus into our hearts?

We are asking Jesus to be Lord of our Thoughts, our emotion, and our choices.

Do you ever feeling conflicted in your emotions or with choices you need to make? Maybe it is just me but I feel conflicted all the time.

So as we celebrate the advent of Jesus this year, we recognize the message of the angels.

Luke 2:14 ESV

14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

That night in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago God brought peace to earth. What form of peace did God deliver? The orthodox jewish rabbis I met years ago believe the messiah is coming to bring physical peace. To stop the wars and killing that is happening all around the world. We know that that is Jesus mission in His second coming but wait the angels said He was bring peace the first time what is the truth??

Look at the wars, the death, the hatred of man towards his fellow man. How can the angels declare peace on earth?

This is a question the author of our closing hymn asked himself.

In March of 1863, 18-year-old Charles Appleton Longfellow left his family’s house on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Unbeknownst to his family, he boarded a train bound for Washington, D.C., traveling over 400 miles down the eastern seaboard in order to join President Lincoln’s Union army to fight in the Civil War.

Charles (b. June 9, 1844) was the oldest of six children born to Fannie Elizabeth Appleton and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the celebrated literary critic and poet. Charles had five younger siblings: a brother (aged 17) and four sisters (ages 13, 10, 8—and one who had died as an infant).

Less than two years earlier, Charles’s mother Fannie had tragically died after her dress caught on fire. Her husband, Henry, awakened from a nap, tried to extinguish the flames as best he could, first with a rug and then his own body, but she had already suffered severe burns. She died the next morning (July 10, 1861), and Henry Longfellow’s own burns were severe enough that he was unable even to attend his own wife’s funeral. He stopped shaving on account of the burns, growing a beard that would become associated with his image. At times he feared that he would be sent to an asylum on account of his grief.

When Charley (as he was called) arrived in Washington D.C., he sought to enlist as a private with the 1st Massachusetts Artillery. Captain W. H. McCartney, commander of Battery A, wrote to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for written permission for Charley to become a soldier. HWL (as his son referred to him) granted the permission.

Longfellow later wrote to his friends Charles Sumner (senator from Massachusetts), John Andrew (governor of Massachusetts), and Edward Dalton (medical inspector of the Sixth Army Corps) to lobby for his son to become an officer. But Charley had already impressed his fellow soldiers and superiors with his skills, and on March 27, 1863, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, assigned to Company “G.”

On the first day of that December, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was dining alone at his home when a telegram arrived with the news that his son had been severely wounded—inaccurately stating that he had been shot in the face—four days earlier. On November 27, 1863, while involved in a skirmish during a battle of of the Mine Run Campaign, Charley had been shot through the left shoulder, with the bullet exiting under his right shoulder blade. It had traveled across his back and nicked his spine. Charley avoided being paralyzed by less than an inch.

He was carried into New Hope Church (Orange County, Virginia) and then transported to the Rapidan River. Charley’s father and younger brother, Ernest, immediately set out for Washington, D.C., arriving on December 3. Charley arrived by train on December 5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was alarmed when informed by the army surgeon that his son’s wound “was very serious” and that “paralysis might ensue.” Three surgeons gave a more favorable report that evening, suggesting a recovery that would require him to be “long in healing,” at least six months.

On Friday, December 25, 1863, Longfellow—as a 57-year-old widowed father of six children, the oldest of which had been nearly paralyzed as his country fought a war against itself—wrote a poem seeking to capture the dynamic and dissonance in his own heart and the world he observes around him that Christmas Day.

He heard the Christmas bells ringing in Cambridge and the singing of “peace on earth” (Luke 2:14), but he observed the world of injustice and violence that seemed to mock the truthfulness of this optimistic outlook.

The theme of listening recurs throughout the poem, eventually leading to a settledness of confident hope even in the midst of bleak despair as he recounts to himself that God is alive and righteousness shall prevail.

Within a decade (1872), the poem was put to music by the English organist John Baptiste Calkin for a processional, set to the the melody “Waltham.”

You can read the whole poem below and listen to a modern rendition of the carol by Caroline Cobb and Sean Carter.