Christmas Musicals for Church
Issue link: http://read.jwpepper.com/i/414864
2 SANCTUARY - SATB Throughout history, every culture has established sacred places of great religious significance. These places, great and small, are havens for seekers looking to discover a higher truth. They are preserved and set aside to encourage contemplation and meditation. They represent a gathering place for worship and a shelter for those in need. In these houses of faith, we encounter a holy hush that transcends the clamor of our daily enterprise. In their cloistered stillness, we sense the divine and learn to listen past our doubts and despair. Inspired, we fill these halls with our voices of adoration and decorate them with our songs of praise. When life brings tears, they are a retreat, a place to rest, where we remember God's promises of hope. Beyond these houses of devotion, there is another sanctuary not made of brick or stone. This sacred haven is not decorated with colored glass or crowned with soaring steeples. This tabernacle of mercy comes to us with doors flung open wide like the arms of a loving parent. Into this cocoon of promise, we enter, unformed and vulnerable. We emerge transformed into a beautiful child of hope. This living sanctuary is Jesus! Through Christ, God's tabernacle became flesh and moved among us. It is beneath this graceful shelt er that we find our way through the wilderness and into our Promised Land. It is in Christ we find our fortress of faith, and there, wrapped in His everlasting love, we at last know the deep peace that surpasses our understanding. Our journey completed, the seeking over, we at last are home. Joseph M. Martin FOREWORD For Preview Only