Pastor's Notes: Pinewood(s) Emerge

December 1, 2024

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“Where’r the Pines?

I’d asked our congregation president—Bill (when the woods around the church and parsonage were in their summer fullness), “Where are the pines, anyway?” Pinewood is what those folks back in 1976 determined to call the rebranded church, just having moved to Burlington from Harvard Street in Cambridge. One would think the place would be full of them, and yet other kinds of trees are more prominent; what gives? In fact, our property became covered with red, and yellow, and orange leaves when the fall days arrived.



It’s interesting, though: once the leaves on those other trees turned their fall colors, something else became evident out in those woods. I was standing at the back window in the parsonage, looking out there, and I said to my wife, “Well, I’ll be. Pinewoods!” There they were in all their glory. The green of their needles remained as everything else turned another color. They’d been hiding in there.

Hiding in Plain Sight

The Savior was doing the same in Bethlehem. If it’d been called “Savior-town” instead, and people had gone looking for Him because of that name, they wouldn’t have found Him. He wasn’t out there in His glory so as to be noticed. He was hiding in the form of an infant.


“…though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9). The unassuming infant lived a perfect life and died a sacrificial death for you. He chose obscurity in this world in order that you might be recognized as His people, and brought to prominence in His eternal kingdom. A joyful and blessed Christmas to you all!


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