May the joy of the Lord be yours this Christmas season. We plan on taking some down time until the first of the year. Until then, may this video link warm you with some Christmas humor.

On this final Saturday before Christmas, we present the last installment of Christmas poetry from Armour Patterson (Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here). As with the other installments, one of the poems is just for fun, while the other is more serious in nature.

The fun:

    The Night Before Christmas in the Parsonage

The serious:

    The Night that Changed the World

From all of us at SBC Today, may this celebration of the birth of the Savior bring you much joy, and may it bring you closer to the One who “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

Merry Christmas!

This week, we present two more poems from Armour Patterson. The Night Before Christmas in the Hunting Lodge is just for fun, while A Soldier’s Christmas is more serious. It takes the point of view of an imagined Roman soldier, tasked with overseeing Herod’s slaughter of innocents, who meets Jesus half-way to Egypt.

Next week, we’ll present the final installment of Christmas Poetry. We hope you enjoy this week’s poems:

• The Night Before Christmas in the Hunting Lodge
• A Soldier’s Christmas

Each Saturday between now and Christmas, we will be sharing with you the Christmas poetry of Armour Patterson.

Armour has been married to his wife Rachel since June, 2001. They have no children and they live in Kingman, which is in northwestern Arizona near the borders of Nevada and California. They attend an Independent Baptist church in Kingman called Gospel Light Baptist Church. It is small, but more traditional and reminds them of what most Southern Baptist churches used to be like. As Armour told us, “No praise band, no skits or drama team, no barefoot guitar players, no hula dancers in grass skirts or fat preachers in aloha shirts, no interpretive dancers, no slide shows with Jesus in various outfits and poses, no snow machines, no cappuccino bar, no Amy Grant or Michael W. Smith, no pizza bar, no helicopter pad, no alternative Christian Metallica service, no bedroom suites, no swinging ropes over the pulpit, generally no animals other than those assisting the disabled, no juice bar fasting rooms, no alternative lifestyle bible studies, etc…. We like it and offer ourselves there for whatever services we can contribute either in the church or in the community through the church.”

It has been Armour’s custom the last several years to write two poems at Christmas time, one that is whimsical and fun and another that is more devotional in nature. We will present one of each type today and the next two Saturdays. Here are this week’s installments.

• The funny: The Night Before Christmas in the Saloon
• The serious: The First Christmas Eve

We hope you enjoy a good laugh and a devotional message, and we’re grateful to Armour for allowing us to publish his work.