Jim Somerville: "It's hard for me to believe, but this is the tenth time I have celebrated Christmas with Richmond's First Baptist Church. Every year, I have looked for a good story to share at the five o'clock service..."

Lynn Turner: "Author Anne Lamott once made this comment: 'You will lose someone you can't live without and your heart will be badly broken. The bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of the one that you have loved. But this is also the good news: they live forever in your broken heart, and your heart doesn't completely seal back up, and you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly, that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp...'"

Jim Somerville: "Wouldn't we love it if something like snow could fall and transform the muddy back yards of our lives into something beautiful and new? Maybe that's why 'White Christmas' is so popular: because we live in the often-unlovely reality between those Christmases we used to know and the ones we long for; because we still hold on to this wild and improbable hope that everything could change overnight..."

Jim Somerville: "'Why doesn't [Jesus] heal now like he healed then?' some people wonder. Others will ask, 'Why is there still hunger in the world? Jesus fed the multitude then, why doesn't he feed the multitudes now?' In each case I say, 'Because he was doing those things for a reason. He was doing them to show and tell people what the world would be like when God finally had his way. And God hasn't had his way yet...'"

Jim Somerville: "There is something inside us that hungers for light in the way our stomachs hunger for food. If we have to go without if for too long we begin to starve. The world seems especially dark these days..."

Dr. Jim Somerville's sermon to the children from Sunday, November 26, 2017.

Jim Somerville: "Compassion, the ability to see the suffering of others, to feel their pain, and to do something about it, sets the citizens of [Christ's] kingdom apart. His judgment at the last day may not be so much about deciding who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, but about identifying those people who have embraced the core value of the kingdom. Those are the ones who will feel most at home there. Those are the ones for whom it will feel like heaven..."

Jim Somerville: "I was [once] convinced that the difference between being welcomed into the joy of your Master and being cast into the outer darkness was the difference between being fearless with what you had been given and being fearful. But now I’m not so sure. Maybe the difference is not between being fearless and being fearful, but between doing something with what you’ve been given and doing nothing..."

Dr. Jim Somerville's "Talkback" from Sunday, November 19, 2017. In this visit with the Upper Room and Gold Band classes, discussions include how technology is changing the way people engage with Richmond's First Baptist Church; 110% Sunday and the importance of tithing; the pastor's recent experience with Encounter RVA and what it means to be a "missionary".

Jim Somerville: "Has anyone here heard of 'The Rapture'? I don't know how you keep that kind of expectation alive over 2,000 years. I don't know how you say to people, 'It could happen any day' and expect them to believe you. And that's part of the problem: they don't believe you. They stop waiting..."