'Twas the week before Christmas,
and in Macomb, Illinois,
not a person was driving -
neither a girl, nor a boy.
The ice storm had come,
and much power was down.
The ice coated EVERYTHING
in this Midwestern town.
The Fourth Sunday of Advent
was only 2 days away,
and the pastor at First Pres
found she needed to pray.
A parishioner called
and needed some help.
"The church building's flooded,"
he said with a yelp!
The ice, it would seem,
had coated the church,
clogging all of the drain spouts,
forcing the water to search
for the easiest path
to escape from the roof.
So the water flowed inside,
where things aren't so rustproof.
The pastor's left eye, well,
it started to twitch;
she feared driving to church
she'd end up in a ditch.
But she managed to get there
with the help of a friend
(who's own church then flooded
before the month's end)!
It had flooded the Chapel's
newly carpeted floor,
and it dripped from the speakers
and was soaked up by the door!
It flooded the pastor's old office -
and how!
She was ever so thankful
to not be in there now!
The water flowed into
the Conference Room,
and the pastor wondered when
the adult class could resume.
Down in the basement
the water dripped, too,
causing ceilings to crash
and tiles to unglue.
They gathered up waste cans
from each nook and cranny -
the number of leaks
and the drips was uncanny!
And up on the roof
they caused quite a clatter;
as they chipped at the ice,
my teeth started to chatter.
The work to clean up
went on through the night,
as the pastor, sexton, and others
worked with all of their might.
The Fourth Sunday of Advent -
it came and it went,
for the ice storm made it too hard
to attend any event.
But the Christmas Eve service
went according to plan,
and we all celebrated the birth
of the Son of Man.
