This Thursday, the 21st, is our Longest Night service, sometimes called a Blue Christmas service. This is a space for you if you need a space to acknowledge that not all in our lives is as merry as the world around us tells us we “should” be, whether because of loss, new or old (I miss my dad, especially every Christmas), because you are weary, because of the violence in so many places around the world, or simply because this year, you’re just not “feeling” Christmas. It will be a quiet service, a place where we can all turn to God’s grace and, if necessary, put our pleas and our frustrations before God, as is our long-held faith tradition. Please invite any friends who might also want or need this space.

Our Christmas Eve service will be at 7:00 p.m., with candlelight. There will *not* be a 9:30 a.m. service that morning—the consensus was that people would be attending the evening service. But we will have Scripture and liturgy and carols and a (short!) sermon, along with sticker books for any young children, at 7:00 p.m.

I wish you all of the blessings of the season, and I’m looking forward to seeing you on Christmas Eve as we celebrate the incarnation, the birth of our Lord in a human form, who came not only to save us but to walk the earth alongside us—

Becky

Prayer

Holy Lord, we are almost there. We anticipate the taste of the day, the wonder of your arrival. We celebrate it every year, and yet it still inspires wonder and awe: the idea that an infinite God loved us so much as to enter a human body, and to experience the realities and difficulties of a human life—and one of the more difficult ones, by far. Such love humbles us, and it gives us grace and even dignity—it tells us how beloved we are. Teach us to savor this feeling and this knowledge; teach us to treat our fellow human beings in light of this love. Help us to pause a moment, and be held in the awareness of your closeness. We give you thanks and praise. Amen.