The Christmas Eve worship services for our church are always highlights of my year. I typically look forward with great anticipation to the shadowy sanctuary, the sharing at the Table, the flickering candlelight, and the sound of “Silent Night” echoing through the midnight sky. But this year was a little different. Christmas wasn’t as welcome or as merry as is usually the case. Some of it had to do with recent losses. Some of it had to do with family illness. Some of it had to do with financial tension. Frankly, some of it had to do with 70-degree temperatures. But collectively, these variables and others made it hard to see the season in a celebratory way. Still, head up, I plodded through my malaise. Responsibilities are responsibilities, after all—and I had places to be and things to do and folks who were counting on me. Even so, each piece felt more like going through the motions than genuinely being filled with the happiness of the holiday. And that
"For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." -Ephesians 2.8