Pastor's Letter - December
Pastor’s Letter
December, 2019
Grace and peace to you in the name of God our Father and the promised Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen!
This year, in a few weeks, the choir will be singing a song called "Almost There", written by Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant. It is a beautiful piece of music, and the whole idea is encouragement of Mary on her journey, as she is about to bring Jesus into the world. It's also encouragement for us- we're almost there on our Christmas journey.
As I've sat at choir practice and sung my part, I've had some thoughts, not just about the beauty of the words or the music, but about how I'm feeling around this time of year, at least this time around.
As I write this, it is very late November, and we are about to celebrate Thanksgiving. Then, after we spend a day in thanks to all that God has given us, many of us will go out to buy more stuff. Then we have Small Business Saturday, and then we have Cyber Monday. We've named nearly all the days of Thanksgiving weekend. Then after that we have three more Sundays in Advent before Christmas. There is caroling to be done, preparations to be made, other activities before Christmas Eve- it doesn't quite feel like we're "almost there." It feels like there's so much to be done, there's a lot to be done before any sense of resolution or accomplishment comes.
I don't know if you know this, and I usually forget until the day itself comes, but the Tuesday after Thanksgiving also has been designated as a "day" culturally. It's Giving Tuesday, a day when charities and community organizations encourage donations. I don't know this for sure, but compared to all of the other days listed in the paragraph above, I bet it gets a much smaller amount of participation. If you happened to support a worthy cause on this year's Giving Tuesday, good for you!
But if you didn't, most of December is Advent, not Christmas, and Advent is a time of preparation. What better way to prepare for the Savior who gave everything for humanity than to spend at least a little time contributing to something that makes this world a better place?
We're almost there. But there's still work to be done. And even after we celebrate Christmas, we will have much more to do, and I'm excited to let you in on that. That will have to wait until next month. For now, be blessed by the presence of the Newborn King, and prepare your hearts and minds to welcome him truly into your life yet again.
See you along the way,
Pastor Brian