From our home to yours, Peace on Earth.
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"Can you feel it? Can you hear it… that Hum in the air tonight?
As all our preparations come to an end and the celebration Begins…
I don't think it is just us,
I think all of creation is humming tonight, when the membrane between heaven and earth is so thin you can almost see through it...
Tonight is the night we measure all time against.
Everything that happened yesterday
is before Christ and everything that happens tomorrow is after him. Tonight we are living in the eternal now of God's coming among us
His name is Emmanuel—the God who is with us— who is made out of the same stuff we are and who is made out of the same stuff God is and who will not let either of us go.
That is the main thing we are waiting for tonight….. that baby's cry.
But that is not the only thing, because most of us are waiting for more than one thing and they are not all the same.
For instance, I believe someone here is waiting to find out what is inside that large box propped against the wall by the Christmas tree.
And someone else is looking forward to waking up in a house in which all the beds are full once again, with children and grandchildren who have come home for the holidays.
Or maybe some are looking to celebrate their first Christmas together…
Some of you have a new baby at your house, which means you are waiting for the first Christmas morning when you wake up in your own live nativity scene.
Yet there are those who will find this is a hard time of the year. There is that empty chair to deal with, that stocking that stays folded in the box.
Christmas is the season when you wait to see if the hurt has lost its edge, you want it to be gone …you want to be the “you” you used to be, so you can get on with your life….yet on the other hand you don't want it to, because that might mean you have stopped caring.
Meanwhile, the memories rise up to meet you, overwhelming you with a melancholy so sweet you can almost taste it
Christmas Eve functions like a kind of time machine for us, taking us back to every other Christmas Eve we have spent on this mortal sphere.
For some, it is a reminder of the way life used to be …. Or never was….
Christmas is the smell of pine and cedar boughs and oranges stuck with cloves, the taste of roast turkey and peppermint.
Everyone is supposed to go home for Christmas, right? Only where is that, exactly? Some of us know and some of us are still trying to find out
The answer is, right here… right now…
This is our home tonight and we are all inside…
Not only is this our home ….This is our Stable in Bethlehem,
Where we have brought all our hopes and fears… of all our years to lay them at the foot of the manger,
For we know what the manger holds…it is the God who is with us
Not the God-Up-There somewhere who answers our prayers by lifting us out of our lives, but the God who is in the midst of our lives 24/7..
None of heaven’s escalators are going up tonight …everybody up there is coming down tonight, right here,
Right here to our own Bethlehem, bringing us the God who has decided to make his home in our hearts….. may your heart be full this night and every night with his love and peace…Amen"
We received our first meaningful snowfall of the season.
