It was thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away,” Frederick Buechner wrote, “but it is a visit that for all our madness and cynicism and indifference and despair we have never quite forgotten. The oxen in their stalls. The smell of hay. The shepherds standing around. That child and that place are somehow the closest of all close encounters, the one we are closest to, the one that brings us closest to something that cannot be told in any other way.
“The world has never been quite the same since. It is still a very dark world, in some ways darker than ever before, but the darkness is different because he keeps getting born into it. The threat of holocaust. The threat of poisoning the earth and sea and air. The threat of our own deaths. The broken marriage. The child in pain. The lost chance. Anyone who has ever known him has known him perhaps better in the dark than anywhere else because it is in the dark where he seems to visit most often.”
Merry Christmas, friends. May your world and our world, your life and our life together, never be quite the same.
Much love,
Pastor Gregg
P.S. Just a reminder: Since Christmas Eve is this Sunday, I hope you’ll join us for our Christmas Eve Candles and Carols service at our regular worship time at 10 a.m.
