Christmas Countdown 2023 … Day 24
It is the fourth Sunday of Advent and in conversation with family and friends at church, we are all in a state of disequilibrium. As I causally surveyed others, I am not alone in continually adjusting my thinking to the fact that while it is Sunday, it is also Christmas Eve. Yesterday as I was working through the menus for the next three days, I had to keep saying out loud…TOMORROW is Christmas Eve. I can only liken it to the recent time change where for a solid week I kept saying, “Now this is what used to be 5:00, right?”
Since it was Sunday morning, Russ and I went to church. Since it is Christmas Eve, we will go back tonight. To the same exact service. It’s okay, it was a good one and we will get something new out of it, I am sure.
When Sarah would play for the services we went to every single one. And it was like the first time, every time. Because there is something about Christmas Eve that is solid and set apart from Christmas Day for me.
The fourth Sunday of Advent focuses on love. Not the love I have for my family and people who are close to me. Not even my love for God. The lighting of the fourth Advent candle reminds me how much He loves us.
Our pastor started the service this morning with a reminder of how we are always searching for a degree of perfection at Christmas. The perfect gifts, the perfect menu, the perfect tree. But nothing is perfect. We, our plans, the people we are doing it for and with…these are all imperfect. And we feel a kind of disappointment that we can’t quite put a finger on.
Then I gather my imperfect self and my failures and disappointments up and head to church for Christmas Eve service. I sit in the semi dark that is traditional for this event and once again peace falls over my soul as I remember that it was right into the middle of all our imperfection, He came.
Like a heart patient lying on the surgeon’s table, I realize there is nothing I can do about any of the things that don’t measure up to my expectations. I can quiet my soul and imagine an infant lying in a bed of straw or his mother’s arms, and I smell the stable and I remember once again how God chose to tell the world He loves us.
This week I had a Marco Polo from a dear friend who has moved closer to her daughter and far away from all of us who miss her so much. She has had to leave her home she shared with her late husband, her friends, her life and relocate to a new place.
Sometimes she cries and sometimes she laughs on her videos, but yesterday she looked right into my soul and reminded me that God had been silent for 400 years and then He broke His silence with something we all can identify with. A woman’s labor and a baby’s cry.
She ended her Marco with reminding me over and over that we know, He is faithful. The people waited for 400 years, and then He came. Just as He said He would.
He is faithful in HIs love and faithful in His grace and faithful in His mercy and faithful in His timing.
Have a blessed Christmas Eve and a joyous Christmas Day.
You ARE truly and deeply loved <3