Why is it that the Advent season, a period that we set aside to prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus Christ into our world, is one of the busiest and worldliest of times in our entire year? For many of us, busy as we are running from place to place, buying, cooking planning, wrapping, etc., we’re not likely to take the time to meditate on the meaning of this moment until we scoot into the pews at the last minute on Sunday morning.

And that, of course, is why the moment is important. Our lives are all the proof we could ask for that we need to be freed from the world we create for ourselves. We encrust the sacred with rituals that then begin to take over, to enslave us. One of tasks of Advent, then, is to recognize we live in darkness. Another, paradoxically, is to recognize that the light that frees us from this bondage is not withdrawal from this world. Rather it is the engaging love that Jesus teaches us, the love that overflows us and engages us with each other.

I’d like you to imagine yourselves standing outside the smoldering remains of your house, shivering in the 4 a.m. darkness. All that you counted on for your daily routines is gone. In one sense, there may actually be a jolt of freedom in realizing that, next to life-and death issues, the rush of getting one child to the dentist and another to a music lesson suddenly seems pretty secondary. Still the freedom that comes from losing much of what you’re attached to can be pretty stark and chilly. So when you try to comfort one another, what do you have to fall back on? As John Welch’s family recognized instantly, they had the miracle of each other’s lives, held in common and suddenly all the more precious. They had the warmth that huddling together brings. And, what it would be days and weeks before they knew, they also had the love of God made known through the prayers and concrete actions of the whole church.

Just as that family finds its comfort in holding one another in the darkness, so do we find our warmth and light in sharing with one another. Before we give our gifts to the Christmas Joy Offering, let us take a moment to thank God silently for the time to pause and reflect on our need for one another and for the opportunity to express that through our giving. Our gifts today will help students at racial ethnic schools find the path that God intends for them. They will support families of faithful church workers who find themselves suddenly facing unexpected needs. But they will also help us open ourselves to the love that Jesus Christ extends to all of us, a love we know best when we share it with each other.

See the “You Shared Our Joy” bulletin insert