After Nativity: Longing for Joy...

Being under a “Covid Quarantine” has caused me to long all the more to be with our family in worship and we look forward to being with you for the Candlelight service on Christmas Eve and for a combined worship service at 11 am on Sunday the 26th, even if it snows! Having our grandson Jamie with us has reminded me of that childlike longing for Christmas. At least once a day he asks if it is Christmas yet. He fully expects the arrival of Christmas to bring great joy and happiness. We will do what we can to make those dreams come true, and yet for Jamie Christmas day will still conclude with the disappointing arrival of bedtime… his hopes for fullness of joy will be caught short by human weariness (both his and ours!) Luke 2:22-38 picks up the first Christmas story in the days after Christmas, and the mood is not one of great joy and happiness. It is more than a month after the exciting night of the nativity and it feels like hopes for fullness of joy have faded under the daily routine of the mundane and ordinary. Here the young family trudges off to Jerusalem fulfill some obscure requirement of the Law. Yet it will be in the ordinary and obscure, and through people others overlook, that God is working, both then and now.