As Christmas Day marches toward us, I hope that you’ve gotten everything squared away so that you can simply enjoy the holiday. From the pastors, staff, elders, and deacons, we wish you a safe and happy Christmas! Just a quick reminder that we will be having Sunday School and worship as usual this Sunday, even though it is Christmas Eve. We will also be having a Christmas Eve service at Harper Park at 5 pm. Hopefully, we will see you at all of those events!

But as we prepare for worship this Sunday, I’d encourage you to read Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 2:1-21, which are our passages this week. This past Sunday, we focused on the transcendence and greatness of Jesus from John 1. For Christmas Eve, we come again to the familiar birth stories. As we examine these accounts, the humble humanity of the story shines through. It’s about traveling, moving and uprooting from hometowns to new places, and childbirth. These are all things that we understand intellectually, but we rarely take the time to think about what it must have been like for them. Let’s put ourselves in Mary and Joseph’s shoes for their journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem this week. I think that we will find ourselves overwhelmed by the many complexities, hardships, and uncertainties that faced Mary, Joseph, and even the baby Jesus. In short, Jesus comes, not as the storybook Jesus who is clean and beatific, but as someone who truly understands what life is like. So, come this Sunday ready to walk with Jesus (and his parents!) to his birth.