Our Christmas Eve drive-thru setting was a wonderful evening (albeit cold and wet at the end). Everyone who drove through received a Christmas message and blessing. We’ve adapted it here for New Year’s, and for everyone to receive who wasn’t able to come on Christmas Eve:
We are so glad that you have been a part of this year with us. It was a challenging year, but sharing strength and encouragement throughout was a blessing. Know that this year, we are thankful for you!
We wish things were safe enough to celebrate our normal traditions and worship, of course. We wish that we could stand together inside, sweetly huddled close, warming each other from the cold. We wish we could linger together, talking and catching up, sharing candles and Communion, connecting and seeing smiles.
We couldn’t do those good things, but celebrating together is still important. You are important. The love of God that burst forth into our world and shone through the life of Jesus is important. Let it shine through you.
While the Christmas carol “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” is heard often each year, its specific message isn’t always noticed. But it feels like the third verse of that hymn resonates for us in a deeper way this year. Maybe it’s singing to you:
All ye, beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing:
O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.
We pray that you will rest and notice songs of angels next year. We pray that it will be a year of healing—of bodies, souls, families, systems, and divisions. Let us start fresh, and establish a new better standard that we want to be as people. Letting go of old patterns that encouraged prejudice and sowed disagreements. Let them go, so that we may all be better next year.
Whatever happens in the days, weeks, and months ahead, do not forget the most important things: that you are loved by God, and by us. No matter what. No matter who you are. You are loved. And that is what we want you to carry with you next year. You are loved. And that’s the truth.
A New Year’s Blessing
The candles of Advent felt pertinent and needed this year more than ever: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. We keep holding them in our hearts as we wait for more of God’s light in Jesus to shine. We wait as we hope for peace and to feel the joy that comes from love.
Advent was a season of waiting, and we did a lot of waiting this year. Waiting to hear about jobs or test results, hoping for vaccines. So here is a New Year’s devotion for you to read by yourself or with others on New Year’s Eve night, to bless our waiting and our hopes:
(bold = all read together, * = change readers)
* God of the waiting ones, give us your good word for our souls.
* God of the watching ones, give us your blessing.
* God of the watching and waiting ones, the slow and suffering ones, give us the good word of your blessing, that we might rest.
* God of the watching and waiting ones, and the angels in heaven, and the wise peoples of earth, and shepherds in fields, and of the child who was born,
Give us the good word of your blessing, to warm our cold souls on this last night, that we might rest in your love.
* This is the last night on the eve of new beginnings, when those who are longing wait for new life.
* We wait with watchful hearts.
* We listen carefully, in the stillness, straining to hear songs of angels—the good news that new life and new light has come.
* Watch and pray, the Lord is near. Listen and wait. He is here.
Shine on us, O God of justice. Guide our path through gloom of night. Bear within us Wisdom's glory. Come to us, O Christ the Light.