Dear Caldwell,
“O Come, Let us Adore Him, Christ the Lord!”
Those are among the sung words of the famous Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols service, held every Christmas Eve in the Chapel of King’s College in Cambridge, England and repeated in churches large and small around the world. That live service is wrapping up as I write and its celebrants, as the announcer has just said “are walking out of the old chapel into the cold and grey night to await the coming of the Light of the World.”
Tonight, the waiting ends and we break forth in worship and wonder. At Caldwell this year, we have sought to observe an “unadorned Advent,” using this season of preparation to seek what is pure, simple and lasting about God’s coming into the world. In the end, as scripture reminds us, our Lord does not seek our adornment in our worship, only our adoration. God has already given us all we need, asking in return for only our hearts, heads, souls, hands and feet. That is the Gospel in a nutshell.
What we are given in this season is hope, as the poet Ann Weems writes in this poem, titled “The Christmas Spirit.”
THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
The Christmas spirit
is that hope
which tenaciously clings
to the hearts of the faithful
and announces
in the face
of any Herod the world can produce
and all the inn doors slammed in our faces
and all the dark nights of our souls
that with God
all things are still possible,
that even now
unto us
a Child is born!
— Kneeling in Bethlehem, by Ann Weems (p. 51). The Westminster Press
Merry Christmas!
In Christ,
John