For months, I have been thinking about Advent and Christmas and I know I’m not alone in that sentiment. Finally, I thought, this year we get to return to some sense of normalcy as we experience the joy of Christmas in person with our family of faith.
2020 was a year like no other with Covid forcing us into isolation. We hung a sign in our proverbial windows that said, “Closed until further notice.” Of course, some were more willing to venture out sooner than others. At St. Luke’s, we did our best to stay in contact, care for all, and to share the Gospel in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. We worshiped with our congregation through the lens of a TV camera every Sunday for months. Our Online Ministry kept us going and connected.
When Advent rolled around a year ago, we knew it would be different. Christmas concerts and parties were all done creatively online without people in the building. We recorded the Christmas Eve service and did our best to look joyful, but when it came to an end, all the pastors stood there with our candles and sang Silent Night to an empty Sanctuary. Personally, it was one of the saddest things I can remember in a long time. It just wasn’t the same without a congregation singing and candles filling the Sanctuary with light.
Christmas Eve came and my family lit our Advent candles that the church had provided for us, and we read the Christmas story. Then we settled in to watch the service. I was not joyful. I was being a Grinch. And then something happened. I watched my family embrace the Christmas service on TV. I saw the joy in their eyes as they heard the scriptures, the sermon, and the beautiful music. They sang along with the carols and at the end, they lit their candles and held them high in our living room. I realized that for this Christmas, the TV service was all they had, and they were grateful, and it was enough.
I had misunderstood how important this service would be to our family of faith on Christmas Eve 2020. In that year, there was fear, fear of the unknown, fear of a virus that was making so many sick and some deathly sick. And yet there was also hope. The hope that comes from knowing a God who keeps His promises to walk with us in the most difficult of times. St. Paul tells us, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
I look forward to lighting our candles in person on Christmas Eve in 2021. But in 2020, the hopes and fears of all the years were met in thee that special night when we were apart and yet together, and we discovered it was enough.
– Rev. Dave Poteet, Pastor of Congregational Care
