No one wants to look ahead right now–and many of us aren’t really capable of looking much farther ahead than Saturday or Sunday. But we’re still here, working away, writing and dreaming and hoping and planning. So let’s keep this Christmas party going! What are you still working on? Where is your Christmas Eve sermon going? Are you singing any unusual carols? What are some of your congregation’s Christmas Eve traditions? For example: At Ridgefield-Crystal Lake Presbyterian Church, right before we sing Silent Night with our candles, someone reads a poem. For several years it’s been Ann Weems’ poem Unexpected from her book Kneeling in Bethlehem, but this year the reader asked for something new, so we’ll be hearing Hush by Lucinda Hynett. It was originally published in Alive Now in 2004.
Sssh.
Can you hear it?
An expectant silence,
a hushed anticipation,
as if the very galaxy
is holding its breath.
There are some truths
even the stars know,
like darkness,
like loneliness
and how the night
can be a living thing.
And how once, long ago,
the night waited in wonder
along with the darkness
and the loneliness,
for the sound of a baby’s cry,
for the miraculous
to come down
to the earth mundane.
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