This Sunday, we will sing

Once again, we will be gathering for worship on Sunday morning with devastating news from the week weighing deeply in our hearts - this time from the violence and taking of life in San Bernardino, California. We may feel helpless to really impact the power of such destruction, but certainly we can speak up - sharing our concerns and hopes for legislation with our representatives; certainly we can align ourselves with groups and organizations that work to cultivate justice and peace locally and globally;  and - we can sing together, as we will this Sunday, songs of Christmas for the sake of the world.

Singing Christmas songs may not seem like much of a response to our world as it is, but have you noticed how many carols have words that do address the need and hurt in our world - and encircle that with the message of what Jesus came to do and to be? Joy to the World includes the words "no more let sin and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground; he comes to make his blessings flow..." And It Came upon the Midnight Clear speaks to so many with the lyrics, "and ye, beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low...rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing."

Singing Christmas songs can be an act of resistance - resistance to the world the way it is and insistence that there is a different dream for the world, already set free, already made real, in the love of God known in the human life of Jesus. And singing Christmas songs can be a way we dedicate ourselves once again to living fully as followers of Christ, bearers of God's love in a world of such great need.