An Answered Prayer

In the midst of one of our Christmas Eve services, it hit me: this was a moment I had prayed about, and wondered about, way back last June. Back then, as we were packing boxes and preparing to leave a place and a people we loved, to come to the “unknown” of Downers Grove and First Church, I was just hoping – and praying – that by Christmas of this year we would be happy, and beginning to feel at home – in short, feeling as though we were in the “right place.”

And then, as is so often the case, I forgot all about that prayer in the flurry of unpacking, and getting to know a whole new church, and figuring out the best way to allocate time and energy day by day. Until Christmas Eve.

Then it came back to me – I had prayed about this moment. And a flood of gratefulness came over me. Far more than just beginning to feel at home, Jim and I had felt, especially during Advent, enriched – blessed by incredible music and interesting, faith and friendship-filled, conversations; stretched by the close interweaving of mission outreach with Christmas celebration in this congregation; touched by elements of worship that were new to us – the Hanging of the Greens concert, the intergenerational carol and story service on December 5, the Chapel Choir’s “Love is the Reason” concert, the sanctuary decorations that evolved during Advent, and the crimson tree; the service of Christmas Peace; the Christmas Eve dinner for the church staff, and the loving, warm welcome to all in the darkness, symbolized by the luminaria path set up on ChristmasEve.

I felt so grateful to be right there, right then, and later as Jim and I talked, he said he had been sharing those same thoughts as we worshipped on Christmas Eve.

We are grateful to you, and we are proud to be growing in faith in Christ with you in this congregation. Thanks for the gifts you have already given us! – thanks for the ways you have been an answer to a long-ago prayer.