Happy new year, Beloved Community!
I write this new year’s note to you still in the wiles of 2024, in those final days before we meet the babe in a manger. As I sit here in mid-December, my list still seemingly a mile long before I meet you in 2025, it intrigues me to wonder how this note will find you today!
Like many an email that begins “I hope this finds you well” – and like many a meme that responds “I hope this email doesn’t find me at all!” – I wonder: does this letter find you well in 2025? Has December’s whirlwind of presents and parties and performances and places to go left you in a dizzying heap of exhaustion, just ready for your long winter’s nap? Is your heart still aching from all the pain of loss that stings all the more through the holidays? Are you feeling the immediate push towards productivity that has entered the space where Christmas preparations just were – goading you with “new year, new you” promises and wooing you with this new plan or that new strategy to get it all right? Are you wondering if this year will be any different from the last?
My hope is that this note finds you resting in the hope, peace, joy, and love of Christmastide, trusting that God’s story of Love made flesh in the world is a story worth telling each December… and also in January, February, March, and so on.
That’s the story of the good life. A life marked not with unchecked power or unlimited funds or unabashed pleasure. A life lived not by running and achieving, fearing or ruling, questing or avoiding. A good life. A life that finds us well.
This winter in worship throughout the Epiphany season, we will consider what God revealed when God came near in Jesus, and what that means for our living. We’ll ponder “the good life” – the good life, of course, that Jesus lived, but also the good life he calls us to live. Not always a happy life, a successful life, or an easy life. But a good life, one where that good news of Love can’t help but to find us again and again and again.
Together in God’s work of Love,
Pastor Emily