December/January Newsletter
The Promise
From Pastor Amy’s Desk
Finding Holiness in the Hardest Season
Dear Friends,
As December settles in around us, the days grow shorter, the shadows longer, and the nights seem to stretch on endlessly. The winter solstice reminds us that these are, quite literally, the longest nights of the year. For many of us, those long nights echo something inside; heaviness, grief, a quiet ache that doesn’t fit neatly into the bright and cheerful images that often define the Christmas season.
Over the years, I have learned, sometimes slowly, sometimes painfully, that grief does not take a holiday. Depression does not pause for Christmas carols. The heart does not always feel “merry and bright” just because the calendar tells us it should. I know this personally. I live with it personally. And if you do too, I want you to hear this from your pastor’s heart: It is okay if this season is hard. It is okay if you are not okay.
One of the questions I hear often, and have asked myself in difficult seasons, is: “How can the holidays still be holy when my heart is hurting?”
And the answer that keeps rising softly, gently, persistently is this: holiness is not the absence of sorrow. Holiness is the presence of God within our sorrow. Holiness is God showing up in our darkness with a light that is steady, tender, and unforced. Holiness is Emmanuel “God with us” especially when the nights feel overwhelming.
To know Jesus is to know community. When we come to Jesus, He invites us into the deep and loving fellowship of His family, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The holy community of God is not a community of pretending but of presence. A community that sits with us in our tears, stands with us in our questions, and holds us when we are too weary to hold ourselves.
If Jesus draws us into that kind of community, then surely, we are called to be that for one another as well. We were never meant to grieve alone, especially on the dark days.
That is why I want to offer a heartfelt invitation to our Longest Night Service on Thursday, December 18th, at 6:30 PM in the Sanctuary. This service is created especially for those who struggle during this season, for those who find the darkness a little too familiar, the memories a little too sharp, or the festivities a little too heavy.
The Longest Night Service is gentle.
It is quiet.
It is honest.
And it is a sacred space where you can bring every part of yourself, your grief, your longing, your fatigue, your questions, and your fragile hope.
We come together not to “fix” anything, but to tell the truth about our lives, to rest in God’s presence, and to remember that the Light of Christ shines in the darkness, not after it, not around it, but right in the very middle of it.
My prayer is that this service will be a place of refuge for you, as it is for me.
A place where your aching heart can breathe.
A place where the holy draws close, even when happiness feels far away.
A place where community holds us gently through the longest nights.
With love and grace,
Pastor Amy
