Silent Night. Grace Church 2013

Pastor Kyle asked me to do tonight’s opening Bidding Prayer at the Christmas Eve service – the welcome prayer in which we ask God our requests.

Last year I remember these phrases as Kyle prayed them – they were meaningful and real but this year they are costly:

“Lastly, let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore, and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom in the Lord Jesus we are one forevermore.”

I miss Jackson tonight as we are still in some shock he is now on that “other shore”, unforeseen to us this time last year when we heard this Bidding Prayer.

However, amen for the realities of these things unseen that we taste now through faith – as real as this couch is now on which I sit winding down Christmas Eve.

Amen for God becoming flesh, dwelling among us, and explaining the perfect Father to us, wooing us to Himself, the One for whom we were made…