Silent Night.
Flickering candles.
Beautiful harmonies.
Cherished faces.
Family.
A newborn Baby.
Love.
Those phrases sum up the end of worship last week on Christmas Eve. As the church reverently lit their candles and passed the flame down each pew, the organist softly playing the beginning strains of Silent Night, I looked down at my hands, holding a lone candle.
And suddenly my hands seemed to change before my eyes. . .instead of hands showing their 50 years, I saw young hands holding the candle. And the candle didn't have a fancy plastic holder, it had a flimsy paper one that sometimes dripped hot wax onto my fingers.
I recalled my childhood Christmases, earnestly holding the candle my parents entrusted me with. I remembered singing in the aisle with the school choir members, and later with the adult choir. I thought of our early years of marriage in differing states and our last 25 years at Trinity, juggling wiggly children with their own lit candles that I cautiously let them hold onto, their faces rapt with joy.
And I realized, with a great amount of reverence, that every Christmas Eve of my life (except for two due to sick children), I was in church, holding a candle, singing Silent Night, surrounded by family. Very quickly, the beauty of that realization hit me, and my eyes welled up. For 50 years, I have been blessed to celebrate Christ's birth in this way - quietly, reverently, beautifully, and with family.
So many things change in life, and change is not my fave. I prefer continuity and constancy and sure bets and steadfastness.
But this. This moment, though each year looks a little different, remains at its core the same. The family surrounding me has changed over the years - some people are sainted with Jesus, some are far away, and some have been born to us. The church family is different as the years pass too. But every year, I stand with my candle in my hand and my family filling the sanctuary with me.
What a gift. To have had parents who raised me in the church, week in and week out, including so many Christmas Eves (and mornings!), to have married a man who values the faith and dedicates his life to it, and to have children who hold their faith dear and are themselves so deeply affected by the birth of their Savior.
As I stood there, last week, with my candle in my hand, singing by heart the song I've sung on December 24th every year of my life, I looked around at the faces both in my pew and in the rest of the church, and I thanked God for His generosity to us. That He sent His son, in such a lowly way, to save all of us. That He gifted us all with each other - brothers and sisters in Christ - to encourage one another on our walk.
That one silent night, so long ago, changed everything. And because of that silent night, we have everything.
