December 2013
Dearest Friends,
What is it about Christmas that deepens my
affections for each one of you?
Maybe it’s the sweetness of the season as
expressed to one another in cards and gifts and Christmas hugs, and just how
the place looks so warm and fabulous this time of year.
Could be the love and sweat poured into preparing
for Let It Be Christmas, now in its sixth season, and how this has
become a kind of portal between the astonishing story of the Nativity and so
many who don’t know Him in our city.
Maybe it’s how we’ve let our hearts grow
bigger for God in reaching out to God-cherished people in our own backyard this
year, and the way this is playing out in not-at-all-random acts of compassion
over the holidays. Perhaps it’s the
stories of how families and individuals at Highview have opened their homes and
their hearts to welcome those in need, living out the radical truths of Isaiah
58 and Matthew 25 in quiet, unassuming ways.
Or how quickly we were able to get the funds
to get a stove for Yupa for Christmas.
I know for sure our shared losses this year
are making this a bitter-sweet Christmas for me. While we celebrate and wonder at what it
would be like to be “Home for Christmas” in Heaven, we grieve deeply with the
families of Dale Brown, George Duff,
and Jonathan Webb; for them and for our own sense of painful separation from
these we loved. Grief-pain has a way of
deepening everything, including our bonds with one another.
Whatever is it I know it is deep and profound
and makes me grateful for you in ways I find poorly articulated in these
far-less-than-adequate words.
I can only hope that in some way I could be
found worthy of being part of this uniquely beautiful and gifted and
Spirit-filled and generous community of grace called Highview Community
Church.
So, this Christmas, I pray God’s deepest
peace be brought to your deepest longing; His brightest light to shine on your
darkest path, and His abundant grace to cover your most desperate need.
Whatever God brings to us in 2014, it’s ours
to do together.
With affection that grows deeper all the
time,
Ruth Anne
Here
is the man whose name is the Branch,
And he will branch
out from his place and build the temple of the Lord.
Zechariah 6:12
You also, like living
stones, are being built into a spiritual house
to be a holy
priesthood,
offering spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God
through Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 2:5
