Open Letter to the Incredible People of Highview

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