Dear friends in Christ,
We’re just a few days away from Christmas. Last year’s Christmas was bizarre, a time when we were unable to gather for worship. There were no churches full of worshipers singing their praises of the Christ child.
Christmas this year is perhaps even more strange. In many churches, worshipers will raise the rafters with glorious praise even as we enter another peak in the pandemic. We will hear the angels’ cry of peace on earth, even as division and strife grow daily.
Perhaps we’ve never needed the Christmas message more than in this moment.
You wouldn’t be alone in asking, how can we be joyful at a time like this? Perhaps we do well to recall the original Christmas story. Two thousand years ago, during a time of oppression and military occupation, in the middle of nowhere, in the midst of what looked like a very ordinary set of people, God acted decisively. The enfleshed Word of God was born.
Everything about the Christmas story tells us that God gets right into the thick of it with us. Our God is not distant and uncaring. Our God sides with the ordinary and the outcasts. Our God values mercy, hope, justice, and peace.
A couple of details in the Christmas story stand out for me this year. God sent an angel to bear glad tidings to shepherds. Shepherds! People of low status were among the first to hear the Good News of Christ’s birth, and they went quickly to see God-with-us. And after their encounter with Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, the shepherds went back to their fields. As the Gospel says, “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”
The shepherds are models for us all. They hear, they respond, they see, and they proclaim.
At Christmastime, as we encounter afresh the wonder of Jesus Christ’s birth, I hope we too can glorify and praise God. Perhaps you and I can be bearers of grace and mercy in a world that sometimes seems graceless and merciless.
Jesus Christ is Perfect Love incarnate, showing us how much God loves each one of us. That is Good News worth proclaiming.
Yours faithfully,
Scott Gunn
Executive Director
Too often, our churches are infected by toxic nostalgia. We are tempted to remember “the good old days” which weren’t nearly as good as we remember them. We use our energy grieving a reality that doesn’t fit our memory of the past. We want to recreate some time from the past rather than pushing ahead.
Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let thy bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be honor and glory, world without end. Amen.
Today we spotlight the artist behind the striking cover image of Mark Bozzuti-Jones’ book, Face to the Rising Sun. 
This image made a great fit for the cover of Face to the Rising Sun, rooted in the deep faith of African American story and the celebration of the Black spirit. Fittingly for a book centered on justice, Holston’s fee for use of the image was donated, at his request, to two local charities: the 
I recently had the opportunity to visit three different churches on three different Sundays. At each one, people told me how much they love Forward Day by Day. In case you’ve never run across it, each day Forward Day by Day offers a snippet of scripture, a brief reflection, a suggested action, and a place in the Anglican Communion for which you are encouraged to pray.
This fall, as I was seeking the topic for our Bible study, someone suggest that we look at the Bible stories behind the stained glass windows in our church. I loved this idea, and we spent eight weeks looking at windows and talking about the related Bible passages. One of the members has done quite a bit of work on the windows, including reading notes made by the artisan who made most of the windows. It’s been a team effort.
This is an ideal social media devotion—a way to claim an often unholy space with the holiness of preparation and repentance. Whether on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, you can follow along for meditations or images through the season. You can savor Advent Word as an individual practice or you might form a group in your congregation.