This past Sunday, 12.14.25, the children of our church presented our Sunday School Christmas Pageant. It was a wonderful celebration of the Christmas Story featuring a “grandma” reading the Christmas Story to her “grandkids” and talking about what it means. Interspersed in the storytelling was a number of songs the various children’s groups sang. Of course, there were shepherds and wisemen, angels, sheep and cows, etc. As you would expect, it was all very cute and delightful!
Now in case you weren’t able to be present in worship last Sunday or watch it on our Mitchell Telecom Chanel (110), or online through our website (www.downtownfirstumc.com) I’ll put the link here in this article. You should be able to click on it if you receive this article through our Friday Update email. Or if you are seeing this article in paper format, you can type the web address into your browser and it should take you to the video of the Christmas Pageant. Following is the link https://vimeo.com/showcase/10994668
A comment that I have heard from a number of different individuals who were present last Sunday participating in the service and watching the pageant, is that people felt moved to tears – there was great emotion that people felt, especially as the children were singing a specific song about peace, God’s peace. I felt it too! It was such a beautiful song. In part it was the beauty of the words, it was the beauty of the children’s voices, it was the beauty of our children singing about something we are all yearning for…God’s peace to fill our land and fill our lives.
At least for me, and I’m guessing for others too, part of the reason for the emotional reaction was that there was a heaviness within us last Sunday morning. I was feeling the anguish and the deep sadness within me because of the shooting at Brown University and then the shooting in Australia during a religious celebration by the Jewish community. And then there was a violent murder that hit the news from Los Angeles. Most people here in the Midwest probably wouldn’t be too connected or concerned about the murder of a Hollywood director, other than he was well known for a number of movies he directed. What made this particular death more real for me is that one of my sisters knew this man. She used to work in the film/TV industry, so this death really impacted her.
Through all these examples that I’ve mentioned in the previous paragraph, and I could list so many more situations of other things happening in our country and world, we are seeing the ugly head of evil rise up and being demonstrated right before our very eyes. Yes, it is alarming – It is disturbing – it is saddening! And it is making me feel, and I’m guessing so many others too, it is making us realize peace is so very far away at this point and time. We are seeing with great regularity just how broken we as people, as a nation, and as a world, really are.
But thank goodness for Christmas, the season in which we celebrate God coming among us. Just recently I read a story about the origin of the Christmas Hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” This beautiful and gentle hymn was not born out of peace and tranquility, no, the seeds for this hymn were born out of the brokenness of the civil war and the strife it brought to our nation. At the end of the article it said, “This hymn has lasted because it reminds us that God often comes not in noise, but in stillness. Not after everything is fixed, but right in the middle of what’s broken. Not with force – but with love, slipping gently into the night.”
As much as we long for the peace and presence of God in the world, there is still much brokenness and despair. Yes, this is a perfect moment for the God of peace and hope to once again slip into our midst in the form of a baby.
May we all continue to yearn, and even weep for, the beauty and peace the children of our church sang about and demonstrated through their pageant. May we also strive for and live out in our lives, our broken lives, the fact that God continues to come to us pointing toward a better way, a better Kingdom to live for. God comes to us, not because things are perfect, we aren’t perfect nor are we worthy…no, God comes to us all in the midst of our brokenness proclaiming a message of Good News… “for unto you is born this day…a savior…” Thank you, Sunday School children and youth. Your message was, and is, greatly felt and needed!
Pastor Keith