It sounds so simple and yet is so true: The church is one of the few places left in modern societies where adults can still have a story read to them. I copied the line from a book about Christmas by Donald Heinz. As I was jotting it down I thought about great stories I had heard on the radio, stories that gripped and moved me, but how radio usually was a solitary experience. Do you remember the feeling of having a story read to you? How warm it is and safe and delightful, and how you wouldn't mind if it went on for 1001 nights?
When we gather in the sanctuary on Christmas Eve it's about coming in from the cold, it's about the music and the little candles in the deep darkness, but it is very much about that moment when a single voice begins to fill the expectant silence, "In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus ... ." I hope many of you will come to one of our Christmas Eve services at Vine Street to listen and sing with shepherds and angels and to welcome the Child.
Would you like to be one of the people who give voice to the great story we have read to us that night? Our 11pm Service of Lessons and Carols has a wide selection of readings from Scripture, and we love hearing a variety of voices. If you would like to participate in this way, please send me an email. I can't promise you a place in the line-up of readers (because we like to mix male and female, young and old voices); but even if you don't get to read that night, you'll get to be there and have the best story of the ages read to you.