It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and we sing along, “hearts will be glowing and much mistletoeing, and songs of good cheer” and we want to feel it. We long for that special feeling that comes, almost as a surprise, and makes Christmas for us.

After Christmas is over, I invite you to take the time to reflect on where that special feeling came from. I’m willing to guess that the most definable “Christmas moments” came as a surprise. That’s how it was on the first Christmas night, according to our beautiful story, the joy of Christmas was unexpected. The wait for the Messiah, another great king, realized as God is born in an ordinary child. Born of humble parents, in even humbler surroundings is the unexpected manifestation of God with us.

How much easier it is to see the handprint of God upon reflection. We remember angels around us, we recognize the mystery of the night sky, we observe the exchange of love and peace, both unexpected, yet boldly proclaimed, and we know that God is here.

The struggle to reconcile the details of the story with what we know to be scientifically accurate is balanced with the mystery and wonder we experience. Over the years, I have learned to relax over this discrepancy. Scripture stories are not meant to be history remembered, rather stories that address the movement and experience of a people within their cultural and religious expression. The Gospel stories, while not necessarily accurate science or history, hold deep and meaningful truth.

After the death of Jesus, the community who followed him began to reflect on the presence of God as experienced by them. If God’s presence was so clearly evident in the time following his death, it was also present in the time of his death. It God’s presence was realized at the time of his death it was also in his life. If we observe a life filled with God, then the birth must also have been filled with God, and so the story of God’s presence is told. We love the telling, the singing and the dramatization of it.

Familiar carols, and little ones dressed in bathrobes and tinselled halos telling the story, somehow reveals the core of the story. It is hard to beat the tenderness and surprise felt when God is revealed in unconventional places.

Possibly, being open to miracle, mystery, and the power of story is key. Open also to how heaven and earth come close, making this the most wonderful time of the year. Even for those who feel the cloud of sadness or grief, and for skeptics among us, there is a place for hope to be born. Are you surprised?

A faith for today lives into the surprising presence of God among us, a presence that invites reflective appreciation of mystery.

“We long for that special feeling that comes, almost as a surprise, and makes Christmas for us.”

Rev. Donna Tourneur works and worships among the people of Trinity United Church, New Glasgow.