Between Sundays – Love Comes Anyway
This season is filled with lights, music, gatherings, and traditions that invite cheer. And still, many of us are carrying more than joy right now.
Over this past year, and especially in recent weeks, we have witnessed violence and loss that have shaken us: shootings in places of learning and public life, acts of terror in spaces meant for rest and community, families devastated by unthinkable loss, and stories shaped by profound struggles with mental health. Even when the details blur together, the weight remains. These stories lodge themselves in our hearts and remind us how fragile life can feel.
Across the Christian tradition, churches mark what is often called the Longest Night, or Blue Christmas, a recognition that for many people, this time of year can feel especially heavy. Grief doesn’t pause for Advent. Worry doesn’t take a holiday. Sadness can sit right alongside celebration.
Advent gives us permission to tell the truth.
We can sing carols and still feel sorrow.
We can decorate and still ache.
We can celebrate and still grieve.
The story of Jesus’ birth does not shy away from this reality. Christ is born into a world that isn’t ready, into uncertainty, displacement, fear, and fragile hope. And that is precisely the miracle: love comes anyway.
This week, we are invited to practice that kind of love, honest, grounded, and present.
One beautiful way we do that is by listening to our children as they help tell the story of Jesus’ birth. Their voices remind us that the Gospel doesn’t belong only to the strong or the certain. It belongs to those who show up, who trust, who wonder, and who hope. When our children lead us in the story, they teach us again that love often arrives small, vulnerable, and unexpected. We will have that opportunity this Sunday morning at 8:45 a.m. in the Parish Hall, as they share their Nativity Pageant and invite us once more into the holy wonder of Christmas.
We are also invited to love our wider community in tangible ways. In the Parish Hall, you’ll find the SHIP Tree, offering opportunities to support students in our community who are facing homelessness. Purchasing a hygiene item or basic necessity helps preserve dignity and communicates something powerful and needed: you are seen, and you matter.
And sometimes love looks wonderfully ordinary. It may be a plate of cookies delivered to a neighbor, a note dropped in the mail, a phone call or visit to someone who seems a little quieter this season. These simple acts don’t fix the world, but they do push back against the darkness in real and meaningful ways.
None of these acts resolve all that is broken. But each one bears witness to the truth we proclaim this Advent: love does not wait for perfect conditions. Love does not require constant cheer. Love shows up, again and again.
As we move toward Christmas, may we hold space for one another with tenderness. May we allow both joy and sadness to coexist. And may we trust that even in a complicated, aching world, God’s love is still being born among us.
Until Sunday, and all the days in-between,
Dr. Hutton