CHRISTMAS EVE PRAYER
Forrest Church
December 24, 2006
What a joy it is for me to be with you once again.
On this night of nights,
We have more for which to be grateful than we will likely ever know.
Let us unite our hearts in the spirit of prayer.On this night of joy and wonder,
Let us enter the realm of enchantment,
Shed our self-protective cover,
And open our hearts to the magic of Christmas.Let us prepare our very souls to receive the gift of life abundant,
Not, as we too often and so sadly do, to take this precious life for granted,
But instead to unwrap the present and hail the gift,
Precious, mysterious, and charged with saving grace.Let us put aside our shopping list of grievances,
Resist the nattering of our grubby little egos,
And crack our parched lives open like a seed.For we too, this very night,
our being illuminated by a story and a star,
can witness a miracle:
A birth — heralding our birth, magnificent and oh so surpassingly strange;
A life — no less wondrous than ours;
A death — itself a gift, to charge our days with purpose,
Helping us to live in such a way
that our lives too will prove worth dying for.In this spirit, let us prepare our hearts,
First for the glory of supernal music and surpassing legend,
And then for the magic of awakening.Awaken to the saving gift of forgiveness,
Where we can, in a single breath, free ourselves and free another.Awaken to the possibility of love,
All saving and all redeeming love.Awaken to the blessing of acceptance,
Expressed in a simple, saving mantra:
Want what you have; Do what you can; Be who you are.Awaken, Awaken, Awaken!
And the God we don't believe in,
greater than all and yet present in each,
May in fact believe in us.Amen. I love you. And May God bless us all.