See here for the first 10 days of Christmas. Here are the final two:

Image 11. The zen-like way my child opens presents. She very deliberately tears back the paper, and when the gift is revealed, she examines it with this patient mindfulness. No interest in what’s next—the thing before her is the most important thing in the world. I admire that!

Image 12. Her singing happy birthday to me, or should I say, “happy too-wah.”

Something mildly strange happened on Christmas Eve. As associate pastor, my only responsibility on Christmas Eve was to do the prayer. So for the early service (a wonderfully chaotic Christmas pageant service), I gathered up all the things I needed for the service—the prayer, the bulletin, and my child, and processed in at the appointed time, toddler on my hip. (It’s become a Christmas Eve tradition to bring her to the service with me. Amazingly, she sat through the whole thing.)

Later I realized that I had dropped the prayer somewhere between my office and the sanctuary. I slipped out at one point and retraced my steps—no luck. It was gone off the face of the earth.

Now, I don’t need a cheat-sheet to pray. I winged it and most people were none the wiser. But it troubled me greatly that the darn thing just disappeared without a trace. Probably someone spotted it on the floor, assumed it was a discarded piece of paper, and threw it away. Of course I hope that it fell into the hands of someone there that night who needed to have it, but who knows. I’ve gotta let it go. At any rate, here it is, in the spirit of letting it go. I don’t know who all will find it here. Some will find it absurd. With luck, some will find it to be their own wish and dumb hope.

Our gracious God,
Emmanuel,
God with us,
God for us,
God among us,
You are the wondrous gift of life and light to all people,
And you have come to us as a child, a baby.

We gather, on this night of nights, to peer down into the manger
and gaze into the unbelievable—
yes, it is unbelievable,
that You, maker of heaven and earth, would enter the world like this,
that You, savior of all, would have a feed box for a cradle,
that You, God of all time and space, would put on this innocence, this helplessness.
Yet you did. And we love you for it.

We gather, on this night of nights, to cast our eyes upwards
at stars, flung wide upon the night sky,
and wonder about the star that led weary travelers to you.
So many of us are weary—
weary of war in our world, of hunger and oppression,
weary from the realities of illness and despair,
weary from grief that does not conform to a calendar,
weary, perhaps, from the frenzy of all our Decembering.

Yet you yourself knew a world not unlike ours—filled with beauty and aching need.
In the eyes of the Christ child we see glimmers of what is to come:
We see him slipping away from his parents to sit in the synagogue;
We see him rubbing clay into the eyes of a blind man so that he can see!;
We hear him uttering words of grace:
“Daughter, your faith has made you well.”
“Rise and walk!”
“Father, forgive them.”
“I will be with you always.”

We see it all, we hear it all, all this goodness, nestled already in a manger.

We gather, on this night of nights, in this sacred space, and realize,
It’s not too late; in fact the time is just right,
to thank you, and praise you, and invite you into the cradle of our heart
to abide, now and always.
Abide with us, Christ child. Abide with us, Savior and Lord. Amen.