"Wonderful, beautiful, inspiring, lovely, that was so good"; these were all comments I heard at the end of the combined parish worship service yesterday. No, --- no one was talking about my sermon, they were commenting on the Christmas Cantata that the choir performed. And --- I gladly admit that I agree with every one of those comments. All of the hard work that group of thirteen people have put in over the past three months shows in their their dedication as a ministry of music to glorify God. So I offer prayers of gratitude for everyone of them and I am honored to sing with them.

Yesterday was a busy day of course. We did the service then we went out to lunch. My sister and hubby are here for part of the week and they brought our mother to the morning worship service and lunch. Afterwards, everyone came here where we visited and "did Christmas", with our gift exchange. Then, it was back to work for me as I had to finalize the services and bulletins for the three other services coming up this week. Christmas Eve we will do a service at each church. I expect a full church at St. Paul's because it is the early service and we are not only doing holy communion, we are also doing an infant baptism. The St. Lucas service starts at 9:00 pm and we may have around forty people at that one. Both services will be candlelight services and both will celebrate communion, and both will be beautiful. It is a great way to spend Christma Eve; being with friends and loved ones and giving God praise for the birth of our Savior. Unless of course, --- you are Ms. Kate who has to spend five hours of her birthday sitting in a church pew again this year. Bless her heart; she loses out on celebrating her birthday every single year. But then, she just says that everybody comes to her birthday party to celebrate.

Today is visitation day at the nursing homes and I need to go to the churches and run the bulletins and make sure everything is set for Chriistmas Eve. We also need to go to sit with Aunt Aleen for a while at her nursing home. This week is going to fly by I suspect. Then the week and the year will be over and everything that we all rush to do will be over and done with. Julie and Jim are coming in on Wednesday morning and my sister and brother-in-law are leaving on Wednesday morning.

I'll bet your week just might be as hectic, but, --- let's not forget to stop and give thanks to God for the reason we celebrate this season. God didn't create the hectic schedule we all try to keep, man does that to himself. God simply gave us a gift of his Holy Son in a peaceful little obscure village far, far away, --- long, long ago. So, may your week be full of the peace that came with God's gift.