In Deeper Reverence, Praise

At the OMF Prayer Meeting just before Christmas our German colleagues shared their experience of moving from Germany where Christmas was a quiet and deeply reverent time for quiet reflection on the work of God, to England with its hustle, bustle and parties... This struck a deep chord with me.

Anyone who has been following this blog or our prayer letters over the years will realize that Handel's "Messiah" has always epitomized the true Christmas spirit for me. But of course, in a church as small as ours, a presentation of that magnitude is out of the question. Still, we have over the years been trying to move from hustle and bustle to reverence - and I think we've finally found it in the 9 Lessons and Carols Program.

An (Irish) OMF colleague told me about 9 Lessons and Carols a few years ago and we tried it out with the English congregation in Itayanagi last year. This year it was more peaceful somehow - this despite the fact that we never did a dry run and only two people knew where we were headed - and only one of them had been there before.

Maybe that's because we featured a cello - and stringed instruments somehow have a soothing effect.

The only photo we took!

We didn't get any photos of the cellist, or the trio of cello, violin, and organ that predominated the program. For once my husband actually remembered the camera! But in the end, I didn't want to ruin it all with a flash, flash, flash.