New Sermon Series Begins Sunday, January 9

Have you finished packing up all of the Christmas decorations yet? (Or have you even started?) Perhaps you have a few more Christmas cookies to eat or a few "thank yous" left to write? Regardless, I hope that your Christmas spirit has outlasted your Christmas "to-do" list.

One of the great gifts of Christmas is that it usually sends us into the New Year full of hope and love, feeling good about ourselves, our families, and our relationships with God. Our challenge is to make those feelings last, rather than crumble as soon as we go back to the grind of work or school, as we face the to-do list of all the things we didn't do in order to get through the holidays, or as we start paying the stack of bills facing us in January.

This Sunday, we begin a sermon series that addresses the period after Christmas, when we're trying to hold onto the Christmas spirit, despite the challenges that inevitably arise. Called "Echoes of Comfort and Joy," the four-week series looks at several New Testament writings meant to encourage us, guide us, and make our darker moments more understandable and more bearable, reminding us that we should never lose hope in Christ.

This week, with "Joy, Patience, Perseverance," we look at one verse in Paul's letter to the Romans, 12:12: "Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer." This is a good way to approach the new year, if not life in general. Sunday we'll celebrate, we'll admit that hard times may be ahead, and we'll remember the promise we have that God will always be there for us -- a promise incarnated in the "God with Us" born in a stable and named Jesus.