Pastor Note for
December 2025 & January 2026

As we enter the season of Advent, so we begin a ‘new’ worship year with the message of preparation. Then, with the birth of Christ, comes another new beginning. This experience continues with the visitation and revelation of the Magi on Epiphany, the secular celebration of New Year’s Eve / Day, and then once more with the Baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan by John the Baptist. Each one of these independently and all of them collectively provide us moments to get serious about our hopes and ambitions. They call us to make resolutions.

We are fine making these when it comes to physical, dietary, and even intellectual goals (maintaining them is a whole other story …). When it comes to our faith journey and application of our faith to daily living, however, we don’t even get close to making them let alone maintaining them. Instead, at best they match our annual parade of decorations. We get them out, dust them off, enjoy the mystery they lend to life, and then pack them away for another year. We fail to carry anything forward leaving the convictions and resolutions behind and blown out alongside of the candles on Christmas Eve.

This year let us use each of these different times and moments from the beginning of Advent to Christmas and beyond to recommit to and work for the change we seek for us and our world. All that we longed for, hoped for, and celebrate – the dawn of hope, peace, love and joy — let it be resolved with our lives and in our lives. Then, indeed, heaven and nature will sing joy to the world!

Yours in Christ, 

Rev. Daven Oskvig