Conference Minister's Corner - 12-23-2025

I have many favorite Christmas songs. But there is one that impacts me spiritually more than any other. And it is one that I find very few people are familiar with. So let me introduce you to it if you do not already know it. Here is this YouTube video of the Christmas song “Awake! Awake, to Greet the New Morn” written by Marty Haugen and sung by the St. Olaf Choir.

I rarely sing this song that I don’t have tears in my eyes. It reminds me that Christmas changes everything.

“Come as a baby weak and poor, to bring all hearts together, he open’s wide the heav’nly door and lives now inside us for ever.” The baby Jesus comes to us as we are and opens us up to the Divine mystery.

“In deepest night his coming shall be, when all the world is despairing, as morning light so quiet and free, so warm and gentle and caring. Then shall the silent join in song, the tired shall leap in wonder, the weak be raised above the strong, and weapons be broken asunder.” Jesus comes to us, not in our confidence and certainty, but in our most difficult moments… and turns them upside down.

“Love be our song, and love our prayer, and love, our endless story.” There are so many ways through our world. But there is only one way of Jesus. It is the way of love.

May you be so blessed this Christmas as to remember…in song, or story, or prayer, or community, or silence, or relationship…how Christmas changes everything.

-Gordon