December 24 and 25, Nativity (Luke 2:1-20)

When I was growing up, my father was always the pastor of every church I attended and the preacher every Christmas Eve. Some people can’t read Luke 2 without hearing the voice of Linus from the 1965 Charlie Brown Christmas special. I can’t read it without hearing my dad. It’s been a long time—he’s been retired for a while now—but still, when I read “In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus,” it’s my dad’s voice I hear.

Another phrase my dad used every Christmas Eve is so ingrained in my memory it might as well be gospel. When it came time for the prayers, he prayed for the people of the congregation, for the church and the community, for whatever crisis was happening in the world that year. And then, without fail, he prayed for emergency personnel on duty “tonight and tomorrow.” Some years he prayed for doctors and nurses, sometimes for firefighters or EMTs, but it was always “tonight and tomorrow.”

It was an acknowledgment that while most of us would go home after the service and tuck in with our families, not emerging until the 26th, when we were stir-crazy and out of milk, there were many people who would not. There were those who would keep watch through the night and into the next day, working instead of resting, ready to respond to the needs of the world.