Merry Christmas!
Dear WTUC Family,
I hope that you had a very Merry Christmas. I am so grateful for this special season, and I am truly thankful for the kind notes and Christmas card that you sent to us. We are truly touched by your act of kindness as well as your continued love for us as we have become a part of this special community. Thank you so much for your care for us.
We are still in the Christmas season… we have twelve days of Christmas before we hit Epiphany, which is why we have the First and Second Sundays of Christmas. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll still be talking about the miraculous birth of Christ and those who are a part of this story. I hope that you will join us for worship this Sunday at 11:00 a.m. It will be of a similar format to our Christmas Eve and Morning services online. You can join us via YouTube and participate in the live chat during the service. Rev. Dr. Tim Boyle will be sharing a message on the Gospel According to the Life of Joseph. Let’s worship together this Sunday as we close out the year.
If you have not had a chance to check out our special Christmas services, please visit our Christmas page, where you can view our pageant, lessons and carols, and Christmas morning services. We are so thankful to all of our WTUC friends who participated in the service, and special thanks to Tokyo Union Church for allowing us to use their music archives for our services. If you had a chance to worship with us in this different format, please let me know if you would like to have future services in this format for special occasions.
As I am preparing for the new year, I am looking to do a community Bible reading. The readings from the Daily Lectionary from the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship takes us through the whole Bible over a period of two years (reading through the Old Testament once and New Testament twice during that span). For a large part of the calendar year, the readings also match the Revised Common Lectionary which we use for most of our sermons throughout the year. If you have a Bible reading plan that you like to follow, then by all means, please use that, but if you happen to not have a reading plan, then why don’t you join me in working through the readings of the Daily Lectionary? You can use this page to get the daily readings and even subscribe to get daily reminders. Don’t feel that you have to read all of the readings each day - even just one reading from the daily set can be enough for you. The point is to be in the presence of the Lord through the reading of God’s Word each day - not necessarily the amount of reading. In this schedule, the Morning and Evening readings are meditative passages, while the First, Second, and Gospel readings are the actual readings for the day. (As the Apocrypha is not agreed upon as a part of the Bible, Old Testament readings are provided as an alternate for those days.) If you have any questions, please let me know!
As we wrap up the year, I pray that whether you felt that this was a “successful” year or not, what matters is that the Lord guided you through it, and we have the opportunity to see how the Lord will guide you in the upcoming year. I am looking forward to walking with you in 2025, and I pray that the Lord will continue to show Himself faithful to you. Again, Merry Christmas, and I wish you all a Happy New Year.
Blessings,
Jonathan