On Christmas Eve morning, there are a few more hours in Advent.  We're down to the wire with preparations for tonight's worship services.  In these preparations, we are reminded that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and that Jesus is coming again.  Christmas has been celebrated for centuries, and it will be celebrated again.  God continues to gather up our hopes and fears and wrap them together into gifts for today.

Today I look at my pets, Addie and Piper.  They've been adopted into what I hope is the gift of my home, and away from the fears of their previous days. 

Addie was, we think, dropped at the church where I previously served.  Maybe someone couldn't afford food or medical care for her.  That day was the Second Sunday in Advent.  She was balled up and looking into the sanctuary through a clear floor-to-ceiling window with her big Advent-blue eyes.  A church member came up to me and said, "Pastor, we have a church cat!"  My son went out and brought her inside from under the bushes and out of the cold.  Cat in their arms, my son and daughter both pleaded, "Mom, please can we keep her?"  We posted in the newspapers "Lost Cat Found."  We took her to the vet.  We boggled at how someone parted with such a beauty.  We wrapped her into our family.  Addie is aloof, but I think she returns the favor.

This summer, Rex died.  Rex came home from the shelter as a three-month-old puppy dog, wrapped in a towel.  Thirteen years later, after much eating of socks and other odd items, chasing tennis balls with a passion, and finally suffering from leukemia, we wrapped him in a quilt to say good-bye.  Though filled with memories, the space he left needed to be filled with another one to be wrapped in hugs.  Enter Piper.  On walks with her, she pounces on the slightest of new items to cross her path--a leaf a tissue.  She rejoices in the smallest of details, spilling out joy on us like the stuffing from a package being unwrapped.

The stories of these humble beast are around me when I go to make visits at the end of Advent and as Christmas comes again.  I take their giving along with me.  One of great age who has fallen and another with an untimely and sudden health emergency are in the hospital.  Together we wrap their fears in prayer and hope for the promise of home.  I pray that they will not feel outside, but wrapped into God's hope.  There was a funeral last night too.  After many years of mothering, that one was wrapped in love and entrusted to God's eternal care.

In the transition between Advent and Christmas, there are those slight items to cross our paths.  The refrain of a carol, the glimpse of a memory on the face of one in worship.  May we gather and spill out joy on each other.  The stuffing of angels, shepherds, beasts, visitors are wrapped around us and with God's Son once more.