Christmas mourning during COVID-19 …

Today we greet the dawn of Christmas 2020

with both tears and joy welling up within our hearts.

Tears that honor and remember thousands of persons

whose lives the coronavirus claimed this past year.

And joy that holds both the memory of Christ’s birth

and the mystery of God’s desire to dwell among us.

So now, Creator God, we pray that You will come

to dwell within our Christmas Mourning,

and let love be reborn within us and through us

in some new ways once again this day.

That joy and gratitude may fill our hearts,

as we let Your Presence within us

be the present we joyfully share

with those we will great and meet this day.