St. James' Sunday 12-28-25

St. James' Sunday 12-28-25 You may download the bulletin at: https://files.constantcontact.com/722... You may download the bulletin insert at: https://files.constantcontact.com/722... Our secure on-line giving portal at: https://stjameshawaiiorg.givingfire.com/ The glorious angels, the gentle stable animals looking on – the Christmas story is filled with rich imagery. But where is the account of the pains of childbirth, the smell of the stable, the cold of the night? We tend to see the manger scene with such a warmth and glow that we forget that it was actually more reminiscent of a present-day refugee camp … a damp and cold, dimly lit stable, with hard dirt floors and cobwebs in the rafters; the young tradesman and his wife huddled around their newborn lying in a feed trough. As with that first-century manger, our lives are not sanitary. Christ’s place of birth, in that stable, expressed without words that God wants to be a part of all aspects of our lives... even in the smelly, dirty, drafty, and uncomfortable parts of our lives... the parts of us that many may turn away – a part of our losses, our set-backs, our hardships, our disappointed and fractured relationships; the deaths we’ve grieved in the past year; the difficulties with which have struggled and the addictions and temptations to which we have succumb. God wants in on every part of our lives. In an unlikely place, to unlikely folk, God continues to reveal God’s self. Jesus comes to us as Emmanuel, God with us. This is the Christmas message. We pray you feel the warmth of God’s spirit through our parish ‘ohana. We offer you our warmest aloha and hope you will return.