A missed opportunity on Christmas eve

We had the privilege of all being together as a family for Christmas. We were all in one home in Montgomery, Ala., for most of Christmas eve and Christmas day.

One of the highlights of our 30 hours or so together was to participate in Christmas eve worship at a local church. The church our son and his family are part of did not have a service that evening, so we gathered with a full house of others at a nearby, gospel-centered church. It was an unprecedented opportunity for all nine of us to be together on the same pew. It was a blessed experience to sing some great songs of our faith about the coming of our Savior and to hear Christ exalted from the pulpit.

And yet, one element of the service fell short of what it could have been. A family -- father, mother and five children -- gathered around an advent wreath and candles at the front of the auditorium. They lit the four advent candles, as well as the Christ candle in the center. The father then read about the lighting of this final candle. It was good. It was meaningful. But it was a missed opportunity.

I have nothing against families observing Advent by lighting candles. We did it in our family when our children were much younger. And I think it was good to have such a ceremony at the beginning of a church's Christmas eve service.

But a different group of people gathered around the Advent wreath would have made the ceremony far better -- and would have far better symbolized what the church was doing in worship. This was the family of God gathered, not just a nuclear family gathered. The church was together as those who are united through the life, death and resurrection of the One whose birth we were gathered to celebrate.

How much better it would have been to have a group something like this gathered together to light the candles -- a young married couple, a widower, a single mom, a middle-school boy, a college-age female and a 40-something, mentally impaired man. A mixture of different skin colors and ethnicities among these seven believers would have made this sight even more beautiful.

The church is not a collection of blood-related tribes. The church is the new, peculiar people united by the gospel that cuts across families, genders, ethnicities, ages and social classes. We are the family created by Jesus and His finished work. This is who the church is, and this is what we should remember as we gather together each week.