O Holy Night

Dear Friend,  
While days are longer & warmer if you are in Australia, if you are living out on the streets or in the aging buildings in the inner city of San Francisco in the Tenderloin, you can feel the draft of winter chilling your bones.

Nights are long and cold in the Tenderloin, especially if you are short on blankets, but during my recent floor by floor, door to door ministry visits with a local outreach team,  it was a joy to find warm hearts among several of the folks who live in this neighborhood that has the highest crime rates & lowest incomes in the city. 

Free food is very welcome by most residents.  If there is a measure of trust, some prayer is also welcome.  Then if there is actually trust that a particular need can and will be met, a frequent & simple request right now is for  "a blanket".

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As I look out at the stars, I think about the shepherds on the night of our Savior's birth.  They had lived through many cold dark nights out in the fields. I bet that one of their ongoing needs was for a blanket.  Funny how the humble & the holy are woven together.

Little did those humble shepherds know that they would be the very first to hear the  announcement of the birth of Jesus, who would offer them the blanket of his sacrificial and redeeming love !

And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were greatly afraid.  Then the angel said to them,   "Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior who is  Christ the Lord."    
 Luke 2: 8-10

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I am praying for you, dear friend.   Praying that wherever you are... whatever your circumstances...and especially on your coldest, darkest nights, you will take time to look once again upon God's gift to us in that humble place on that holy night.   Merry Christmas !