Dear Friends,
Lately I’ve come to believe a good Christmas letter is much like a good graduation speech: brief, upbeat, and well aware that it is not the primary interest of its audience. It’s the photographs that wind up on the refrigerator, after all, long after the words are forgotten. You may not be prone to keep this picture of a motley crew of people you’ve mostly never met, but before you let it go I hope you will stop for a moment to really look at the upturned faces of our family and friends here in Walnut Hills. These are the folks I’ve been telling you about, after all, whose lives are so tangled up with our own.
Our photographer friend, Juli Boehm, captured this image at one of our weekly dinner parties, after she had done the family portraits we are framing for everyone for Christmas. Years ago, Juli and her now husband David, were part of Mission Year with Marty and me, so it was fun to have them visit our new, small-is-beautiful ministry in such a natural way. People always want to visit our dinners, but we’re generally not comfortable inviting them unless we have a good reason. It would be different if they were moving in, but it just doesn’t feel right to be watched by outsiders when we’re all still learning how to love each other.
Which is, perhaps, one reason Jesus became one of us way back when in
Of course, there is one key difference between Christmas letters and graduation speeches: at graduation nobody thanks you for your money and then asks you to consider a special year-end gift. But I am thanking you, because your support has allowed us to do such amazing things with and for our neighbors. And I’m asking, too, because we’re just getting started and the potential for goodness here is even more amazing. You may not be from Walnut Hills, but you are not outsiders, either, because you are the extended family of our fellowship here. We thank God for you, too, and we love you for loving us in such real and tangible ways.
Bart