Ben's January Letter

Dear Friends in Christ:

As I write this in the days before Christmas, my mind is occupied nearly 3/4 of the way with the
Christmas Eve service, plans for Christmas Day, and the handful of tasks I wish to accomplish in
my last office days of 2025. It strikes me (as it always does) that singing Silent Night, Holy Night
together on Christmas Eve does not actually evoke quiet. I have to wait until January for that.

A lot of people dislike this month—it falls in the wake of Christmas, it is just as dark as December
is but without Christmas lights or fun holidays to mark it, and it is pretty reliably the coldest
month of the year in Ohio. But I’ve come to love it, because it doesn’t require as much planning
and preparation as December does. January is quiet, and as an introvert, that suits me just fine.
In December—we sing about silence. In January—I actually get it.

Christians have a long and productive history with quiet. Monks and nuns frequently take vows
of it, or spend large portions of their day in silence. Quakers can spend an entire worship service
sitting in silence, waiting for the Holy Spirit to evoke something within them. Protestants tend to
fill worship with sound—but a moment of silence during a worship service can still feel full and
powerful. The wisdom here is that in silence, God speaks; in stasis, God moves; in the empty
schedule, God finds time.

Evergreen is a church with things to say, songs to sing, and construction thrumming in the halls.
It is a church with plans and aspirations and a sense of God’s calling to work and act. It is a
church that values a list of activities and which appreciates a (productive) meeting. We aren’t inclined to quiet and stillness and an unplanned day. But maybe, as we start a new year and as we figure out how to spend our days post-Christmas, there is value in taking January as the quiet,
unhurried, unscheduled gift that it is. Maybe now, just as much as during the rush of Christmas and the accompanying holidays, now is when God speaks and acts and dwells with us.

I wish you a quiet January—when God can break into your silence, your stillness, and your unplanned time.

In Christ,

Rev. Ben