Dear Friends,

I hope you all had as good of a Christmas as we had. Thank you to those of you who came out for the Christmas Eve service. Plus the whole holiday season has been full of goodness and light if we look for it.  As has the year.  We have had a lot of positive things happen in our church over the last 12 months. There is a lot more to celebrate this year than comes to mind easily when we think of politics and the state of the world.  But it is reassuring that people are standing up for each other, and people who have long held negative views of society are beginning to wake up and see the impact of negativity on the world and their lives.  How do we encourage this and be kind?

Maybe in 2026 we could all promise to focus on kindness or grace for the year even when our boundaries are being challenged.  Can you imagine the differences in our relationships and in the world? Just adding a little more kindness and grace – when someone cuts you off in traffic, the mail gets wet, the dog next door decides to bark through the night – normal things that happen in everyone’s lives as some point.  But what about kindness and grace when your child has gotten on the last nerve you had keeping you level headed?  Or how about kindness and grace when you don’t feel appreciated?  I am not saying to let all of these things go, but what if as you respond to them you do so with more kindness and more grace as you go about securing your boundaries.  So many times we think kindness can make us let go of our boundaries, but in truth we can be kind and firm, and show grace and still not be pushed around.  Those of you who know me know this is a point I am working on — how to be kind yet assertive — how to be graceful yet true to myself.  But maybe in 2026 we could all work on this and all get this to a better point in our world in 2026.

ICE is going to happen as we learn how to assertively respond to help our neighbors.  The wealthy are going to get less cuts than those on the very bottom of the social hierarchy in our nation and world.  Our officials are still going to use demeaning names about other people they don’t like.  But we don’t have to.  We can be there for our neighbors and learn how to respond when ICE comes. We can help all we can to balance the resources in our society.  And we don’t have to stoop to using demeaning adjectives or nouns when talking about people we don’t want to continue to be derogatory.  How can kindness and grace help us be stronger leaders and better friends?  Can we become better enemies?  Not something we think about much, but we are to love our enemies and pray for them, so how can we acknowledge the differences in beliefs or choices and still remain kind and gracious?  Just something to think about as you go about making New Year’s resolutions.

I hope 2026 is kind and gracious to you as you are to it.

Blessings,

Leigh