{"id":8578,"date":"2023-12-24T04:10:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-24T04:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8578"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:44","slug":"christmas-eve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8578","title":{"rendered":"CHRISTMAS EVE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I am excited &#8211; I get to preach in the morning and then lead an evening candlelight service.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While I tend to be a bit Grinchy about Christmas itself (I am working on this!), I somehow always forget how much I love Christmas Eve.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Especially the evening church service.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By then &#8211; God willing &#8211; most of the hustle and stress are finished.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Or at least the end is in sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And there is an hour of quiet reflection.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Carols are sung, candles are lit, and the most familiar sacred texts are heard once again.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hope for the future reaches heights unavailable throughout the rest of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And, for all you know from your seat in the sanctuary, the entire world is united in wonder at God&#8217;s gift to humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I am excited &#8211; I get to preach in the morning and then lead an evening candlelight service. While I tend to be a bit Grinchy about Christmas itself (I am working on this!), I somehow always forget how much I love Christmas Eve.\u00a0 Especially the evening church service.\u00a0 By [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8579,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578\/revisions\/8579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}