St. Stephen’s Stories, December 2025

When I teach classes on faith formation, we talk about how much we can know about God. In academia, we talk about two ways of knowing God: kataphatic and apophatic. Kataphatic ways of knowing God are positive ways we can describe God: like a father, loving, as Creator, as Holy Spirit, etc. Apophatic ways of knowing God are recognizing the limits of what we can know. They are our ways of acknowledging that God is bigger than we can imagine and our knowledge of God will ever only be partial. It is good to have both of these ways of knowing. If we only describe God based on what we know, we might develop the mistaken impression that God is only ever how we describe God. It can lead to arrogance and self-righteousness. On the other side, if we only ever describe God in terms of what we do not know, God becomes distant and less real to us.

Jesus, by his own words in John 14, describes himself as a way to know who God is. The more we understand Jesus’ character, motivations, and ethics, the better we can understand who God is. We do this a lot with the way Jesus teaches as an adult, but what about Jesus as a baby and child? Are there things we can learn about the nature of God based on what we know about Jesus’ birth and childhood? At this time of year in particular, we spend a lot of time reading about and pondering the birth of Jesus. This Advent, we will be reading the beginnings of all four gospels, as well as some apocryphal writings (letters written in the first two centuries about Jesus that did not become part of the Bible) to see what we can learn about how early Christians described Jesus. My hope is that as we read these familiar and new-to-us stories, we might discover something new about God. I hope you’ll join me!

December is always full of activity at St. Stephen’s! I encourage you to check out our calendar for the many ways you can celebrate the season, in excitement or quiet, through generosity and participation. We hope there is something for everyone as we celebrate the hope, peace, joy, and love of the Advent and Christmas season. The church is decorated, the candles are ready to be lit, and I can’t wait to see you!

Blessings,
Meg

A Song from my Playlist:

There is a beautiful song by Lauren Daigle called Light of the World. It starts with “The world waits for a miracle | The heart longs for a little bit of hope | O come, o come Emmanuel.”

Click below to listen: