"Many Gifts, One Light" - 12/13/25

Vincent Church’s annual Miracle of Christmas gathered many hands and many hearts last Wednesday evening. Volunteers from the church and community offered gifts of time, skill, strength, listening, cooking, carrying, organizing, and welcoming. What might have seemed small in isolation became spacious and powerful when offered together, and more neighbors were served than expected, leaving gratitude in the wake of a shared yes.


Scripture
“There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone, it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”
- 1 Corinthians 12:6–7  NIV


Reflection
A winter evening can teach the quiet mathematics of grace. Cold gathers in corners. Breath turns visible. Boots track in salt and snow. And then, somewhere inside a building warmed by ordinary heat and extraordinary care, tables become altars of provision, and hallways become rivers where people move with purpose, carrying what is needed toward those who need it.

The miracle rarely arrives as a single, blinding moment. More often, it comes as a braid of small obediences. A door held open. A list checked twice. A coat sorted by size. A child’s mitten was found and returned. A smile that does not ask for anything back. The Spirit’s work can look like a volunteer leaning in to hear a name correctly, as if names are candles and it matters to keep the flame steady. It can look like a teen lifting a box without being asked, or a tired parent pausing to help another family choose what fits. These are not grand gestures, yet they carry the weight of heaven’s gentleness.

Paul writes of “different kinds of working,” and the phrase feels like a room full of distinct rhythms. Some people move quickly, solving problems on the run. Some settle into patient tasks that do not shimmer with recognition. Some bring laughter that lifts the ceiling. Some bring steadiness that lowers the temperature of anxiety. The common good is not built from one kind of holiness. It is assembled from many, and it becomes beautiful because it refuses sameness.

In Korean, the word 마음 (maeum, heart or mind) can name an inner place where intention and attention meet. When 마음 gathers, scattered pieces find a center. A community becomes more than a crowd. A project becomes more than logistics. A meal becomes more than food. The offering deepens. What was individual turns communal, like separate notes learning to sing as harmony.

Scripture’s language for this shared life is κοινωνία (koinōnia, fellowship), a word that can hold partnership, participation, and a kind of belonging that is practiced rather than declared. Fellowship is not only a warm feeling. It is a holy choreography of giving and receiving, of noticing and responding, of allowing one person’s strength to cover another person’s weakness without shame. It is the courage to be needed and the humility to need.

There is also the tender paradox that “the same God” is at work “in everyone.” Not only in the confident. Not only in the experienced. Not only in the ones who know where the tape is kept. God works through the shy volunteer who arrives uncertain and leaves surprised by joy. God works through the one who cannot stay long but stays long enough. God works through the one who prays quietly at the edge while others lift and carry. The Spirit does not distribute gifts to rank people. The Spirit distributes gifts to gather people.

A night like Miracle of Christmas can reveal how God’s grace, χάρις (charis, grace), often travels in plain clothes. Grace looks like community members showing up after a long day. Grace looks like hands washing pans. Grace looks like someone running to the store for what ran out. Grace looks like quiet leadership that never announces itself. If grace is unearned love, then service becomes one way that love gains traction in the world, not as transaction, but as testimony.

The common good is a phrase with a horizon. It suggests that goodness can be widened, that wellbeing can be shared, that dignity can be reinforced like a strong seam in winter fabric. In a culture that often praises the solitary hero, the Spirit keeps drawing attention back to the body, the many-membered life, the truth that no single gift is sufficient, and that sufficiency is found in communion. A single candle is light. Many candles are a sanctuary.

After the tables are cleared and the doors are locked, what remains is not only the memory of a successful event. Something else lingers: a sense that God’s abundance is not merely stored somewhere above, but released among people who consent to become channels. The miracle is not that everyone suddenly has everything. The miracle is that love becomes organized, that compassion becomes coordinated, that hearts gather and, in gathering, become large enough to hold more than expected.

And perhaps that is one of the Spirit’s quietest gifts: the widening of expectation. A congregation learns again that the sum of offerings is not only additive.
In God’s economy, gathered hearts multiply.


Prayer
God of many gifts and one love, receive the offerings that were carried, cooked, sorted, spoken, and silently given. Let gratitude deepen into humility, and let humility open into joy. Knit the threads of service into lasting communion, and keep making room in this community for the common good. Amen.