There is more to the story

First, let me make it very clear that I think any time a family comes to church is a good thing. Having said that, I'd like to share a conversation I had this past summer with a thoughtful young man.

His family does not attend church on a regular basis, if "regular" means weekly or throughout the year. They do regularly attend two services a year - Christmas Eve and Easter - and that makes this young man both frustrated and bored. His comments and complaints about how this twice-a-year worship affects him were interesting and telling.

Complaint number one: "Why do we only go to church on days when there are the most people, so it always lasts longer and everyone is squished in? And Christmas Eve services are late, and I'm tired."

Complaint number two: "Out of the whole Bible, year after year I only hear the same two stories!"

And then we laughed, because we both knew he was right.

I thought about him this week as I settled in to watch my favorite Christmas movie, the 1951 version of "A Christmas Carol," called "Scrooge."

This time, I heard a sentence in the opening narration that really hit me: "Jacob Marley was dead. You must believe this, or nothing wonderful can happen."

Everything about that statement held the promise that something wonderful was about to happen, but it didn't happen right away. We had to see the journey from death to life - and when life comes, Ebenezer is filled to exuberance with it.

"I'm so happy!" he says. "I don't deserve to be happy, but I can't help it! I am!"

And so it is with the celebrations of life that are Christmas and Easter. What makes them so exuberant, so joyful, so beyond our deserving is that across the Sundays of the year, we have experienced the whole story - a story of the fulfillment of God's promise of abundance and life to us, across realities of confusion, anxiety, fear, hopelessness, hunger, sorrow, the stuff of all our lives, every day.

In the midst of all we experience, the good news of God's love - always, 24/7, 365 days a year (366 in leap years) - is really something, something wonderful.

Please do take your family to church this Christmas Eve and Easter. But consider making room, a couple of other times of the year, for more. Your kids really will thank you for it.

• The Rev. Sue Bahleda is pastor of Resurrection Lutheran Church, where Christmas Eve services are at 5:30 and 11 p.m.