The Hope Alight Story and Celebrations

Hope Alight 2025 is in the books and it was one worth celebrating.  We saw God do some amazing things through the preparation and prayer that went into this magnificent event.  There were four sold-out performances, which totaled 379 people gathered to celebrate the story of Jesus through music, Scripture, and story.  Many of that 379 were engaging with Port City Church for the very first time, creating meaningful moments of connection. Behind the scenes, 52 volunteers served faithfully, giving their time and energy to make every detail possible. 

Beyond the performances themselves, generosity overflowed as over 400 pounds of food was donated to Feed Nova Scotia, extending hope beyond our walls and into our city. We are deeply grateful for all God has done through Hope Alight and for every person who played a part in making it such a meaningful and hope-filled experience.  Let’s celebrate and give God thanks for how he worked through this event.

Also, below is the story that was written for and read at Hope Alight.  It’s our prayer that it was an encouragement to you as you reflect on the hope that came down from Heaven in Jesus Christ.

Night. A blanket heavy with silence, stretched across the hills and fields outside Bethlehem. The stars burned cold and steady above, indifferent to the small lives below. Sheep huddled close, bleating softly in the darkness. Shepherds watched, their eyes accustomed to shadow, their hands rough from labor, their hearts weary from the weight of routine. Night, usually a time of quiet and tending, had become the backdrop for a trembling world.

Hope. A word that had been whispered in the stories of prophets and mothers, sung in faint melodies of prayer from long ago. But for the shepherds, hope had always seemed distant, unreachable, like the distant stars they were accustomed to staring up at each…night. Life had taught them the limits of dreams. Their work was routine, lonely, harsh, hard and thankless.  The greatest threat to the shepherd was not the wind and cold nor was it the predators that threatened the flock.  It was the nagging and constant thought of an insignificant existence as a mere shepherd.

Shepherds were often among the outcasts. The overlooked and underappreciated.  A poor, uneducated, and itinerant lot. Their testimony was often doubted; their opinions never really mattered, and their words disregarded. To be a shepherd was to exist at the edges—outsiders, confined to the hills with their flocks, measuring life not by status or wealth, but by the number of sheep that survived the night.

It was a hopeless life in many ways. A life of labor and vigilance with little reward. They worked as others slept, they endured nights that seemed endless, they carried the monotony of routine, and yet they were invisible in the eyes of the world. Their voices rarely mattered, their presence often dismissed, and their dreams almost forgotten. And still there remained a faint stirring of expectation—a whisper of hope.

“Do not be afraid.” - BOOMED the voice of the angel.  Without warning, the night itself shivered. Light broke through darkness—not the pale light of dawn, not the gentle glow of fire, but a brilliant radiance that the lowly shepherds had never experienced. This group of lowly social outcasts froze. Fear and awe gripped their hearts. And then came the sound—a chorus beyond imagining, angels singing, voices like rivers of light cascading across the hills:

“We bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born; He is Christ the Lord.”

The shepherds trembled. Ordinary men, poor and despised, were now witnesses to the extraordinary. For the first time, hope was no longer distant. It was immediate, tangible, alive. Not a story, not a dream, not a promise whispered across generations—it was here, in the flesh, in the small and fragile, yet infinite, presence of a newborn child.

Fear gave way to urgency. Guided by a force they could not name, they ran across the fields, through the cold night air, their hearts pounding with wonder. Each step was driven by the knowledge that the impossible had begun, that heaven had touched the earth, that their lives, small and disregarded, were about to intersect with the eternal.

And there, in the humblest of places, they saw Him. A child. But not just any child.  The child.  Hope had come. Salvation had arrived. The God who had called the stars into motion, who had measured the oceans with His hand, who had stretched the heavens like a tent—this God had come to dwell among the lowly.

For the shepherds, this child was more than a miracle. He was the answer to the hidden prayers of the overlooked and despised. He was the promise fulfilled to those who had lived in the margins, who had felt invisible, who had endured long nights of loneliness and despair. He was a light breaking through the long darkness of social scorn, economic hardship, and weary hearts.  Hope had come.

From that night forward, the ordinary was never the same. Darkness remained, yes, but now it quivered in the presence of light. The life of the lowly and despised had intersected with eternity. The powerless had been chosen to witness the powerful, the forgotten to encounter the eternal. Hope was no longer a distant word; it had become person, presence, reality. Salvation had come, and the world would never be the same.

And just as hope broke into their hopeless night, so it breaks into ours. For though our world glitters with light, many still walk through their own quiet darkness. There are people today who feel the weight of being overlooked—those who work hard yet feel unseen, those who carry silent burdens, those who move through life convinced their voice does not matter. There are the ones who sit at the edges, who feel passed over, who wonder if anything meaningful could come from their story. Ordinary people with extraordinary aches, modern-day shepherds longing for something beyond routine survival. 

Just as God drew near to the lowly that night, he draws near to those who feel small today. In Jesus, hope still descends on the overlooked, still finds the weary, still reaches those who believe they stand outside the circle of worth. What the shepherds discovered in the fields of Bethlehem is the same truth offered now…here: the Savior (Jesus Christ) comes not to the strong but to the struggling, not to the celebrated but to the forgotten, not to those who have it all together but to those who fear they never will.

And in that moment, the shepherds understood something else: their witness mattered. Their voices, once disregarded, would now carry the story of joy. Their feet, hardened by mud and stone, would walk home forever changed. Their hearts, once weighed down by social rejection, would now bear the memory of heaven itself.

This night…just like it was on that night, hope is no longer abstract. Jesus is alive. And through him hope has descended.  Our hearts' deepest expectancy has turned into reality. Where once there was despair, now there is a promise.  Where once there was darkness, now there was light.

And the story, like that night, has only just begun.

Merry Christmas,

Pastor Jeremy