On the second day of Christmas, Yahweh gave to us: Redemption.
On the second day of Christmas, Yahweh gave to us redemption. It’s a fancy theology word we toss around in church circles but do we ever stop to consider what it actually means that God “redeems” us. Outside of theology circles, I bet most folks think of coupons.
But our God is relational not transactional. God doesn’t trade one thing for another, or look for the best deal, or purchase us at a discounted price. God says we are an invaluable treasure.
God came as Jesus the Messiah, another big word we toss around in Church circles which is an ancient title designating someone as the promised deliverer, to fulfill the divine promise to re-set all things in proper order.
You see, we humans broke the deal with God, our creator and divine parent, by choosing our own way instead of God’s way. We tell the story of The Fall, the story of Adam and Eve, to explain how our ancient earthly ancestors, decided what God had given them wasn’t enough and that they deserved more and so they took it, regardless of the consequences God had outlined for them.
No matter what our egos try to tell us, it is only God who can set things right. Jesus came, fully God and fully human, and lived on the earth to give us the ultimate example of how to live in God’s kingdom now, and to eliminate the distance we had created between God and us. Jesus came to remind us we are God’s beloved children, that we don’t have to earn the a title. Our adoption as God’s children is a gift freely given. This is how God designed this world to work – God’s children working with God to care for and tend to all of creation, especially each other.
Each time we choose kindness over anger, love over selfishness, compassion over hate, we are living on earth as it is in heaven. We are showing the world what it means to be redeemed. So on this second day of Christmas, I invite you to make time to consider God’s gift of redemption and how it changes everything.
On the First Day of Christmas, Yahweh gave to us: Presence
On the first day of Christmas, Yahweh gave to us: Presence. Not P-R-E-S-E-N-T-S but Emmanuel, God with us, divinely present with our humanness. This is the very thing that we celebrate at Christmas – God coming to us as the baby Jesus. Stop and think what an amazing gift that is!
God chooses us and comes to us, where we are, to be in relationship with us and to be with us every moment of every day.
The birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph is the ultimate gift that changed everything! And when we choose to follow Jesus, living as he teaches us to live, we are changed and transformed as we journey this life with the awareness of God’s presence.
Our worldview shifts as we continuously learn to see everyone and everything as Jesus sees it, through eyes of love and compassion. We become a part of the answer to the words we pray – God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
So, on this first day of Christmas, focus on the presence of God with you in all that you do. See Jesus in everyone you encounter today. And may God’s peace be always with you, my friends.
The theme for the fourth week of Advent is Love. John Lennon sang, “all you need is love.” Bing Crosby sang, “Love makes the world go ‘round.” (Don’t be judging my music choices.)
Jesus tells us, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence. This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: Love others as well as you love yourself. These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.” (Matthew 22:37-40 MSG)
We often hear or say that love is a two way street but as Jesus’ Followers we know that love is about a three-way relationship (I guess we’ll need flying cars before we can say three way street?) and that it isn’t transactional.
When Jesus gives us the Greatest Commandment, “Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself” he shows us that love includes all involved. We can’t fully accept God’s love for us without revealing God’s love for others through our behaviors, thoughts, and actions. That’s how God’s love works – it fills every cell in our body and overflows to those around us.
Our model for loving others is God’s love for us. There are no caveats to God’s love. God doesn’t love us “because” we are worthy or have earned it or are good looking enough and definitely not because of what we can do for God. God love us. Period. Full stop. Each of us. Each and every human being ever created, past, present, future. From this ‘peg’ as Eugene Peterson puts it, hangs all else. This is the true foundation of our lives.
God love us so much that God came in the form of Jesus to be with us in the every day, ordinary moments of this life on earth so that we can learn what it is to love as God loves (on earth as it is in heaven). This is what we celebrate at Christmas; this is what we have been preparing for through the season of Advent.
When we come to know God’s love for us, we discover the true peace of knowing that regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, God is with us, loving us, guiding us.
When we learn to love ourselves because we know God loves us, we discover the joy of belonging as God’s beloved children.
When we let God’s love flow through us to others, we understand the hope that through this divine love, the world is made a better place because we participate with God in answering the prayer “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
LOVE. PEACE. HOPE. JOY.
This is the intricately woven tapestry of God’s kingdom; bringing light to even the darkest of days; revealing beauty in the most dismal of places; bringing life as God intends for us to live it as divine children.
Give yourself a gift in these last hours before Christmas: make time to sit quietly and say to yourself “I am God’s beloved child.” Say it over and over again. Let God’s love come to you and transform your view of this world and every person you encounter.
Together with God we walk this journey of Love, following Jesus and shining light so others can see The Way and join us. There’s always room for more.
All we need is love because God’s love really does make the world go ‘round as God created it.
2 Samuel 11:1-7, 16 Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26 Romans 16:25-27 Luke 1:26-38
It’s almost Christmas! Are you ready? Is your tree up? Gifts purchased and wrapped? Menus organized? Are you ready to encounter God in all of it?
I know I’m not the first to say it and I’m sorry for the redundancy but it’s true – Christmas 2020 isn’t like any other Christmas we’ve encountered before because this year hasn’t been anything like what we planned.
And yet here we are in the days leading up to the celebration of the birth of Jesus. How have you prepared to receive God in this crazy, discombobulated year in which we find ourselves?
Through this season of Advent, Fr. Ricardo López and I have been sharing online conversations about the interruptive nature of God’s love in our lives and the readings for the fourth Sunday of Advent illustrate this so beautifully.
King David wanted to build an extravagant temple to honor God and God interrupted his planning. David felt God deserved a better place than a tent. He wanted to show his love for God by honoring God with the best he thought he could offer. And God says no, thank you. God reminds David, through Nathan’s dream, that God now moves among the people, that God is with David and the people wherever they go. God doesn’t want David’s building, God wants David. And promises to make David a great “house” made of people.
Mary, I’m sure, was planning on being an ordinary wife to an ordinary man and become an ordinary mother in the ordinary way, and while all of the ordinariness of our lives is beautiful and holy, God had extraordinary plans for Mary. God interrupted Mary and Joseph’s expectations for their life together.
How do we react and respond when our extravagant plans or even our ordinary routines are interrupted? Do we fight against it or do we look for where God is making order in the chaos?
Both David and Mary respond to God’s interruption with humility and amazement at God’s work through them saying let it be so, do as you have promised. In the interruptions of their plans, their relationship with God grew deeper, they were strengthened and encouraged as they accepted God’s love as God comes to us.
And so, we come to the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, and we face the darkness of this day with the sure and certain hope that the light grows stronger going forward. Together with God and each other we step into this season of Christmas knowing we are God’s beloved children. A light shines in the darkness and nothing can over power it.
This promised hope, this inexhaustible light, this extraordinary love comes to us! We don’t have to make elaborate plans to find it. We don’t have to prove ourselves worthy. We don’t have to do anything except receive it! Sometimes, however, we have to let go of whatever it is we are clutching before we can open our hands to receive something new and better.
All four candles of the Advent wreath are lit – hope, peace, joy, and love – the four flames shining together to interrupt the darkness. Let God interrupt your plans and expectation of this season with divine love and let this gift of love shape and transform you so that God’s light shines brighter into this world.
“Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord God; you have spoken also of your servant’s house for a great while to come. May this be instruction for the people, O Lord God! Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have wrought all this greatness, so that your servant may know it.” (2 Samuel 7:18-19, 21 NRSV)
The theme for this third week of Advent is Joy and I have to admit that I’m really, really, struggling to lean into the joy of the Good News. I know, I know, I’m a priest, I shouldn’t admit such things. I’m supposed to be a spiritual role model. But it’s true: this has been what feels like the most difficult year of all time. Everything I thought I knew about, well, everything, has been called into question and I just want to crawl into my blanket fort and hide.
And hiding in my fort, with the storm of life raging, I’m thinking about what I could possibly say about Joy that doesn’t sound syrupy and fake. And, so, I do as I know and I turn to the words of God’s story to shape the words I will use.
In the Daily Office reading, I hear Isaiah saying that we who walk in darkness have a great light for a child is born who brings us heaven on earth; and Peter tells me to be attentive to this lamp shining in dark places; and Jesus reminds me that God’s love is the most powerful force in heaven and earth.
As my heart and mind ponder this all powerful light of Love, I remember a painting of Mary and Elizabeth that always makes me smile.
Jump for Joy A watercolor by Corby Eisbacher
When Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth with the news of how God has interrupted all that she thought she knew about, well, everything, Elizabeth exclaims that the child in her womb leaps with joy.
I think I can feel my inner-child of God making the tiniest of joyful leaps, reminding me of who and whose I am. Through the words of Isaiah and Peter and Jesus I am remembering the joy that comes with the birth of our Savior and the daily rebirth of the child of God in all of us as we let the light of God’s love shine.
This great joy proclaimed by prophets and angels and the people of God comes from within, from that God shaped center of all of us. It is not temporary. It is not fleeting. It is enduring and life giving and healing. It is the still small voice saying to each of us, “you are my beloved child” and knowing that is enough.
So, for me, today, as I peak through my blanket fort to see if the coast is clear, joy is knowing that regardless of the storm, God’s love is the most power force on earth. Regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, God’s love is in us. This Good News isn’t syrupy or fake. It is the most concrete reality of all time.
I’m going to fold up my fort and do what is mine to do this day by the light of the pink (forgive me, Fr. Rick, but to me the word pink is more joyful than the word rose) candle on the Advent wreath. Perhaps I’ll make some pancakes.
As we continue our journey through Advent, we spend another Sunday with John the Baptizer preparing ourselves to recognize Jesus when he comes to us. John wants to make sure we don’t miss this awesome event of God coming to be not just among us but one of us, to show us complete and unconditional love. John wants us to know the hope, peace, joy, and love of knowing God.
I remember attending a fancy dinner at my seminary one evening, the purpose of which I forget, but one thing the guest speaker said has stuck with me all these years. She said, “the difference between God and us is that God knows who God is.”
Advent is an invitation to the coming of God into our lives. God’s greatest desire is to be in relationship with us so that we know God and come to know ourselves as God knows us. God doesn’t just wait around; God pursues us, comes to us, meets us where we are and says, “I love you.” Advent is an invitation to know who God is and who we are created to be.
John knows who he (John) is: not the messiah, not a prophet, but the messenger, the ‘preparer’ foretold by the prophets who comes ahead of the Messiah. John doesn’t mind being the messenger because he knows who God is and in his relationship with God he knows who God created and calls him to be.
In last week’s Living Sunday School, I said that John models the true meaning of humility. Humility isn’t lacking self-confidence, it is being so very confident in who we are created to be in God’s Image that we don’t need to prove we are better than everyone else. True humility is knowing that we are infinitely valuable in God’s eyes and letting that be the core of who we are. True humility is being grounded in God’s love.
We expend so much energy seeking to create ourselves in the image of this world. We live to fulfill outward expectations with the right clothes, beauty treatments, cars, houses, decor, jobs, clubs, and, yes, even the right church. At the heart of the matter, I believe, is that we’ve forgotten God’s love for us. We aren’t grounded in God’s love and so we drift (or run furiously) from one thing to another in attempts to find ourselves.
At the heart of the matter, I believe, is that we’ve forgotten God’s love for us. We aren’t grounded in God’s love and so we drift (or run furiously) from one thing to another in attempts to find ourselves.
God created us in the Image of Love and the only place we can find our true self, the person we were created to be, is in our relationship with God. When we recognize the one John points to, when we see our Savior and Messiah and seek to know God, we are freed from the struggle of finding our value. In God’s eyes, we are – each and every one of us – a pearl of infinite value, a treasure beyond counting.
Keep your compass calibrated to God’s Love.
As you light your Advent candles today, remember God’s love for you and in remembering you will come to know God and yourself so that you can live confidently and boldly pointing others who have forgotten to the light of God’s love. Together with God we can live on earth as it is in heaven.
If you’ve ever attended an Episcopal worship service, you will have witnessed what we call “Passing the Peace,” a part of the service when we move from hearing and reflecting on God’s word to gathering at God’s table to give thanks and receive the gift of Holy Communion. In some churches, folks stand in their place and smile, nod, and shake hands with those in close proximity while saying “the peace of the Lord be always with you.” In a lot of churches, it becomes a lengthy love fest where everyone moves around hugging and greeting each other in the name of God and return to their seats only after greeting every single person. And, I’m sure there are many churches that fall along the spectrum between these two situations (that should include everyone!).
As a priest, I especially like the latter version – to watch the people I am charged with shepherding and loving joyfully greet each other in the name of God fills my heart to bursting each time I witness it.
The theology of Passing the Peace is this: that whatever may have transpired since the last time I saw you, regardless of the ideas and concepts over which we may disagree, in spite of our joint broken humanness, I offer to you peace and accept yours so that we can come together around God’s table in unity to offer ourselves over to God’s holy presence in humility and repentance (and if the word ‘repentance’ makes you squirm, please see my post from December 6).
Peace, as it is understood scripturally, isn’t a complete absence of conflict. Jesus’ life was constant conflict – the government and the religious leaders wanted to silence his ministry; his own family called him crazy; he was so upset that people were profiteering from the sale of religious rites that he flipped tables and cracked the whip (literally); even his own disciples regularly questioned his choices and methods.
And yet Jesus says to us, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you” (John 14:27).
Peace, as we offer it in the name of God, is an understanding that we are bound together through the power of the Holy Spirit and the love of God which is greater than any disagreement or conflict we may have with each other.
Peace is a state of being in which we are not completely undone by the changes and chances of this life.
Peace is the confidence that God is always with us and it comes from the hope we have that God brings newness and goodness to all things.
Peace is believing that there is no situation we can mess up so badly that God can’t redeem and bring good from (don’t be judging me for ending that sentence with a preposition – that is a grammar rule up with which I will not put), and that even when we “lose the peace” God is with us to remind us and draw us back into spiritual peace.
Peace is trusting that in spite of how we may perceive ourselves or how we think others see us, God sees us, each of us, only and always as God’s Beloved Child, wonderfully created in God’s own image, unique with gifts necessary for the completeness of God’s Kingdom.
Peace is knowing we are loved, not in spite of or regardless of anything, but because God is love.
As we continue our Advent Journey, consider where in your life you need to receive Jesus’ Peace. Consider how God’s Peace equips you to love through the conflicts and challenges you face.
The themes of Advent are Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy.
May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of God’s son Jesus Christ our Lord.
(And, as I always sign off, even if it may seem repetitive in this post, it can never be said enough) God’s peace, Mtr. Nancy+
How’s your Advent journey going? What surprises has God revealed to you about how divine love comes into this world? How is your view of ‘normal’ being interrupted?
In today’s Gospel reading, we jump back to the beginning of Mark’s version of the story and get introduced to Jesus’ cousin John the Baptizer. He’s quite the character, paying no attention to current fashion or dietary trends, proclaiming uncomfortable yet essential truths.
A lot of people would describe John the Baptizer as a difficult person. He confronted people head on with the message of God. He didn’t mince words or sugar coat anything. He spoke of repentance and sin and called out the religious leaders for their hypocrisy. And yet he models for us the true meaning of humility, always, only, directing everyone’s attention toward God.
John the Baptizer models for us the true meaning of humility, always, only, directing everyone’s attention toward God.
John didn’t do what he did for his own glory but because he passionately believed with every cell of his being that he was preparing others to see and experience God. He felt an urgency in this message of hope. Prepare the way! The kingdom is at hand! Make ready! Repent! John knew that God’s Love requires us to respond, in one way or another.
In this season of anticipation, John the Baptizer’s message is so big it gets two Sundays, today and next Sunday. That’s a lot of press for someone who today would more than likely be told his message was too harsh, to tone it down, to quit being so critical, quit trying to change people and just let everyone be.
To us, in our twenty first century western mindset, the word repent feels like a weapon not a beacon of hope. We don’t like to be told we have to change or that we could possibly be wrong. And we label anyone who says things like this to us as a difficult and demanding person.
The word that John spoke, metanoia, that we translate into English most often as repentance means a change of mind. The Common English Bible translates John’s charge as “change your hearts and lives”. John knew that God’s way of seeing the world was better than anything the people listening to him could ever imagine. He believed that Jesus was coming to show us all how to be who God created us to be.
And John also knew that this change we are all called to face isn’t some instantaneous magic trick. To prepare ourselves for God takes work, continuous, lifelong, ongoing, difficult work. It requires us to face the difficult questions. There is no quick fix. This metanoia God calls us to is a way of living as we follow Jesus with our whole being, all the time.
The first step is to admit we need to change, to accept that God calls us to be different from what the world tells us we should be, to change our heart and mind about what success looks like, what money is for, how we view other people, and how we view ourselves. The most difficult question ever asked is ‘why’. Why do we do the things we do? Do we live, like John the Baptizer, directing other people’s attention toward God with all that we do, with all that we have, and with all that we are?
Do we live, like John the Baptizer, directing other people’s attention toward God with all that we do, with all that we have, and with all that we are?
John’s urgent proclamations come from the understanding that unless we can see a purpose for changing we won’t be willing to do the difficult work. The reason repentance is necessary as a starting point for our ongoing relationship with God is because repentance is our recognizing that we need God.
God’s gifts of love and compassion and forgiveness are always available to us. We benefit most fully from these gifts when we actively use them. And we can only fully grasp the meaning of them if we know how desperately we need them to live into our whole and holy humanness as God created us to live.
As we continue our Advent journey toward Jesus, how are you preparing the way? As you light your candles and reflect on the themes of Advent, I invite you go a little deeper into the work of asking yourself difficult questions.
The good news is that we don’t face these questions alone nor do we have to find our own strength or courage. God is with us saying to us, “you are my beloved child and together we can live in hope and peace and love and joy. Walk with me on this journey. It isn’t always easy but it is always worth it. Use my strength. I will give you courage.”
Do not be afraid. Take heart. The Kingdom of God is at hand. God is with us.
I love to play Scrabble. There’s just something exciting to me about the possibility of the words to be found, the anticipation as I watch what my companion spells out and discovering how I can build on that, and the revealing of the layout of all the words in an interconnected pattern created by our minds working in concert. Of course, my husband, the competitive one of us, gets really excited when he gets more points than me.
I’m a fan of words. My undergrad senior paper was about the 50 or so words that remain in use in the English language that were spoken by the first European tribes to settle Britain. (I can sense how excited you are to hear more about and perhaps even read such a paper but I’m going to have to save that for another time. Don’t be too disappointed.)
The writer of Genesis tells us that God spoke all of creation into existence.
In telling his version of the Gospel Story, John says, “In the beginning was the Word.”
One of my favorite descriptions of God’s use of language is from Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the NIH, who says that as he and his team mapped out the human genome in the letter sequences used to denote DNA, he saw the language with which God spoke us into being1.
Words matter. The words we choose in life can build and create beauty. They can heal and repair. And they can cause great damage, tear down, and destroy. Our words are so very powerful and yet words are commonplace and ordinary so we often forget how much power they have.
Each week in Advent, we focus on one of four theme words and this week’s word is HOPE. This is one of the words I think we use so casually that the deeper meaning is overlooked. It’s become merely a synonym for “I want”.
The deeper meaning of the word, and how it is used in scripture, is to trust that things will turn out a certain way.
Tikva, literally translated from Hebrew as a cord or attachment and figuratively as an expectation, is the word we translate into the English hope. The first use of it in scripture is in the telling of the story of Ruth, Jesus’ great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-I-don’t-know-how-many-actually-but-you-get-the-idea-great grandmother. When Naomi is in despair and tries to send her daughters-in-law away, she sees no hope, no reason to trust that good will come of their situation, no reason to remain attached to each other. But Ruth found hope. She could see what Naomi could no longer see, that in their love for each other, God would protect and provide for them.
God’s promises often interrupt our despair as they did Naomi’s. When we reach a point of despair (defined as the complete loss of hope) the people around us can remind us that God’s light is still on the horizon.
God’s promises often interrupt our despair through the words of the people around us.
So many of us are in despair after this year we’ve had and with the need to stay home and physical distance from those we love it is more challenging to keep pointing each other toward God. My faith isn’t “all about me and God” it is about God and all of us. In response to Naomi’s urging to leave her, Ruth says, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” (Ruth 1:16 NRSV)
Ruth had no idea what was in store for them as they returned to Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem but she believed, she trusted, she had HOPE in the God whom she had come to know through Naomi.
Ruth knew that going “back to normal” wasn’t an option and that maintaining the hope in God meant going forward. She knew she and Naomi couldn’t even begin to imagine the fulfillment of God’s promises ahead if they were stuck in the past.
We cannot even begin to imagine all that God has in store for us if we are busy trying to ‘get back to normal’.
Hope is knowing that even in the darkest of times – losing loved ones to a disease that we could control if only we all worked together, losing a job and a home, not knowing what is next – in whatever the circumstances in which we find ourselves, God is with us and is true to God’s promises. Although God’s plan may not be what we envision for our future (or even just tomorrow) our HOPE lies in the wisdom that God’s way of love can make all situations better, here and now, on earth as it is in heaven.
When you can’t remember how to HOPE, when you struggle to find even a glimmer of God’s light, let me know and I’ll remind you. And when I can’t remember, I’ll call on you as well. Perhaps we can figure out how to play Scrabble online, or just talk and really listen to each other.
Together with God’s help we continue on this journey speaking love and compassion into the darkness so the light of heaven shines for all of us.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13 NRSV)
God’s peace, Mtr. Nancy+
1I highly recommend The Language of God by Dr. Francis Collins as well as the website biologos.org
Sunday, November 29, 2020 The first Sunday of Advent Isaiah 64:1-9 Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 Mark 13:24-37
Each Sunday of the church year has an appointed prayer called a Collect.
In the Episcopal Church, we follow a church calendar that begins each new year not on January 1 but four Sundays before Christmas Day (the date can be from November 27 to December 3, depending on which day of the week Christmas falls on for the particular year).
We call these first four weeks of the church year Advent (Christmas begins on Christmas Day and goes through January 5, which are the real 12 days of Christmas but we’ll save that for another discussion).
I’m sure y’all are familiar with Advent calendars which count down the days in December until Christmas as a way to build anticipation with a hidden treat to be discovered each day. Your church may make an Advent Wreath part of their worship services the Sundays before Christmas and your family may even have an Advent Wreath at home.
Advent means “the arrival” from the Latin adventus, translated from the Greek parousia (the language lessons are free). In this season, we anticipate the coming of Jesus from different perspectives: the prophets proclamation of the Messiah throughout Isreal’s history, the birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, the arrival of God’s kingdom through the life and ministry of Jesus to all of us (the kingdom is at hand), and the establishment of the New Heaven and New Earth as the culmination of God’s plan for all of Creation.
The season of Advent and the new church year begins in the dark and stillness of winter. For those of us who live in regions where winter is more of a picture postcard than reality, it’s tough, I think, for us to really step into this meaning. Our grass is still green as are many of our trees, we don’t need a coat most of the time, and we still have 10 hours of good daylight every day. We may have the occasional ‘freeze” of a day or two over the coming months but we return to warm days quickly in between. This year, however, it may be easier to live into the anticipation of the amazing and promised goodness breaking into the dark and decay.
This pandemic began during the church season of Lent and we talked about how to let the forced giving up of so much deepen the transformative time of Lent, to deepen our understanding that all that we are and all that we have comes from God, to deepen our awareness of God at all times.
Through the summer and fall as we journeyed through Ordinary Time (the time in the church calendar between Pentecost and Advent) we talked about how to live all that Jesus’ teaches in the regular and routine events of our life even though this year wasn’t at all regular or routine. We talked about using this pandemic time to evaluate what we want to be regular and routine and how to (re)ground ourselves in the Gospel message so that our lives are shaped by God’s love.
And so we find ourselves, still deep in the grip of the sickness and death of the pandemic; the anger and hate of the most embittered and divisive political wars of our nation’s history; facing the fallout of the systemic racism and injustices in our society that we just can’t keep hidden any longer.
And it’s the season of Advent, the season of anticipating the arrival of God’s promises.
The themes of Advent – HOPE, PEACE, JOY, LOVE – are the very things that will heal us and our world, not just from our immediate circumstances but our past and our future as well. These are God’s promises for us, for this world, gifts given in compassion to shape us so that we can participate with God in transforming this world “from the nightmare it often is to the dream that God intends” (Bishop Michael Curry).
As we journey together toward the coming of Jesus, I invite you to choose a way to mark Advent in your home. You don’t need to buy anything fancy. To make a wreath you just need 5 candles, one for each Sunday and one for Christmas Eve, (traditionally 3 purple, one pink, and one white but don’t fret if you only have orange and yellow candles left from your Thanksgiving table, use what you have. God will be ok with that, even if my Liturgy professor wouldn’t be). Arrange them in a circle with one in the middle. Each week beginning on Sunday, light a candle and pray/talk/write about one of the words – HOPE, PEACE, JOY, LOVE.
Use whatever calendar you have to mark each day and pray/talk/write about what it means to you to anticipate the promises of God.
Welcome the interruption of how we define “normal”.
Stay alert for the presence of the divine and holy in all people and events.
Let yourself be surprised by God’s love, by Jesus’ compassion, and by the Spirit’s power to make thin the veil between the Kingdom at hand and the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Let God’s light shine into the darkness and all will be made new.
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 