Worship - December 13, 2018

Photo by Dylan Mello

    The advent season has always held a special place for me when it comes to worship.  The ability to have reflection time and expectation has really grabbed a hold on me as each annual Advent season approaches.  Every year, I love waiting to hear and sing the specific hymns of Advent. The anticipation we experience each week in our services as we await the joy of Christmas brings me a sense of awe and wonder.  

    The main highlight of my worshipping experience is the Advent Lessons and Carols. No matter what church I’ve been in, each special service fills me with a feeling that is hard to describe.  A building filled with fellow worshippers exploring the meaning of the season is quite a sensation. Personally, this worship experience allows me to let go, listen to themes, the words, and attempt to find the message in front of us. A particular anthem, “Veni Domine”, stands out to me at this time of year.  The translated words are such, “Come, Lord, and do not delay. Visit us with your peace so that we can rejoice in your presence with hearts made pure. Come, Lord, and as a mother consoles her children, so shall you comfort us, and we shall see you and our hearts will rejoice.” I can’t help but see the imagery of these lines and how this captures many of the feelings of Advent.  I can see Mary holding the newborn Jesus, comforting his hunger, fears, and cries. And so, we turn in the same way to Jesus. We wait for the celebration of his birth to remember how we share and experience this love.

    Advent is a busy season for worshipping.  There is much time spent looking ahead to the planning of Christmas and all that entails.  I think it is important to slow down and recognize the importance of this waiting. We are waiting to rejoice in the celebration of Jesus and the peace and love that he brings.  We can remember why we have four Sundays of the season, why we light the candles each week, and how refocusing our efforts can bring us back to a place of solace.

Post by Dylan Mello

Turn - December 10, 2018

"Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other.”

Isaiah 45:22

Another advent is well underway. Our annual reminder that once again it is our turn to wait. Of course all through the year we wait on many things. We wait for buses. We wait for news to arrive by any number of different means of communication. We wait for someone to do something for us or evaluate us in some way. We wait for medical results, for the work day to be done, or school to be over. I think it’s safe to say that each day, at least once, we find that it is our turn to wait for something.

But Advent is different. It is during this wondrous season, while we wait our turn to celebrate the joyous birth of the Christ Child, that we are afforded the precious opportunity, if we are willing to take advantage of it, to reflect on the magnitude of the event for which we all are waiting.

I believe that the season of Advent is an invitation to all of us to turn away from the chaos swirling around us at every turn and make the most important turn of all. The turn that we are all called to make. The turn for which we were all created by God our Father. Simply put, we must turn back toward Him. Advent represents an extraordinary gift which enables us to remember that if we refocus our efforts and intentionally turn back toward Christ we will be better able to live more fully into the role of apostles that we were meant to fulfill.

There is perhaps no better place to start living into this invitation than Advent as we wait expectantly for that moment in the manager when the wait was finally over and the world can turn, along with Mary and Joseph, to face the challenges ahead with the confidence and strength afforded to each of us by the birth of Christ. It will be there, cradled in the loving comfort of the palm of God’s hand, that we will never again feel the need to turn away from anything because we will have everything that we need.

It’s our turn. It’s the world’s turn. And no matter how often we may veer off course or how many wrong turns we may make we must now dedicate ourselves to making that last turn and knowing that we are almost home. My prayer for all of us this season is that we will remember the gift that Advent provides and do everything in our power to right the ship, re-calibrate our compasses, and turn back toward the light of Christ.

We have a bit more waiting to do this year. And while we wait, there is work to be done.

Peace to all.

Post by Michael Southwick

Knocking at your door

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. –Revelation 3:20

When I was a kid, for some reason, a fright frequently came over me when someone called or knocked on the door. I was always busy doing something else: reading a book, or browsing the internet, or playing a game. And then, suddenly, the phone rang from the kitchen (oh, the days of landlines), or the doorbell sounded throughout the house. Whatever it was I was doing stopped, even if just for a moment. Something more urgent beckoned.

Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding!

A voice cries out in the wilderness!

For us, Advent is often like that unexpected sound, jolting us out of our reverie. Just when we’re in the midst of our lives, doing something else—taking care of our work or families, our chores or play—the prophets interrupt us to remind us to listen closely. They shake us from our slumber and remind us that “salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers” (Rom. 13:11).

We’re in the last stretch of this season of Advent, getting ready to celebrate the first coming of our Lord at Christmas. But above and beyond the church year, the Scriptures call us to prepare for eternity—to repent, to pray, to listen, to look to the One who was, and who is, and who is to come.

For now, the prophets and apostles call out to us, seeking to prepare the way of the Lord. But soon, the One to whom they bear witness, he himself will come, as a child in a manger and as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, knocking on the door of our hearts.

When Jesus comes knocking, will we have ears to hear him calling? When Jesus comes knocking, will we open the door?

Post by Armando Ghinaglia

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Photo labeled for reuse with modification from https://www.flickr.com/photos/waitingfortheword/5561187028/in/photostream/

Darkness has a tangible quality

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For a while at the end of seminary, my husband Nik and I followed a fairly strict routine. Around 8 or so, when it had finally started to get dark in Tennessee, we turned off all the harsh fluorescent lights in our student apartment and lit candles. We called it “candle time,” and we started doing it as a way to spend intentional time together at the end of a long day, to better wind down. There was one evening when my orchestra rehearsal ran long and I biked home in a rush and hurried to the door juggling my French horn, music folder, water bottle, and keys. When I opened the door, instead of more noise, more bright stage lights, more people asking something of me, there was only soft light, warmth, and quiet. And when we finally blew out the candles, some of that warmth remained. Our apartment, rather than being sterile student housing with thin carpeting and ugly cabinets, had been purified somehow. The darkness had been changed.

Darkness is not always empty. Right now, I am rereading Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and there is a point when Meg and the other characters travel to a distant planet by way of a wrinkle in space. While they are traveling, Meg was completely alone. Reflecting back on it after, she realizes: “It was not as simple as darkness, or absence of light. Darkness has a tangible quality; it can be moved through and felt; in darkness you can bark your shins; the world of things still exists around you.”

In Advent, as the days shorten and the nights lengthen, I am finding myself leaning into that darkness, the type of darkness that is full, rather than empty. I am pressing into the penitential Sunday lections and prayers, the apocalyptic Daily Office readings. I am casting around in the dark and realizing I am not alone. The darkness falling in Advent is not the empty darkness of Meg’s travel through space, but a darkness that is full of active waiting, anticipation, and hope. It is the darkness that falls after candle time: holy, refreshing, allowing you to go deeper and deeper, all the while knowing that you are safe.

Post by Carrie Combs

We Wait.

We wait.

Did you watch the news today?

Did you hear what the president said?

That earthquake in Mexico was devastating.

33% of Puerto Rico is still without power.

I heard there was rioting in the West Bank. I heard one protester was killed.

41 million Americans struggle with hunger. 13 million of those hungry are children.

There was a school shooting last week. It hardly made the news.

We can wait to be saved from all of this.

We can wait for Jesus.

We can also act as Jesus tells us.

We can stand up to injustice.

We can love our neighbors.

All of them.

We can sue for peace and heal the injured.

Or we can wait.

We can prepare for the arrival of our savior by building the kingdom of God here on earth.

We can wait

or we can do.

We can hold firm to the divisions

-- and bad feelings  --

that keep us separate

or

we can reach out our hands in peace.

We can adhere to the old ways that keep us apart

or

welcome the new.

Meet the hungry with food.

Give the thirsty a drink.

Invite the stranger in.

                                                                                                                       Clothe the naked.

Care for the sick.

Visit the prisoner.   

We can wait.

Or we can do.

We can wait.

Or we can renew.

Post by Matt Handi

I wait

By Stacey Kohl
 

I wait.

As the days grow shorter and the nights longer, I wait.

As the wind blows more sharply and the world around me grows colder, I wait.

As the very earth seems to sink low into the darkness of winter, I wait.

I wait.  

I wait because I know someone is coming—because I know someone has already come.

I wait because I know this someone will take the darkness and make it light

Will take the cold and make it warmth

Will take the weight of so much pain,

so much anger,

so much loneliness,

so much hate,

and lift it away.

I wait because the one who is coming—the one who has already come—is love itself.

And love is always worth waiting for.

I am Present

View image | gettyimages.com

December 2, 2015
Reflection by Phil Bjornberg

In “I AM Present” poet K. Hall invites us to reflect on the past and to know the reality of God’s intimate presence. “In the womb of Eden where I fed you and warmed you,” recalls a place where both our most basic needs and our highest needs are fulfilled.

What are important moments in your life that you can recall both your physical and spiritual needs were met, and that you knew that this was from God? How can the past memory of God’s presence help us to know of the reality of God being with us?

When we wait, we are often anticipating the arrival of something or someone. However, the wait can be scary, lonely, and/or full of anxiety. We are reminded that God’s “presence remains.” How is God’s presence revealed in our waiting?

How can waiting be a way that we can know God’s presence, even before the great arrival? K. Hall uses the image of “seers” who “lead the blind” and those who “take up hands with the paralyzed.” This speaks of aiding others in their time of waiting. How does ministering to others during their waiting help us to anticipate the coming of God?