December 2007
 

From the Pastor

Advent Beauty

Tilting on her yearly track
Advent beauty circles back,
Flying faster with the years,
Hardly giving time for tears
First to dry upon the cheek—
 

Has it been more than a week
In the ground now winter cold?
Has there really been a spring
When the birds began to sing?
Has there been both summer, fall
Since the Baby in the stall
Called us with a Christmas bell
to sing, O Come, Immanuel?
 

Tilting on her yearly track
Advent beauty circles back,
Flying faster with the years—
Ah, but overtaking fears.
 

Let the Lord of advent lift
Every care (an early gift!);
See the Savior and the Son
Shine in advent candle one.

by John Piper. © Desiring God.

Website: desiringGod.org

Dear Friends,

Hardly is the turkey consumed, the stuffing swallowed, and the pumpkin pie digested when the sights and sounds of Christmas begin.  It’s as if we are on a racetrack, crouched at the start line, and we hear the start-gun crack, and we burst forth in a rush to the finish line.  Except that there is no finish line. Even when the holiday greetings are exchanged, the gifts are unwrapped, and the calendar reads Dec.25, we will not be finished. In some ways, we have only just begun.

If that concerns you—if you can’t imagine one more thing to “do” on your list or plate or whatever, then please realize that God is not a project. Christmas is not something to “get through,” “get to,” or “scratch off our lists,” but something to pray for and ponder.  You can’t buy it or orchestrate it, no more than you can buy or orchestrate true love.  Christmas is the recognition that a birth, this particular birth, can really shake things up and give us (and our world) a fresh start.

The Holy Incarnate comes to help us realize what we’ve been running past on our race to the finish line, whatever our finish line represents.  The danger is that we are “on track” for the wrong things.  This is why Advent is so very important in the church year.  It’s an intentional time to ponder, to wonder, and to savor. You could “gulp it down” in four weeks, but you’ll surely get indigestion on your way to the manger, and you just might miss the miracle.

Advent helps us to slow down, to prepare our hearts and minds for the gift of our Savior. It helps us contemplate how God shatters our illusions by working through humanity and history, through you and your neighbor and this moment--and not apart from them.

Of course, the commercials and catalogs will try to put us on a different track entirely, they will tell us to hurry up and buy now, while the sales are good, knowing that we are still making out our Christmas wish list and checking it twice.  But if we want to experience any of the “Advent Beauty” that this life is about, we will need to step off of our individual race-tracks, catch our breath, and let the Lord of Advent actually be the Lord of Advent.  Maybe by doing so, we won’t be distracted by shopping, working over-time, or trying to force Christmas to happen.  Instead, we will be walking slowly and purposefully with Mary and Joseph as they take each step forward, trusting that God’s miracle will happen, whether they feel themselves to be ready or not.

May the Lord of Advent redirect our gaze and slow our steps, that we may be ready to welcome Christ in our hearts.

Peace,

Rev. Dee

Take Time to be Aware . . . . . . . .  Edward Hays, A Pilgrim’s Almanac, p. 196

   "Take time to be aware that in the very midst of our busy preparations for the celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem, Christ is reborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives. Take time, slow down, be still, be awake to the Divine Mystery that looks so common and so ordinary yet is wondrously present.

   "An old abbot was fond of saying, ‘The devil is always the most active on the highest feast days.’

   "The supreme trick of Old Scratch (the Devil) is to have us so busy decorating, preparing food, practicing music and cleaning in preparation for the feast of Christmas that we actually miss the coming of Christ. Hurt feelings, anger, impatience, injured egos—the list of clouds that busyness creates to blind us to the birth can be long, but it is familiar to us all."