Church Seasons: Post Script

While I truly love the mystery of Christmas and Easter, I find meaning for the church in Pentecost, I enjoy the seasons of preparation in Advent and Lent, by about May every year, we have been through the major Church Event...especially when you consider that Christmas in December is really in a NEW CHURCH CALENDAR year (even as it is the dwindling days of our usual way of telling time).  This means that for well over half the year, six months, we are in what the church calendar calls, "ordinary".  This means God does God's usual work in the midst of the mundane, ordinary, every day.  While we love the music of Christmas and the trumpets of Easter; while I enjoy the preparation of Advent and Lent, the church seasons proclaim that most of the time God shows up not in special Sundays, but normal, every day life.  That is a profound theological statement that is preached to us by the liturgical, church seasons.  We need to be reminded of that daily.  Of course, usually these ordinary, normal days are not exactly when the church is packed.  But, that is okay too.  What God longs for is relationship in the ordinary, not just the beauty and pageantry of the most sacred days.  I think about weddings, those are great events and life changing...but marriages are lived in the ordinary when the dishes are piling up and you are just trying to get dinner on the table.  I think about starting new jobs, the excitement and energy...but careers are lived in the ordinary day to day of completing assignment.  First date...the same...relationships are lived in the ordinary and every day.

So, after we live half a year jammed packed with special events, we live the second half in the ordinary.

What might that say to us?

This is where I find my life taking shape and form.  I find God in the ordinary.  In dinners shared as a family.  In preparing lunch for my kids for school.  In texts exchanged with my wife.  Which is also where we might look for the hope, peace, joy, and love of Advent to be found as we enter into December.  Maybe it is not in pyrotechnics and magical moments.  Maybe hope moves quietly and in the still small silence.  Same with peace, sitting in darkness listening to carols.  Same with love, a hug at just the right time.  Same with joy, in simply unwrapping a present given with love.

The ordinary becomes extraordinary is true not only in church seasons, but also throughout scripture.  In the end, that is really where we sense the traces of God's grace.

Blessings ~

Church Seasons: Pentecost

So far, we have waited/anticipated/prepared for Christ's birth in Advent and Christmas.  We celebrated God's in-breaking and incarnation at Christmas.  We observed Epiphany, the Wise One's bringing gifts and being saturated in the light of God's presence.  We look at the time in-between Epiphany and Lent as another moment God moves in our midst.  We explored Ash Wednesday, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter as diving deep into God's promise to meet us, even in moments of desertion and betrayal and death.  We looked at the day after, how it takes time for the promise of resurrection to take hold.  There are actually fifty days after Easter.  For a time LONGER than Lent we try to find ways for the empty tomb to take hold fully of our lives.  And then, we arrive at Pentecost, fifty days after Easter.  Usually Pentecost is seen as the birthday of the church.  The story is that as the disciples met in the upper room day after day trying to wrap their minds, hearts, souls, and lives around the promise of Resurrection eventually the Spirit stirred.  Just as the Spirit stirred over the chaos in creation.  Just as the Spirit led the people wandering through the wilderness.  Just as the Spirit stirred the day Jesus was baptized in the Jordan.  The Spirit swirls in amazing ways and the people of God again caught wind of the new things God is doing in our midst.

One beautiful part of the church seasons is the rhythm of sensing God in different ways.  Another mysterious part is the ways past, present, and future all culminate, collapse and collide in any and all of the above seasons.  You see, we celebrate Christmas not only as an event back then in our history, but as a present reality of Emmanuel, God with us NOW.  We look for the star light of Epiphany both as an event that happened and is happening.  We see the trials of Lent both as something Jesus went through and we go through in our lives with Christ.  Time is bendy within the church seasons.  We need these seasons to keep us open to that Pentecost spirit of new life breathing in every Sunday.  

So, we have gone through these seasons: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, In-Between, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, the Day after, and now Pentecost, where do you find yourself?  Is there a season you connect deeply within your own soul?

I pray that you have found the reflections on seasons meaningful.  BUT more importantly, I pray that as we have just started on another cycle of the church seasons with the First Sunday of Advent today, you will participate in the seasons this year.  I find more than a trace of God's grace in these church seasons.  I find a routine and rhythm that helps me make sense of my life.  May God's love move in your midst and you will sense God stirring in life giving ways.

Blessings ~ 

Church Season: The Day After

Ever had a party?  After all the guest leave there are dishes in the sink, the once-freshly-washed floors are suddenly again dirty, there are bits of food scattered around, trash to take out, and you try to return to ordinary of life.  Yet, something is different.  Hopefully it was a good party where laughter was absorbed into the walls of your home.  Hopefully with each dish you wash you remember the delicious food and friendships deepened.  Hopefully as you rewash the floors you know that the impression of your friends was left on your life.  It takes time after the party to appreciate how quickly the time went and beautiful that moment was.  Easter is a grand, great, holy celebration, but most of us don't live life in party after party.  We live (what I said previously) in-between.  In-between the holy and ordinary.  In-between the to-do-lists and the complete.  We live between what was promised on Easter and what will come when God's realm is fully established.  

The day after Easter is not only about cleaning up...it is about trying to live our life as though that empty tomb held more truth than we could every explore in a lifetime.  There were fifty days set aside between Easter and Pentecost.  Fifty day when we could let the events of holy week settle into our soul.  Yet, usually we pack up and leave after Easter.  Usually, we think not much happens.  But God is found in the ordinary.  God is discovered in the clean up.  God is there not only in joyful, but moments we are just trying to get food on the table for supper.

Easter was an amazing, life-changing moment.  And it takes intentional and prayerful time to process.  Easter takes time to bask in the light that poured forth from the empty tomb on Easter.  Easter is about noticing God's grace not only in moments of loud trumpet blasts, but also the quiet laughter of a family meal or coffee with friends or just a quiet night at home.  The day after Easter and the one after that and the one after that...this is where really the traces of God's grace start to make all the difference.   

I hope this stays with you...now, I have dishes from supper to tidy up.

Blessings ~ 

Church Season: Easter

After the joy of God breaking into our world at Christmas, the season of letting that sacred truth saturate our lives (known as Epiphany), the recognition that everything is not chocolate rivers and we have brokenness in our lives (called Ash Wednesday), the season of Lent (deepening a connection with God), and finally Holy Week where we go from the enthusiasm of a parade to the pain of desertion/betrayal/denial by so-called friends, we arrive exhausted (perhaps physically, emotionally, and spiritually) at an empty tomb.  This great cycle of birth, death, and resurrection is part of life.  All around us, the soil is constantly being transformed as some plants die and others strike out tiny sprouts.  Our bodies are constantly shedding skin cells as new ones are made.  In our lives, constant change of family and friends and in our own bodies is a theme.  

God enters into that cycle, participates in the dance, and on Easter morning proclaims, that now there is a new beat/riff.  Now, instead of brokenness or fear or desertion being the final word, there is new life and promise.  Instead of thinking we have this whole thing figured out like a puzzle, we realize there is more mystery than knowledge.  Easter is the comma to life.  Easter is the pregnant pause that suggest, "Wait...wait there is more."  Easter is the profound, paradoxical truth that God is at work even in empty tombs of our lives.

Yet, that is scary.  Because when the dead won't stay dead, everything we think we know is in question.  Everything is turned inside out, upside down.  There is a re-birth that is working within us even in the darkest days.  I recently heard from a scientist that every atom in your body was around before we were born.  Yet...yet out of some 6 billion people YOU are the only one who will have have your particular make up of atoms bouncing around.  I love it!  That is grace upon heaping helping of grace.  That is good news upon good news.  We need Easter after the Friday world we live in.  We need new light after the deaths we experience week after week.  We need hope when things feel like they are going you know where in a hand basket.

Easter is a promise...that we never quite grasp...but hopefully/prayerfully are grasped by.  I don't think we ever understand Easter, but we can stand under a grace and love that brings new life from empty tombs and echoes of emphatic "yes" to life.  May Easter be found in your lives this week as our still creating and dancing God moves in our midst with more than a trace of grace!

Blessings ~ 

Church Seasons: Holy Week

As the season of Lent enters its final week, we set aside the week before Easter and call it, "Holy".  The week begins with Palm Sunday, Jesus triumphant entry into Jerusalem.  We continue on Maundy (Greek word for commandment ~ referring to Jesus' new commandment to love) Thursday where we celebrate the Last Supper and, in some churches, foot washing.  We come the next day, Good or Holy Friday, where we stand at the foot of the cross.  For me, God did not need Jesus to die on a cross to satisfy some anger.  God had already come to us in the form of unconditional love and unceasing grace.  But when met with such a radical, unimaginable, un-human-like gift, we could not deal with the sacred.  In some ways, we still cannot.  We don't like it when we receive a gift without one to offer in "exchange".  We don't like it when we are upset and someone says, "I love you" or "I forgive you."  Such words fuel our fire of frustration.  Friday is us confronting our humanness and the myth of redemptive violence.  Jesus offered us a better way than eye for an eye justice, but we keep clinging to the old way rather than Jesus' new commandment.  Friday is only "Good" in light of Easter morning.  Friday is only "Holy" because our violence and brokenness is never the last word.  

These three days can turn the soil of our soul.  They shine a light bright on joy turned to betrayal and denial and desertion of friends turn to death.  In the course of one week we experience and explore every emotional humanly possible.  I don't know why exactly these services are not jammed.  Every where people are thirsty for meaning.  Every where people are talking about spirituality.  If you want to stop splashing around in the shallow end or cotton-candy promises of happiness that leave us feeling empty, we can find no deeper and more holy time than the three services of Holy Week. 

I realize that this has not always been the explanation of the Christian Church.  I understand that after the palm branch waving of Palm Sunday, most of the time the pastor sounds more like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" or what Dallas Willard once called, "Vampire Christians" so interested in Jesus' blood.  Some of that has to do with the time of the Gospels.  Blood was the life force.  Blood had to be drained from a sacrifice just right in order for it to be excepted.  Just as our understandings of "freedom" or "consumerism" influences our faith today, so did the practices and ideals of Jesus day impact people's confession of faith.  So, before we go rolling our eyes, let us be honest that the expressions of faith today are culturally conditioned too...it is just that we don't always see our assumptions.  

These services can take us deeper into a connection with God and neighbor.  These services can lead us to a deep place.  If Lent is in invitation to explore further "God-with-us", Holy Week is trying to binge watch the mystery of God in the course of one week.  Holy Week is an invitation into God found in moments of joy, to holy meals, to garden moments of despair, to accusations and trials, to a cross, and to the silence of sighs deeper than words on Saturday.  That is life.  That is Holy Week.  There is more than a trace of grace...it is the very foundation and culmination of God-with-us, the light that shines in the darkness.  If that is what we are about, then Holy Week is a week we cannot avoid, for in it, we might just find life that is true life.  I pray it will be so for all of us this Holy Week.

Blessings ~   

Church Seasons: Lent

From Ash Wednesday, we set out on a journey of forty days, not including Sundays.  The first question might be, "Why not including Sundays?"  Because we live on the other side of Easter, we know the end of the story, every Sunday, even in Lent, remains a mini-Easter celebration.  Every Sunday is a celebration of the possibility and promise of resurrection, even in the journey of Lent.  It is an interesting juxtaposition and tension.  And we usually don't do well with it, we end up treating the Sundays of Lent be governed by our inner-Eeyore.  We are sad rather than celebratory, we are solemn and serious rather than practicing our "alleluias".  Most of this has to do with tradition and our general distrust of all things enthusiastic in worship.  It need not be that way.  Worship in Lent can hold in tension the pain and joy.  In fact, if we don't shine a like on the intimate dance of two in these forty days, when we will do it?  Yes, the cross is horrific.  Yes, there is brokenness in life.  Yes, just a few days ago, we saw this as Paris fell under attack.  Yet, there can also be moments of joy and hope even in grief and pain.  We have fallen into extremism when we think we are capable of only one emotion.  Lent asks us to dive deeply and dwell with the ways our hearts, souls, minds can hold the tensions and ride an emotional roller coaster.  I have recently celebrated three funerals in a short period of time.  I have seen waded up tissues and tears.  I have seen people grieving knowing that life is no longer than same.  And I have seen people laugh joyfully as they share an experience with their beloved family member, now in God's embrace.  I have seen people lean trustfully into God's promise that this life is not all there is.  So, Lent calls us into the twists and turns of life.  Lent builds upon Advent, the promise of Emmanuel, God with us in the flesh here and now.  Without Advent, Lent would be solemn and serious.  In the light of the candles of hope, peace, joy, and love, facing the cross can help us find the courage we need holding onto the promise that Sunday comes after Friday.

Lent is also a time when we can explore the rawness of faith.  Lent invites us to go deeper.  And, unlike Advent where all sorts of activities compete for our attention, Lent doesn't have company parties or gift buying or cards.  When was the last time you sent out cards for Lent?  But maybe you should.  Maybe it would be a time to build upon the experience and practices of "God-with-us" from Advent and Christmas.  Maybe this can be the season when faith can take the center stage and we can engage in prayerful practices or simply try to keep staying awake and alert.  Barbara Brown Taylor wrote a book about finding Altars in our world around us.  That is a practice we can engage in during Lent.

With the ashes of Wednesday lingering, we start a journey that faith is more than self-help or improvement.  Faith calls us out of our confines of self-concern to see all of God's creation and all God's beloved as part of who we are.  There is unity in community, there is self in the eyes of others.  We need to explore that truth, for it does not come easily in our consumerist culture.  We explore relationships with God and other and self as a way of digging deep into faith.  

I pray as you enter Lent this year it will be about more than prayer or fast; giving up or taking on; that it will be another season of preparing, plotting the resurrection and new life found in God.  May there be more than a trace of God's grace in Lent this year.

Blessings ~ 

Church Seasons: Ash Wednesday

After Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, and being in-between...we arrive at Ash Wednesday which marks the start of Lent.  I will talk directly about Lent in the next post...but it is good to center on the service that starts that 40 day journey to the cross.  Ash Wednesday centers around the phrase above, "From dust to come, to dust you shall return."  That does not sound very happy!  Where is the positive thinking?  Where is the uplifting thought?  Where is the inspiration?  No wonder people avoid this service...plus isn't this really Catholic?

A couple of thoughts.  First, on Ash Wednesday we do come face to face with our mortality.  Again, most of modern-day, Western thoughts wants to avoid this topic.  We are a death-denying culture.  We Botox and photo-shop our way to believing that we can live forever.  The fact is when you spend time around people in their 70s plus...most DON'T want to live forever.  I love serving a church that has wisdom of age to look at life, see the blessings and brokenness, and honestly say, "One day, I will not be here and it's okay."  But to say, "From dust to come and to dust you shall return," in our faith is not really morbid...it is an affirmation of our original blessedness.  In Genesis 2, God kneels prayerfully in the dirt, fashions and forms a being, and breathes life into that beings nostrils.  With each breath, we breathe in God's presence and life and energy.  We each breath, we breathe in the promise of original blessedness.  Ash Wednesday, viewed through this Scriptural lens, says to us, "We and star-dust and earth are connected in sacred ways."  Dirt and dust can be brought to new life through the breath of God.  

I pray that you will participate in an Ash Wednesday service in 2016.  As you enter into and prepare for Lent, this service is a holy threshold.  Gathering to set out on the journey with others reminds you that you are not alone.  The ritual of putting dust made from the ashes of last year's Palm Sunday parade on your forehead helps connect us to the circle of seasons/life.  It is a holy mark because it traces where the water at your baptism evaporated.  And both are true.  At your baptism, God made the holy promise to be in your life, sealed your heart as a beloved child.  At Ash Wednesday, we make a covenant with God to be honest that we don't always live our life by that truth.  We need this moment of confession and preparation for the long journey of Lent, to the cross, darkness of Friday, and the mystery of Easter.  

I pray we will not always leap from mountain top to mountain top in worship, that we will allow our worship of God to walk the valley...for as Psalm 23 says...there is more than a trace of God's grace there...it is a dwelling place for God's love.

Blessings ~ 

Church Seasons: In Between

At some point the Christmas tree comes down, the creche scene is wrapped carefully and put away, we hang our new calendar on the wall, and we enter a season in the church of "in-between".  We have celebrated another Advent/Christmas/Epiphany and we are anticipating another Lent.  Some years, this in-between time lasts a few weeks, other years it can be closer to two months.  It is not exactly the most exciting season.  There are NO great decorations to put up in the church and the liturgical color green (which I find ironic in the north...where the tree shed their green leaves months ago and the green grass is covered with snow upon snow upon snow...feel free to visit Florida at that point).  

Usually to be in-between something is not seen as a good thing.  We talk about being between a rock and a hard place or in the messy middle or caught in a sticky situation where you are darned if you do and darned if you don't.  But, then, I found the above picture.  Let's face it, whatever they put in the 'stuff' in-between the two Oreo cookies is AMAZING!  Who hasn't twisted the cookies, peeled off the 'stuff' to save the best for last?  Sometimes being in-between is okay and can be even good.  I look at my kids who could be called 'tweens, they are in-between childhood and teenagers.  That is VERY good, especially since I don't have to teach them to drive yet!!  But it is a magical, beautiful time.  My kids have great, unique personalities.  It is fun to see them growing up in that place of letting go of childhood but not quite ready to face the realities of adulthood.  Being in-between might be just as sacred as belting out "Silent Night"...which always gives me goosebumps.  Maybe it is just that we have not always seen the in-between that way.

Where are you in-between right now?  In one sense, I am in-between with the church I presently serve.  I have been there almost two years...my new pastor smell wore off a long time ago.  Yet, I have not been there a long time yet.  Trust is still earned day-by-day, decision-by-decision.  But I know the people well enough to start laughing at jokes together and sharing in the sacredness of everyday human life.

True is we live most of our lives in-between and in the ordinary (which we will arrive at in a few posts after Pentecost).  That is just as holy and sacred a time as Christmas or Easter.  So may you this week think about places where it feels like you are in-between.  May you prayerfully ponder what God might be up to in that space...and by all means feel free to buy some Oreos to help!

May you sense more than a trace of God's grace in these days.  Blessings ~ 

Church Seasons: Epiphany

There are twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany, which is where we get the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas"...although I have no idea what I would do with six geese a-laying and twelve drummers drumming just sounds loud.  There is a connection between Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.  We spend four weeks preparing for the birth of the One with promise dancing in his eyes.  We spend four weeks making room and ready for God to enter into our lives anew and afresh.  We bask in the silent, holy night of Christmas.  Then the next day, we pack every thing up, put the tree back in the attic, try to get the tinsel out of our carpet fibers, and start making New Years Resolutions.  But it wasn't always that way,  Many people can remember NOT putting their tree up until Christmas Eve and the tree would stay up until Epiphany.  I am not suggesting we go back to those 'good ole days'.  What I am suggesting is maybe we find ways to keep basking in the glow of Christmas.  There is no way one hour on Christmas Eve helps us fully explore the mystery of God entering our world.  There is no way that one day, December 25, with its often frenzied opening of packages and racing to family events, helps saturate us with the truth that God's love is no longer distant or disinterested in us.  God's love comes into a smelly stable.  God's love breaks forth in a barn.  God's love is scene only by a couple (Mary and Joseph) who never would have been lifted up as an ideal marriage and some shepherds considered thieves.  It takes more than one day, it takes more than twelve day, it takes a lifetime of returning to this season to help us begin to grasp the scandal of Christmas.  The scandal that God is a weak force, one whose love really does make all the difference, but we keep clinging to 'might makes right' and 'knowledge is power'.  The scandal that God is willing to walk among us in the flesh.  The scandal that God faces death.  Or as C.S. Lewis once said, God coming in Jesus is the 'intolerable compliment,' because suddenly faith is not only about intellectual assent, faith is living, breathing, sweating, eating, and sharing all the beauty and brokenness of life in the form of Jesus the Christ.  

I need twelve days to let that soak and saturate my life.  I need to keep standing in that divine light.  I need to keep lighting the candles of hope, peace, joy, and love as well as the culmination of those lights in Christ, to see how God is moving now as 2015 dwindles and 2016 dawns around me.  The season of Christmas into Epiphany is a bridge.  We sit with the profound question, what difference does it make right here and now that God is still willing to come into this world and move into my neighborhood?  What difference is that going to make in my life now and in the year to come?  For me, that truth keeps challenging me to be more loving, especially toward people who frustrate me.  For me, that truth keeps pushing me to delve deeper into where I sense God right now and where might I be missing God.  I need the light of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, especially since all around me in nature the night is longer.  Sure, the winter equinox has occurred, but it takes awhile for that event to be fully realized.  The same is true for Christmas and Epiphany, God entering in takes awhile.

So this year, as we round the corner to Advent, I encourage you to do a few things:

1.  When you write your Christmas cards, maybe choose one of the words of advent, "Hope," "Peace," "Joy," or "Love" and write that in the card.  Or when shopping asking which of those words would you most want to give to the person you are trying to find something for?  How might those words be tangible in your relationships in this season.

2.  Keep celebrating Christmas and the truth of God's love entering in long after the stores put the items on clearance.  God's love breaking into our world is way too beautiful and bright for us to stop basking in that grace on December 26th.

3.  Keep a journal of ways you sense God.  What new insights roam around?  What new directions are you longing to God?  Where do you need a renewed sense of hope, peace, joy, or love?

I pray that as we move through these seasons this year, you will sense more than a trace of God's amazing grace and that grace will last all of 2016.

Blessings ~    

Church Seasons: Christmas

After the church season of keeping awake and alert.  After Advent lighting the candles of hope, peace, joy, and love.  As the days grow darker and the candles drip wax growing shorter, eventually the waiting and watching is over.  God breaks into the world.  Advent is the preparation for Emmanuel, God with us and for us.  The candles of hope, peace, joy, and love help direct our gaze toward where we might notice God within us and around us.  If we want to know what God is up to in the world, Advent says, look where hope causes the tiny hairs on your next to stand on end.  If you want to know where God breaks in try cultivating peace, shalom (wholeness) in your life and in your relationships.  If you want to prepare the soil of your soul for Christ, try radical, unconditional love (especially if that means reaching out to someone in a different tribe!)  If you want to make room for God, make room for joy.  Christmas is the culmination and coming together of hope, peace, joy and love.  Those candles are not extinguished on Christmas Eve...they fan the fire and spark the light of Christ, God entering our world.  God enters in the most peculiar and unobtrusive way...in a stable?  Really, a dirty, dark, damp, dank stable?  What kind of God would want to enter that way?  Or better yet, what kind of God wants to take on flesh and actually walk around this broken...and sometimes beautiful world?  

We have emptied the mystery of Christmas by thinking we've got this story all figured out.  Yeah, yeah, yeah we say....Joe and Mary traveling...let me tell you about travel and getting stuck at the Des Moines airport with two small kids.  No room for them at the inn...been there...sleep on my in-laws fold out couch with what someone generously called a "mattress".  Shepherds, this profession that let their sheep graze on other's property...oh I know about unexpected relatives showing up and grazing on all the egg nog in my refrigerator!  Christmas has become mixed and mingled with culture.

What if this year, in December, you let hope, peace, joy, and love really try to sink in and light your way?  What if this year, when you write your Christmas cards you pick ONE of those words for each person in your family?  Who needs hope right now?  Who needs a word of love right now?  Who needs peace?  And the point is that we can't give that hope, peace, joy, or love.  It has already been given and already lives in our world.  Christmas is a luminary moment that blurs the past, present, and future.  Hope, peace, joy, and love already broke into our world two thousand years ago.  Hope, peace, joy, and love are rekindled in our lives right now and set ablaze in our hearts.  And the fulfillment of hope, peace, joy, and love will still come as God continues to create and love this world into a new way.

One final thought on the season of Christmas...which is to really let the scandalous love of God enter our world be part of what you mediate upon.  To say, God took on flesh because God's love could allow nothing less, is life-changing and we never quite grasp.  What wondrous love is this, O my soul, we could sing out.  When the tips of the flames of hope, peace, joy, and love touch, what sparks is the light of Christ.  What starts to burn brightly is a dream God had from the very beginning of creation, that chaos and brokenness would NEVER have the last word.  Christmas is full of mystery and promise and sets the tone for the entire church year.  

May you sense a trace of God's grace as we turn the calendar to November and begin to plot calmly the revolutionary love of God's presence, Emmanuel, entering in once again. 

Grace and peace

Church Seasons ~ Advent

We have looked at the four seasons, now we turn to the church seasons.  There is a different rhythm and routine to the church year...what is often called the liturgical year.  These seasons offer us an important insight about faith and living in relationship with each other.  The church year starts with the season of Advent.  This is the four Sundays before Christmas.  Christmas is always on December 25th, so look backwards and find the four Sundays preceding and that is Advent.  

Advent was at one time forty days, mirroring the season of Lent (the 40 days, excluding Sundays, before Easter).  But at some point it was narrowed.  Each Sunday you light a candle for the season of Advent.  The candles are named: hope, peace, joy, and love.  These candles light the way for the coming, the birth of Jesus at Christmas.  These candles light the way as darkness descends on the earth (until the winter solstice ~ which is December 22nd, the longest night, and slowly days start to have more sunlight).  In one way, the church mirrors what is happening around us.  As night is growing longer, less sun, we light candles to proclaim that hope, peace, joy, and love can never be extinguished.  These candles, often in a circle like the candles above, are like a compass.  We strive to orientate ourselves toward hope, peace, joy, and love.  We strive to stand at the center where we find Christ.  

Season of Advent is about waiting (not only for Christmas presents) but for the long-expected Jesus.  It is about watching for signs of God's movement.  It is about keeping awake for the sound of God's still singing voice.  It is about preparing a place in the "stable" of our hearts for the One who is God's love incarnate (in the flesh).

Most scholars talk about the scandal of the particular.  That God was willing to take on flesh, enter into our lives and be make real God's presence.  Emmanuel means God is with us.  Sometimes that is to suggest that God is NOT with you...who the other group is that gets on your nerves or tests your patience.  Emmanuel is for all people.  In fact, the prophet Isaiah images all people...ALL people... streaming to God's mountain.  That may not have a snowball's chance in Florida of happening, but that is the kind of vision and prayer we try to stay awake, alert and ready to receive anew during Advent.  

In some ways, four weeks is not enough for such life-changing world.  In other ways, we don't need to stop waiting, watching, and preparing just because the calendar is turned to December 25th.  As the first church season, this wisdom sets the tone for the entire church year.  As we move on to other seasons, listen for how this truth keeps on echoing...echoing around.  

Until then, where are you in the advent of your faith journey, which might feel more like spring than the bleak mid-winter when Advent takes place.  Where are their the faintest signs of hope, peace, joy, and love starting to spark, promising and pointing to something more?  That is the truth of Advent and one I pray that you will begin to hold onto before we even light that first candle at the end of November.  May you find some candles, light one and call it hope.  Where is hope stirring?  Where do you need peace?  What brings you joy?  And where does love glow brightly?  Don't push off preparing room for Christ...for indeed that is an invitation every day...not only in December.  May you sense more than a trace of God's grace as you light candles and reflect on the season of Advent.

Blessings