Searching for and Seeking out

 

Love is continually searching for and seeking out the sacred, which is where we find our hope and peace and joy.  In some way, maybe we should light the candle of love first, because this is both our beginning and ending.  You are born beloved, called to shine/share your belovedness, and the last words God says as you breathe your last is, “You are my beloved!”  How to live this way is less about some easy to follow, step-by-step system I could sell you, and more about mystery and mistakes and miscues and moments we want a rewind button to take back what we said, and marvel and so much more.  Love is where we reside, rest because that is where we discover God again and again.  So pray with me these beautiful words by Ann Weems.

 

In Search of Our Kneeling Places by Ann Weems

In each heart lies a Bethlehem,
an inn where we must ultimately answer
whether there is room or not.
When we are Bethlehem-bound
we experience our own advent in his.
When we are Bethlehem-bound
we can no longer look the other way
conveniently not seeing stars
not hearing angel voices.
We can no longer excuse ourselves by busily
tending our sheep or our kingdoms.

This Advent let’s go to Bethlehem
and see this thing that the Lord has made known to us.
In the midst of shopping sprees
let’s ponder in our hearts the Gift of Gifts.
Through the tinsel
let’s look for the gold of the Christmas star.
In the excitement and confusion, in the merry chaos,
let’s listen for the brush of angels’ wings.
This Advent, let’s go to Bethlehem
and find our kneeling places.

Love Loves

 

Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale…love loves; this is its nature.  Howard Thurman

 

Love is not an abstraction but a concrete reality.  James Cone

 

Love is not an accounting system, or balance sheet, or a linear, logical puzzle ~ love lives organically.  And like any organism, love is impacted and influenced by what is around us as well as the chemical reactions within us.  Love struggles in the face of hatred and hurt and heartbreak.  Love thrives in moments of laughter and tears shed while someone is holding your hand.  Love doesn’t need to be dissected but is dynamically delivered through the beautifully imperfect vessel of you.  You are, God says, “Beloved”.  This is your name, identity, calling, and blessing to live from.  I know there are so many other voices that want to contradict this or debate this or tell you it is all foolishness. 

 

And you, beloved, need not conform or contort to others.  Let your words, presence, and prayers be rooted in the reality of love.  Let go of earning and deserving, which God never said would bring love, for the reckless and radical love of One in whose image we are continually crafted.

 

May God’s love be heard in the song of your life.  May God’s love be tasted in the food you share with others.  May God’s love be felt in your life to flow through you this day.  Amen.

Love is a Verb

 

This Advent, love is not passive.  It is a verb, a force that requires us to reach out, to serve, and to care for others.  Henri Nouwen

Love is our true destiny (identity).  We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find meaning with another.  We find meaning in sharing love with those around us. Thomas Merton

 

Both Nouwen and Merton invite us to move beyond cognitive comprehension of love to embodied expression.  Love is not hypothetical or theoretical; something to be studied so we can “pass” some test or earn some merit badge on our heavenly sash.  Love is lived in life with others and with all God’s creation.  Love is relational ~ with God, others, and yourself.

 

How do you love another person, is a question we all ponder. 

 

We tell the story of God’s love unable to be confined and contained, broke out of some heaven light years away to show us heaven here on earth ~ in a time of terror and oppression and fear of the Roman Empire.  God burst and broke into the world through the back door of a barn, so why would we look for love in only the perfectly polished and posh palaces of temples and politics today?  God’s love is subversive and subtle, not screaming and shouting trying to get us to buy into a system for $19.95. 

 

And how you express love is different and beautifully diverse from how I will.  And we are called to find ways to share this with each other.  So here is a blessing by Kate Bowler for the messy, imperfect, human-sized way of love:

 

O God, we are waiting,
we are longing for You,
o Lord of Love.

Jesus come. God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy.

“and john said, ‘are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’” Matthew 11:3

God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy.

“God reached down from on high and took hold of me; God drew me out of deep waters.” psalm 18:16

God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy.

Blessed are we who look to You o Christ and wait for the fulfillment of that love which is higher, deeper, fuller than anything we have ever known.

Blessed are we in our incompleteness, this place where we are overwhelmed who hear you saying, I come! despite all, I come bringing true life and health and healing and love that never ends.

Blessed are we who see You, o Saviour the light that dawned so long ago in that dark stable, shining in the perfection of love given, love received, enfolding us into the heart of Your beauty
and glory and bliss.

Blessed are we, looking into Your face, into the gaze of the beloved, the One who knows us best of all, and calls us God’s very own. God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Spirit have mercy.  Receive this, your inheritance: love has come for you. “I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” John 10:10.  Amen.

When I say I am a Christian...

 

Let us pray that we shall be able to welcome Jesus at Christmastime not in the cold manger of our hearts, but in a heart full of love and humility, a heart warm with love for one another.  Mother Teresa.

 

I love the image of not just receiving God, who is born in a manger, but every person we encounter.  This sounds so good on paper (or your computer screen), but is difficult/demanding to live in these days.  Love is a great theory or ideal for people we agree and whose affection affirms us, but for those people who push our buttons?  Not so much!  Who lives life with such radical love anyway?  Okay, Jesus, but who else?  Too often we put people like Mother Teresa, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, leaders who we admire on a pedestal and convince ourselves we could never live the way they did!  We turn humans into superheroes and super-she-heroes of faith that we admire as they glimmer behind the protective plexiglass of our belief that they are holier than we could ever be.  But, Mother Teresa was honest about her doubts and even anger at God.  Dr. King had moments of fear in the face of hatred that threatened his life and wasn’t sure he could keep on keeping on.  Maya Angelou famously said she was surprised when people would say to her, they were a Christian and would think, “Already?”  Christianity is not an identity we put on like a protective suit of armor, Christianity is a way of life ~ a process where there is no finish line.  Christianity is a commitment to letting hope, peace, joy, and love author our stories and be embodied in our hearts.  Christianity is not a philosophy to study, but a covenant we live with God every day.  Christianity shapes us, even as the world’s gospels seek to sink their demands and decrees into our hearts.  They will, as the Spiritual sings to our souls, know we are Christians (followers of the Way of Jesus) by our love.

 

Here is a beautiful poem/prayer by Maya Angelou

 

When I say…”I am a Christian.”
I’m not shouting, “I’m clean living.”
I’m whispering, “I was lost,
Now I’m found and forgiven.”

 

When I say…”I am a Christian.”
I don’t speak of this with pride.
I’m confessing that I stumble
And need Christ to be my guide.

 

When I say…”I am a Christian.”
I’m not trying to be strong.
I’m professing that I’m weak
And need his strength to carry on.

 

When I say…”I am a Christian.”
I’m not bragging of success.
I’m admitting I have failed
And need God to clean my mess.

 

When I say…”I am a Christian.”
I’m not claiming to be perfect.
My flaws are far too visible
But, God believes I am worth it.

 

When I say…”I am a Christian.”
I still feel the sting of pain.
I have my share of heartaches
So I call upon His name.

 

When I say…”I am a Christian.”
I’m not holier than thou.
I’m just a simple sinner
Who received God’s grace somehow.

 

May the unceasing grace and unconditional (which is to say unearned) love of God light your way this day. 

The Candle of God's Liberating Love

 

Throughout the pages of scripture, love is like a thread woven into the quilt of the thin pages and through the words we read.  Paul talks about faith, hope, and love abiding…and the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13); on the last night of Jesus’ life he said, “this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12); Jesus called us to love our enemies in the gospels, which stretches us beyond our own abilities or even desire to live that way.  We lit the candle of God’s liberating love yesterday to illuminate our way to Bethlehem where we encounter and experience God’s love in the flesh and form of a vulnerably baby laid in a manger.  This sacred space preaches a gospel that the world doesn’t comprehend and cannot control, so we often turn from the truth of Christmas to ones of consumerism, rating/ranking, posturing, posting endlessly to social media, power, and politics. 

 

I invite you to light a candle now.  As you gaze at the flickering flame you could extinguish at any time ask yourself:

 

When did you feel most fully loved last week?  Last month?  Last year?

Who shared unconditional love with you?

Where do you feel the warmth of love in others and for others? 

Or are you struggling, especially with that person who is always pushing the nuclear codes of your emotional wellbeing?

 

One more question for you to carry in your heart, mind, and life today ~ how do you define and distinguish love?  What words or actions or experiences/encounters help you describe how love looks/sounds/tastes/feels?  I pray the candle of love will burn brightly within and around you every day this week.  With God’s embodied and emphatic and enthusiastic love to you!  Amen.

Prayer

 

What are you holding onto this morning from this past week (or even past year)?  Where do you feel the tension in your body?  Maybe in your shoulders or your mind spinning like a hamster on a wheel or in your gut that is doing summersaults.  What thoughts are stirring and swirling within you this week?  What storms came out of nowhere in the last few days?  Where did you find peace and where was shalom (integration of head, heart, soul, body and community) elusive or felt like you were nailing Jello to the wall (which why would anyone do that to perfectly good Jello?!?).  So, for you my beloved, a blessing:

 

God of journeys that we know like the back of our hand to the stable, but this year (and every year) is different, meet us in the messy manger moments of our one wild and precious life.  God of moments when we can breathe, center us.  

God of long lists of where we long for peace/reconciliation/repair/renewal of our lives, help us continue to offer You the people and places and parts of ourselves that need Your healing shalom. 

God, we don’t always know what we are waiting for…or our thoughts can be jumbled, or we worry that if we start listing all that is within us we will look greedy. 

Help us be honest, open, willing to You, O God. 

Knitting Seamstress God, You continue to weave us into a garment with all Your creation, yet there are threads that threaten to be snag and unravel the whole sweater.  Continue to repair and renew us, we pray.  God of silence, Shalom, storms that all mix and mingle together that is the recipe card of life, go before us, beside us, behind us, and befriend us this day.  May the hope and peace of Advent burn brightly guiding our way and be lit anew in our hearts for every day in 2025.  In the name of the One who is Your love in the flesh, Jesus the Christ. Amen.  Blessed are you, Pilgrim People, as we trudge toward Bethlehem this year.    

Peace...when there is no peace

 

This week we are exploring and experimenting with shalom, peace, and how this sacred encounter shows up disguised as our life in the journey to Bethlehem this year.  Yesterday, I offered words from the author Madeleine L’Engle on silence and letting the Word pray within you.  What happens if peace feels as far away as Pluto?  What if this week you have been fraught with anxiety or anger, what if you have fought with fear and frustration, what if your life resembles a home that has been broken into by forces beyond your control?  Your life may feel like something that is broken beyond repair and the furniture of your life is turned upside down and your skin keeps crawling with aches within.  Maybe what you long for and are waiting for is this storm of life to pass.  Maybe what you are praying for is your cancer to be cured.  Or maybe you are waiting for a relationship to be restored, even though the other person has blocked you on social media.  Or for the leaders of this world to be adults rather than bickering like children on a playground.  Or for the church to be the church to speak up.  So where does that leave peace when everything isn’t perfect or polished?  Isn’t peace supposed to glisten and glow, make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside?  Maybe…but maybe not.  Peace is about integration, letting our head, heart, soul, body, words, and presence be in alignment with God (not just with our own plotting and planning).  Peace is being enfolded in the crucible of God’s embrace, which sometimes feels like a boat slowly going down stream and at other times can feel like white water rafting.  For my beloved reading this who don’t feel peace, who think all this sounds too much like positive psychology, or Pollyanna, let me share the words of Jan Richardson who writes:

 

Blessing in the Storm

I cannot claim to still the storm that has seized you,
cannot calm the waves that wash through your soul,
that break against your fierce and aching heart.

But I will wade into these waters,
will stand with you in this storm,
will say peace to you in the waves,
peace to you in the winds,
peace to you in every moment
that finds you still within the storm.

May Jesus speak and sing to the storms within us and around us offering shalom each second, a sacred presence and reminder that we are not along.  Amen.