Advent in August

 

What is your favorite Christmas tradition?  Is it baking cookies, singing carols, or putting up decorations?  Is it a quiet moment when the words of Silent Night for a few fleeting moments feel true and trustworthy?  Is there a new tradition that can help open your mind/heart/soul to the mystery of God’s arrival in a barn, especially this year?  To be sure, I want to be careful not to ask or suggest you try to cram more into your life.  Perhaps a new tradition can replace one that has become less meaningful/where you are going through the motions but not feeling any swirling of the Sacred.  Why wait?  Okay, maybe if your favorite tradition is buying a fruitcake for everyone, you might not find those in abundance on the shelves today.  But you could probably find fruit and cake, so try that out.  Part of the invitation of Christmas is to awaken our shepherd-like curiosity to keep searching for Christ, who is also searching for us!  We pay attention to God, who is paying attention to you right now, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.  Do you feel a holy nudge in a certain direction or destination?  Maybe like the shepherds, you feel scared trying to go to a new place.  Or maybe you want to share God’s love in a new way, but, like the shepherds concerned about what others will think, you are holding back.  What tradition might stir within your heart, awakening you to the mystery and marvel of Christmas ~ even though the “actual” day is weeks/months away (“actual” because we don’t have Jesus’ birth certificate and we don’t know when he was born.  However, things can be true without happening exactly as I say.  There is a truth I cannot prove with evidence ~ things like love, hope, peace, and joy).  Today, practice Christmas.  Maybe you blare your stereo with music, make cookies for your neighbors, light a candle, or decorate a part of your house.  It doesn’t have to be splashy and spectacular.  Christ arrives quietly, barely noticed by anyone except a few shepherds.  You don’t have to inflate your 8-foot Santa Claus on your lawn, causing your neighbors to question you.  You can honor this day as holy and God-saturated because that is true of every day.  May you discover God in the most unexpected places and people this day.  Amen.

Advent in August

 

Even though it is, according to Google, 127 days until Christmas Eve, today I want to invite you to blast and blare a Christmas Carol (or many) from your stereo!  Pull out your favorite record, put on a beloved CD, or go into your music app to play that song list that has gathered dust since January.  Christmas Carols teach and tell us powerful truths about God’s entry into the world amid oppression, pain, discrimination, brokenness, and fear ~ if that sounds familiar, good!  God didn’t wait until the most optimal time; God didn’t do marketing research on the best location to launch a new product; and God didn’t ask for celebrity endorsements.  Nope.  God came amid the chaos and clutter of a political census that was for the purpose of Caesar to get richer and prove that when he said, “Jump”, you leapt and kept on leaping like the 12 Lords in the 12 Days of Christmas.  The first gleam of Christmas, one carol proclaims, is re-born with each new birth.  The hopes and dreams of all the years are met in Christ, not just on Christmas Eve, but with the setting of the sun each day.  Our souls are called to feel their worth and to recognize that each person is our sibling, as O Holy Night sings out.  Christmas Carols proclaims the good news of God’s love we are infused/inspired to share/shout from the mountains. 

 

As you blast and blare the Christmas Carols today, what lines/lyrics touch your soul?  Go ahead and post in the comment section and call me with your insights.  Perhaps today, you might hear the Christmas Carol differently because you are not as exhausted from the hustle and bustle of December.  Perhaps today, amid the warmth of the sun, God’s love incarnate casts a new light you had not heard/felt/experienced before.  Slow down.  Sit down.  Listen again and again to a favorite carol or two for a fresh insight you’ve missed before.  As mystics say, when the student is ready, the teacher arrives.  Let the Carols be your teacher today as God’s love ministers to you through the music/melody/meaning of Christmas Carols.  Amen.

Advent in August

 

As we savor how Advent isn’t only a season confined to the four weeks before Christmas Eve, we honor that active waiting is a faithful invitation throughout the weeks of any given year; let’s focus on the candles that are lit during Advent. 

What does hope sound like, not just in December as we sing about a Silent Night when all is calm, all is bright, but in summer with the sun shining bright?

What does peace feel like right now?  It might be the end of war, the ceasing of words from people that cause hate and fear that keep your soul on high alert.  How might peace be a flourishing that isn’t just quiet but also joyful, as in Psalm 100?  Peace, or shalom, is the well-being of all creation.

What does joy taste like today?  An ice cream cone, a sip of water, or feasting on a conversation with a family member or friend?

How is God’s love showing up right here and now in your life?  When was the last time you knew deep in your bones/soul that you are unconditionally and unceasingly loved?  How did that moment leave a residual energy fueling your life?

 

We light the candles during the dwindling daylight of December not just to light the way into the next year, but also to shine a light on what is needed to keep our faith growing and grounded.  What if hope, peace, joy, and love are not just words but active ways/ingredients for each day?  What if hope, peace, joy, and love are like the sun warming the soil of your soul to activate and animate your life?  What if these are both gifts from God each day (meaning every day is Christmas Day in God’s presence) and practices to share with others?  This receiving and giving dance that we are all called to part-take as we move about the day.

 

Where might hope led you and where might you share hope?  Be specific.  Where is peace welling up, and who might you drench with this gift from God?  Where is joy and love joining hands to bless you and others throughout the day ~ both in ways you can plan and be surprised as well.  God does surprise earth with heaven not just on one day in December, but every day we stay awake, alert, and aware of God’s presence in our lives.  Amen.

Advent in August

 

What are you waiting for?  That question can be asked in so many ways, with different tenors, textures, and tones.  Go ahead, say those five words aloud, each time, emphasizing a different word.  When I say to myself, “What are you waiting for?,” it makes my shy soul curl up like a frightened turtle.  Emphasizing the word, “what” is dripping with judgment ~ dripping like humidity on a hot Florida August day.  But when I gently say, almost with a whisper, “What are you waiting for?”  Try that right now, softly/gently say those words so you can barely hear, emphasizing the word, “you”.  When I do that, I sense curiosity, openness, and wonderment about where/when/how am I waiting?  Maybe today you are waiting for the doctor to call, words from others that squall, for resolution of the things you haul, and trying to dust yourself off from the fall.  Everyone, as Dr. Seuss prophetically proclaimed, is waiting.

 

In the church calendar, we have a season called Advent that is about spiritually waiting.  These are the four Sundays before Christmas Day.  During Advent, we light four candles, one each Sunday, that we say help us prepare for God’s grand arrival in a barn on Christmas Eve.  We call the candles: hope, peace, joy, and love.  These are audacious names given the external evidence of the news you read each day.  Hope?  Really, in a world of deep divisions, where we struggle to know what is real?  Or maybe we’ve been taught and told to delay joy until we’ve earned/deserve it ~ like God’s joy is some vacation that we’ve got to work a certain number of hours before we can take.  Or how do you practice peace in the face of war and violence?  

 

The church year cannot be confined by a calendar.  Just because Advent falls at the end of the year, the themes of Advent can visit you no matter the date or weather outside your window.  Advent offers us the meta-narrative of both waiting and preparing.  The waiting of Advent isn’t passive, nor is it scurrying, hurrying, flurrying around like we must look busy because Jesus is coming!!  However, the culture at Christmas is very much preaching a gospel of more and cramming another party/event/concert/gathering into your calendar before this year is finished.  Prayerful waiting, watching your life for God to show up in the least likely place (because if God decides a barn is the setting/scene for a grand entry- doesn’t that give us pause for how God continues to show up in our lives?).  God comes in the vulnerability of a baby.  God’s arrival doesn’t stop all oppression immediately; Caesar is still on the throne as Mary nurses Jesus.  God’s arrival doesn’t immediately right all wrongs. 

 

God moves slowly, intentionally, thoughtfully ~ like we are waiting for a turtle. 

 

What are you waiting for right now in this moment, in this season, on this day?  May that prayerful question meet you in the Advent of August this week.  Amen.

Known

 

Transcending, transitioning, and transforming One, as we explore how You know us fully, help us be brave and bold in claiming our lives.  Help us let go of feelings of shame or blame, knowing that those are human responses.  There is no brokenness You cannot redeem, repair, and restore.  Help us know the power of forgiveness of others and ourselves.  Remind us that forgiving is an act of love that is needed in a world that is too caught up in eye-for-eye justice, and even worse.  God, we are determined to win and show that we are boss, regardless of who the bomb kills or words wound.  We are far from Eden.  This homelessness creates restlessness within us, like the Prodigal Son who found himself in the muck of life.  Call us back to ourselves.  Call us back to You.  Call us back to our connections which are where love can be expressed, explored and experienced in new ways.  Bless us with Your presence and peace this day and throughout this month.  Amen. 

Known Part 4

 

I recently heard a person say, “Most of us deeply want to belong, but we settle for fitting in.”  We want to be fully known but are concerned that such vulnerability is unsustainable, impractical, and impossible.  The Psalmist offers a different perspective.  You are known.  All of you.  Whether this causes you to exhale deeply, shift uncomfortably, or question how that is even possible, all those reactions/responses are appropriate.  For me, this means that when I discover something about myself as if for the first time.  For example my need for perfectionism can feel like I am still trying to impress my elementary school teacher for a gold star on my paper.  I trust that God knows this.  God holds this alongside me.  God invites us to be honest with ourselves without any harshness.  What is one truth about yourself you’ve discovered or rediscovered in the past month?  Maybe you discovered that the gospel of your family growing up was to cut corners and get ahead at any cost.  Maybe you discovered that the values of growing up still linger even though you are thousands of miles away from your place of birth.  Maybe you recognize now that you’ve been carrying unresolved grief around a rupture in a relationship, because when you wrote the person’s name in a circle weeks ago, tears came to your eye.  Maybe…you fill in the blank.  The mystery of your life is held by God.  You can continually rediscover your life as you open yourself to connect with God.  The threads that run from places to people to events and experiences have been knit together by the One whose wisdom is deeper and wider than any human being can imagine.  Let this reassurance embrace you and remind you, God will never let you go.  Amen.

Known Part 3

 

If you look in your Bible at Psalm 139 you might notice this Psalm is attributed to David.  While many tend to have a positive view of David, he was not always the hero of the story.  There is a time he was attracted to a married woman, named Bethsheba, so he sent her husband to the front lines of a war where he was killed (2 Samuel 11).  Eek!  You can’t make this stuff up, it is in the Bible.  Imagine David praying the words below:

 

O Lord, You have searched me
    and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I get up;
    You understand my thought from far off.
³ You search my path and my lying down
    and are aware of all my ways.
⁴ For there is not a word on my tongue,
    but behold, O Lord, You know it fully.

⁵ You put Yourself behind and before me,
    and keep Your hand on me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is lofty, and I cannot fathom it.

 

Now imagine you praying these words when you do/say something you wish you hadn’t done or said.  After you called someone a name or lashed out in anger at someone who just happened to be standing there or blamed someone else for your brokenness.  Imagine God knowing not just the good parts of life, but the ones we tend to keep hidden in cardboard boxes in cobwebbed corners of our souls, hoping/praying no one goes back there!  Not family, friends, yourself, or even God!

 

But the Psalmist says God does and will go to every corner of our being!  God knows our movements.  God knows us better than we know ourselves.  God surrounds us, which means God can sustain us.  To be fully known is both our most heartfelt prayer and sometimes our deepest fear!  Re-read that sentence.  We want to be known, but we also tell ourselves that if someone really knew us, they wouldn’t love us.  So, there is the contradiction.  Here is the truth: God does love you.  Paul picks up on this in Romans 8 ~ nothing separates us from the love of God.  What is your reaction?  Honestly.  Do you still want to object and argue that God couldn’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t love you?  How is that going?  God loves you fully, unconditionally, and unceasingly.  Let this promise take hold of your heart on this day and every day.  Amen.