Welcome to our blog! This is a place to share ideas, thoughts, concerns and joys of our faith journey. I'll be posting sporadically, but hope you will feel free to comment and join in the discussions.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Silent Night

Were you there at church last night? Did you see how pretty the church looked with the decorations and the candles? And the music! Oh, it was lovely. The service was all printed out in the bulletin, so you didn't have to fumble around with the hymnals. The choir was beautiful. Everything, (especially the sermon!) was just the right note.

And I'm thinking, too, of the birth of Jesus. Of course I am, it's the "reason for the season" as the bumper sticker points out. But the coming of something so profound, so hard to believe that it just has to be true. That God would love us so much...it staggers the mind...or at least my mind. That the humble beginnings of so great an event pulls you away from the clang and clatter of the TV and the i Pad and the iPhone and remind us once again that there are somethings more important than the wrapping paper and bows. The pivot point of the history of the world. The coming of God down to earth--Emmanuel--I am so humbled and awe filled. Like the shepherds with the sheep and the scary angels lighting up the sky.

I hope you joined us for Christmas this year, but if you didn't, that's okay, we'll catch you at Epiphany.

Monday, December 5, 2011

The Season

I love songs at Christmas. Not just the hymns, but all the hokey, smarmy, cliche ridden songs I can listen to--especially now. I know lots of lyrics for those songs and many in my family probably wish I didn't as I belt them out in my best out-of-tune voice whenever I hear them. I'm one of those people who love to sing, but people don't love to hear it, you get the idea.

Anyway, the one lyric that is sticking in my head today is from the Christmas Waltz, the version I'm thinking of is one that Frank Sinatra recorded. The line is this: "It's that time of year, when the world falls in love..." And it makes me smile. We are sometimes foolishly convinced that our fellow man is more generous, more gentle, more humane at this time of year than any other. I really don't know the statistics of whether this is true or not. But I don't care. I smile more and more people smile back, so let me have my illusions. I fall in love this time of year, too. Because I believe that Jesus is coming, not as the child in the manger, but as my Savior. He's coming to all of us. And his arms are open and welcoming. He doesn't need this time of year to love us, he does that all year. God isn't partial I'm sure to evergreens and pretty candles. And I fall in love with the idea that someone loves me no matter what I have done in the past or will do in the future. This song reminds me of that love...or maybe I can just hear it better in this season.

So Merry Christmas, happy Advent and Joyous Noel to you and yours.