“Glory to God in the highest, and peace to God’s people on earth!” Here, in the great 12-day season of Christmas, the praise & prayer of angels continue to inspire our ongoing celebration of Christ’s birth. While society has moved on from its holiday and now focuses on a secular New Year’s Eve, we followers…
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is Given!” This joyful weekend, our Advent cries of “Prepare the way of the Lord” shift to wondrous sounds of Christmas good news for the world: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the…
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is Given!” This joyful weekend, our Advent cries of “Prepare the way of the Lord” shift to wondrous sounds of Christmas good news for the world: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the…
Pause, Prepare, PonderThis midweek Advent series invites us to pause, to prepare, and to ponder. First is the call to spiritual introspection, prayerful waiting, and pausing from the constant busyness of our normal lives. This is juxtaposed with Advent’s clarion call to wake up, to rise in action, to prepare the way of the Lord,…
“Rejoice always,” begins the reading from 1 Thessalonians. Isaiah and the psalmist make clear that God is turning our mourning into laughter and shouts of joy. “All God’s children got a robe,” go the words of a spiritual. It is not so much a stately, formal, pressed outfit as it is a set of party…
“Pause, Prepare, Ponder” This midweek Advent series invites us to pause, to prepare, and to ponder. First is the call to spiritual introspection, prayerful waiting, and pausing from the constant busyness of our normal lives. This is juxtaposed with Advent’s clarion call to wake up, to rise in action, to prepare the way of the…
John calls people to repent, to clear the decks, to completely reorder their lives so that nothing gets in the way of the Lord’s coming. The reading from Isaiah gives the context for this radical call: the assurance of forgiveness that encourages us to repent; the promise that the coming one will be gentle with…
This midweek Advent series invites us to pause, to prepare, and to ponder. First is the call to spiritual introspection, prayerful waiting, and pausing from the constant busyness of our normal lives. This is juxtaposed with Advent’s clarion call to wake up, to rise in action, to prepare the way of the Lord, and to…
Stir up your power, and come! The psalmist’s plea in Psalm 80:2 has become familiar to us in the Advent prayers. Isaiah wants God to rip the heavens open. Both cry out for an apparently distant, angry God to show up, to save, to restore. When we hear Jesus describing the coming of the Son…
On this final Sunday of the church year our gospel is Jesus’ great story of judgment. In the end, the faithful are those who served Christ by ministering to those who are poor, hungry, naked, sick, or estranged. In the first reading God is the shepherd who seeks the lost, weak, and injured and feeds…