Tuesday, December 29

As we approach the end of this year, we are once again in lockdown. Covid-19 is sucking the joy out of us, even those of us who are “go with the flow” types of people.

Fear of the future causes us more distress sometimes than our immediate situations do. In this time of lockdown there are worries – when will it end, will the vaccinations work, when will I see family again, will I get sick.  These worries all have their origin in fear – fear of the unknown.

I get a bible verse delivered to my phone each day.  Today’s verse is Psalm 34:4: “I sought the Lord, and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears.”

Psalm 34 is one of the Psalms of David.  We first meet David when he is a young shepherd boy who defeats the giant Goliath.  David later went on to be a king.  Was David a perfect man?  Far from it but he did experience a closeness with God.  He blessed the Lord and his songs of praise are recorded in the Psalms.  He had seen God’s faithfulness on many occasions, but this still did not make him immune to anxieties.

Different commentaries suggest that Psalm 34 was written after God had answered one of David’s prayers for deliverance. Iit was probably after David’s escape from the Philistine King Abimelech, found in 1 Samuel 21: 10-15.

When we “seek” the Lord for “deliverance,” we know that we may not be taken out of the situation but we are assured that God will walk with us as we go through it.

The fears we are experiencing because of COVID-19 are real.  Some of us are dealing with loved ones who are sick.  Some of us are worrying over a family member who is a frontline worker.  Some of us have a compromised immune system and fear getting sick and the implications that it would bring.

“I sought the Lord, and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears.”  Even though we are ending this year in lockdown instead of a giant New Year’s Eve party, God is still with us.  He is holding out His hand to us. We just need to grab onto it.  However your particular situation plays out, if your hand is firmly in His, you will get through it.  Let’s not let fear stop us from seeking the Lord in prayer and giving our worries and concerns to Him.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, have mercy on all your children during this time of uncertainty.  Calm our fears.  Give us strength of mind and a cheerful spirit.  Amen.

Tuesday, December 22

Today’s Thought & Prayer is supplied from the weekly Advent Oasis service, happening on zoom on Wednesday evenings at 7:30pm. Please plan to come to this brief (15-20 minute) gathering. Here are the coordinates:

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83561561966?pwd=V1B5ZmtZYktnNDRzRVlWMkpmclp3UT09
Meeting ID: 835 6156 1966
Passcode: 358775

In addition to lighting of the Advent candles together, we will pray, hear God’s word, and reflect on the Christ’s promise of salvation, in this time of darkness. All this in 15 to 20-minutes!! Here’s the reflection that Arleane R. will be leading us through. This week the focus is on Love. 

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Matt Tullos, an American Baptist preacher and writer, speaks of today’s reading in these simple terms:

If you want to know how to love one another, look at the love that sent Jesus to earth to live a life of love and pay the price for all of our sins. It’s all about love. It’s always been about love. This isn’t a love of fancy words and impossible tasks. This is a love that simply says, “I am willing to love you no matter what.”

God loves us, you and me, no matter what. This is wonderful and astonishing, all the more so because God doesn’t need to love us. God wants to love us, and God wants us to be open to receiving that love. God didn’t need Jesus to live among us. But you’ll note that God in fact “sent” his son for the sake of humanity — “sent,” not “Jesus came” or “Jesus showed up” or “Jesus happened to be in the area.” God sent Jesus, and in just a few days we will celebrate that great gift.

Note also that God doesn’t love us this way, because we persuaded God to do so or because the human race demanded or even expected it. God doesn’t love us because we are especially good (because frankly sometimes we’re not). God made us and chose to love us. I find that staggering and at the same time breathtakingly simple.

God’s love exceeds action or earthly relationships. God loves and God IS love. The Incarnation of God at Christmas sets into motion the divine example of how we need to be loved and to love others. It exceeds mere fondness or polite affection. It’s not romanticized. It’s not seasonal. It’s not fleeting. God’s love is very real and sweeping, while it’s not fancy or impossible, it is certainly radical. The Christmas narrative – God sending a baby into the world for our salvation – is, on the face of it, an extraordinary and risky and seemingly impractical plan.

Mother Jennifer referenced the unexpectedness of it all in her Christmas letter: a virgin becomes pregnant; there’s no room in the inn; a star and angels alarmingly appear in the night sky; and the first to have audience with the newborn king are seekers from a foreign land who have to sneak home by a different route. On top of that, the holy family themselves become refugees.

There is an Impressionist painting of the Nativity by Garibaldi Melchers that shows Mary not upright and beaming, but completely laid out on her back and likely asleep. Joseph sits with hunched shoulders and clasped hands, somberly watching the baby, perhaps worn out himself or maybe in contemplation about what this is all going to mean. The walls and floor are grey and barren. There are no adoring gift-giving guests in this scene. The only spot of brightness besides the Christ child are a water jug and basin – clearly there for post-natal clean up. Childbirth is messy and exhausting. Child rearing is exhausting and expensive. Living a human life can be frustrating and tedious, even without being something of an outsider and social disrupter as Jesus became. This is how God loves the world.

Dorothy Sayers, best known as a crime writer but also an essayist, put it like this:

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is— limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death. He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. … He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

God could have loved the world from on high, from a position of majesty and glory. Jesus could have least been born in a really nice B&B. He could have skipped the whole thing and been remote and omnipotent. God could have done it that way, but God didn’t, “and thought it well worthwhile.” This is how God loves us.

I am in a unique position to be able to quote the Right Rev. Jenny Andison who, in one of her Christmas homilies last year, beautifully summarized what we can learn about love by examining God’s extraordinary plan of sending Jesus to dwell among us:

God becoming one of us dignifies what it means to be human –– no one therefore is disposable, no one is irredeemable, no one is beyond hope. God living a human life demonstrates for us the potential that exists in all of us and in all our relationships for transformation. By coming to earth as the baby Jesus, God is hanging in there with us, not leaving us to our own devices, not abandoning us – Jesus shows us what IS possible in our friendships, our marriages, or work relationships.

If we didn’t believe God’s love could perfect everything, we would have given up a long time ago. We wouldn’t work at relationships with each other. We wouldn’t work to soldier on through this pandemic. We would ask questions like, “If God is love, why do we need to create Christmas hampers? If God is love, why can’t we celebrate together as a parish family? If God is love, why is rain forest still being depleted at a rate of 200 thousand acres a day?”  Well, it is precisely because God is love that we ask these questions and then act on them to care for and feed one another and to protect each other and God’s creation.

God so loved the world that Jesus was sent to live among us and experience human existence from birth to death, with all its chaos and roughness and pain. And while that seems like bad news, it is in fact the very best news. Christmas shows us that divine love can transform the world, that trials shall pass or be overcome, and even when life turns out to be messy or disappointing and challenging, we have a God that knows exactly what that feels like and a guarantee of a love that triumphs over it all. We therefore are not without hope or peace or joy. We are not in darkness, even when it seems as if we are. And we are the recipients and the instruments of transformative love. “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  If we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

Prayer:

Lord God, let your blessing come upon us with the lighting of this candle of LOVE.
May its light be a sign of Christ’s promise of salvation, in this time of darkness.
Now we watch and wait for his coming. Lord Jesus, come soon.

Thursday, December 17, 2020

One piece of technology I am most appreciative of these days is the PVR (personal video recorder). For some who remember VCRs, the scrambling to find blank video cassettes and the bother of setting times for recording etc., the PVR is far more convenient. In our home, the PVR gets a real workout on Sunday mornings when I have at least three programs set for viewing later in the week. Two of them focus on U.S. politics while the third, CBS News Sunday Morning hosted by Jane Pauley, offers a wide array of interesting topics beyond the political realm. A segment of this program shown last Sunday got the wheels turning in my head as I was musing about what I should write for today.

The first program in the December 13th recording showcased the work of Brandon Stanton, a young American who took to the streets of New York City armed with only a camera and a penchant to engage those he photographed in a conversation about some part of their life story. This led to a very successful blog by Stanton and later a book, Humans of New York, containing photographed individuals alongside a solitary but powerful printed statement which captured some aspect of their life – perhaps a sense of loss, pain, generosity or hope and so on. This led Stanton to undertake an eight-year global sojourn capturing people from different countries and cultures, around the world, that again relied on a simple photograph of individuals and a statement about their life. It also created another best-selling book of photos entitled World.

Stanton told the CBS interviewer that he learned from these encounters that everyone experiences pain and in sharing these stories he has seen the power of other human beings who viewed his photos to connect with such accounts. It is the foundational nature of this human sharing, Stanton suggests, that allows us to cross borders that geographically, culturally or demographically divide us, yet at the same time affords a chance for a sense of connection with others.

The Advent Oasis series being Zoom-broadcasted at this time via All Saints’ website features meditations and prayers on the subjects of hope, peace, joy and love. In watching the segment on CBS News Sunday Morning, I was struck by how Brandon Stanton had taken upon himself the task of engaging randomly-selected individuals to photograph and tell their story. Many of these conversations were indeed dark in tone and lacked a sense of peace. Yet, there were some interactions that caused the person being photographed to convey to Stanton a positive message of hope or joy.

As we celebrate the birth of our Lord in just over a week’s time, even though the event took place many centuries ago in a place far removed from us geographically, we may be comforted in knowing that you and I too are always in God’s camera lens. He can see not only our outer image but into our hearts. Even if our accompanying situation now reflects a personal story of a darkened reality – one of pain, loss or disappointment, God is ready to provide a sense of connection with you that will eventually restore the feelings we celebrate this Advent. Our image in God’s camera lens may convey a sense of joy and hope at this time and for this we should give thanks for His gifts and to also pray for the restoration of these emotions to those who are in need of such respite.

Somewhere along the pain – joy emotional continuum, we can also be comforted in knowing that Jesus represents light as predicted by the prophets and this light does shine on each of us. It is a light that can reduce a sense of darkness that may enshroud us at this moment of fear and anxiety while the uncertainty of the pandemic is gradually extinguished. It is a light that can bring us a sense of peace that comforts our troubled spirit in a time of loss. It is also a light that can restore in us a sense of joy and hope knowing that God so loved us that He sent to us a baby born in the humblest of settings and in doing so provides us with a connection between faith and grace now and in the life hereafter.

Merry Christmas from our household to yours.

Prayer:

Lord our God, you sent your Son, the Light of the World into the darkness, which covered the earth and its peoples.
May the brightness of this rising shine in the church, so that the nations may walk towards the light –
Jesus, the Christ, our Lord. Amen.

(A Christmas Prayer, from The Glenstal Book of Prayer)