The Work of Christmas...

"When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with the flocks,

then the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal those broken in spirit,

to feed the hungry,

to release the oppressed,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among all peoples,

to make a little music with the heart…

And to radiate the Light of Christ,

every day, in every way,

in all that we do and in all that we say.

Then the work of Christmas begins."

-- Howard Thurman

Right thing for the wrong reason...

"Do I want social justice for the oppressed or do I want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 % of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I talk about love, forgiveness, social justice; I rage against American materialism in the name of altruism but have I controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of the time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the those in need. Six billion people live in the world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me." -- Donald Miller

Advent means living with hope in a broken world

As if by loving pieces…

Once, in my carelessness,
I broke a tea cup.
An heirloom,
All we have left of my wife’s grandmother.

I break a lot of things.
We just sweep the shards into a pile
And toss them in the garbage.

Not this time.
We carefully picked up each piece;
Saved it,
As if it were an act of love for grandma,
As if by loving pieces we could restore the whole.

Once, in our carelessness,
We broke the world.

Keeping our heart focused in Advent...

A shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch will grow from its roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. (Isaiah 11.1-4a)

"...That was when I realized that Jesus had come to church that morning. Twice. He came as that homeless man – I was hungry and you fed me, I was confused and you took me under your arm, I was sorrowful and you held me as I wept. And he came in the arms of my rich friend with his expensive suit who held a neighbour in his sorrow. He will not judge by what his eyes see, and what his ears hear."

Read the rest of this great post by Brian Walsh here...

A laugh for today...

...thanks to Scot McKnight of Jesus Creed.

Click here...it's totally worth it.

Chris Hedges on Hope...

Chris Hedges always pushes me to think. In this season of Advent where we feed on hope, his words offer a challenge to our ways of thinking and our ways of acting...

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. Hope does not come with the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and the more potent hope becomes. Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope does not believe in force. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope’s power and it is why it can never finally be defeated. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Read the rest here.

Advent hope...

Here's some food for thought from Brian Walsh during this first week of Advent...

You see, my friends, if in the face of rising military tensions on the Korean Peninsula, in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and throughout the world, you don’t achingly long for a time when nation will no longer rise against nation, then you miss Advent.

If in the face of gun shots ringing through this city and young men and women lying in pools of blood doesn’t make you cry out for swords to be beaten into plowshares, for guns to be transformed into garden tools, then you miss Advent.

If the foolishness of much ideologically driven scholarship at the University of Toronto doesn’t make you long to see the nations coming to learn wisdom from the God of all of creation, then you miss Advent.

And if the anger, enmity, jealousy, prejudice and hatred of your own heart and your own life doesn’t make you seek out the Prince of Peace to transform your life and lead you on the path of peace, then you miss Advent.

Jesus says that one will be taken and one will be left.
Let us pray that we are left.
Let us pray that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Let us pray that we would be an Advent people,
…left behind to beat swords into plowshares,
…left behind to replace implements of violence with the instruments of peace,
…left behind to transform tools of destruction into tools of cultivation,
…left behind to face the violence and embrace the peace.

Read the rest here.

Check this out...

My brother Mike has written an excellent book...and followed it up with what looks to be a great blog. Definitely worth checking out.

Prayer for the week...

My wife found this one from John Wesley:

I am no longer my own but yours,
Put me to what you will
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal
And now glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
You are mine and I am yours. So be it.
And this covenant now made on earth, let it be satisfied in heaven.

This is one we should pray slowly and often...

The bottom line is the moral question...

I am not a big Newsweek fan, but this article really summed up to me the difference between the Canadian and the US perspective on Universal Health Care. It's a question that doesn't get as much play as "How do we afford it?" (another great question) and "Shouldn't the government leave me alone?", but it is, from my perspective the most important question - "Is for-profit health care really a moral option?"

The fundamental truth about health care in every country," notes Princeton professor Uwe Reinhardt, one of the world's preeminent health-care economists, "is that national values, national character, determine how each system works."

Read the rest of the article here.

It's in all of us...

My prayers go out to all the wounded and the families of the fallen from the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, today. Although no one can know the motives behind something like this, it reminds me of what Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago as he writes about what he took to be the great moral gift that he had received in prison.

"It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains . . . an uprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. And since that time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions in history: they destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them (and also fail, out of haste, to discriminate the carriers of good as well). And they then take to themselves as their heritage the actual evil itself, magnified still more."

I am convinced that we cannot continue in the path we are heading without destroying ourselves. The way of Jesus is the only answer that deals with both the beauty of the image of God in humanity and the transformation necessary for the evil that lies within us.

Quote of the week...

No explanation or introduction needed...

"Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."

--Frederick Buechner

Taking my brother to Hell...Hell's Gate, that is.

Well my brother and his family have safely arrived and my children made it through their arrival with no heart attacks from sheer excitement... although it was close. Today we laze around the house through the morning and will head out to Hell's Gate in the afternoon. I have a pass that let's me take in as big a group as I want for free, so it you want to join us show up there @ 1:30....

Word Creation Wednesday

My brother Mike and his family come for a visit today. This makes him the third and final sibling to come for a visit since I moved to Canada 16 years ago. I love it when they come and realize what a blessing it is to have siblings that I really like and love to spend time with. Thus this week's word -

"Funamily" - The experiences you have when you are enjoying time with family. I realize that some people are sorely lacking "funamily" in their life. I feel sorry for your loss. But I must admit I am looking forward to the next week of "funamily" in my life.

This week's sermon...

Not from this past Sunday, but from September 2007, but one that I liked, especially as I prepare for communion this week at our church.

Full study guide online here.

Quote of the week...

Here's a good one for this week. A long one from Barbara Brown Taylor, but well worth the read.

”Several summers ago, I spent three days on a barrier island where loggerhead turtles were laying their eggs. One night while the tide was out, I watched a huge female heave herself up the beach to dig her nest and empty herself into it while slow, salt tears ran from her eyes. Afraid of disturbing her, I left before she had finished her work but returned next morning to see if I could find the spot where her eggs lay hidden in the sand. What I found were her tracks, only they led in the wrong direction. Instead of heading back out to sea, she had wandered into the dunes, which were already hot as asphalt in the morning sun. A little ways inland I found her, exhausted and all but baked, her head and flippers caked with dried sand. After pouring water on her and covering her with sea oats, I fetched a park ranger, who returned with a jeep to rescue her. As I watched in horror, he flipped her over on her back, wrapped tire chains around her front legs, and hooked the chains to the trailer hitch on his jeep. Then he took off, yanking her body forward so fast that her open mouth filled with sand and then disappeared underneath her as her neck bent so far I feared it would break. The ranger hauled her over the dunes and down onto the beach; I followed the path that the prow of her shell cut in the sand. At ocean's edge, he unhooked her and turned her right side up again. She lay motionless in the surf as the water lapped at her body, washing the sand from her eyes and making her skin shine again. Then a particularly large wave broke over her, and she lifted her head slightly, moving her back legs as she did. As I watched, she revived. Every fresh wave brought her life back to her until one of them made her light enough to find a foothold and push off, back into the water that was her home. Watching her swim slowly away and remembering her nightmare ride through the dunes, I noted that it is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or being saved by the hands that turn your life upside down.”

I love that last sentence...it is just so true.

This week's sermon...

From I Sam. 16:1-13 - The last in the series on Samuel...

The spiritual benefits of diabetes...

This week I had my lab work done, specifically my hemoglobin A1-C test. I have to have it every three months to monitor my sugar level. As much as I hate it, it's a good thing for me. Most days I check my sugar at home. I do the old finger poke and the machine tells me if I'm eating right or just fooling myself. If I work at it, I can manipulate this daily routine. I can choose to test my blood after not eating for a bit, or just after exercise. In short, I can often make it say what I want it to say. Not so with the dreaded A1-C test. It reports on the average level of sugar in my blood over the past three months. It easy to play games for a daily check, but the A1-C takes a hard look at what's been going on inside over the long haul. The problem is that this tends to make me want to put it off. I find great excuses to not get the blood work done. After all, I have a busy job, four kids, a yard to keep up, etc. But finally I run low on medicine and need to go back to the doctor, or the guilt overwhelms me and I give in.

My numbers this week were okay. Could be a bit better, but could also be a lot worse. That's good. But it has started me thinking. What if there was some way to have the condition of our soul tested...kind of a spiritual hemoglobin A1-C? What if every so often all the illusions we present to ourselves and those around us were pulled back so that someone could see what's really been happening inside over the past three months. I think for all of us that would be a bit scary. Nobody wants others to see what actually happens in the depths of our heart and mind. But it's in that openness that we actually begin to find the power to change. The truth is that the A1-C forces me to watch what I eat, even though I don't want to. I know my cheating will eventually show up in my blood. So I eat better. Not perfect, but better than I would if I knew I could hide it.

In the same way, maybe the opening up and exposing of our soul to another on a regular basis, no matter how humbling it can be, would do wonders for our own transformation into Christlikeness. The forced acknowledgement of what is inside to another who loves us and wants the best for us pushes us to be honest with ourselves. It lets the light shine into the dark corners. It doesn't let us play games with matters of the soul. And just like ignoring my blood sugar will eventually kill me, ignoring what is actually going on in my heart and soul can have even nastier implications - for myself AND for those around me.

So here's to the development of a spiritual A1-C. I think it's already there and we call it authentic living within a community. But maybe this blog is a call to not avoid it, but to embrace it. We need it to survive...

"I'm way too close..."

From the "Dumb things that I will never do" Department...

Any reason that He keeps driving toward the storm?

This week's sermon...

I Samuel 15:1-35.  Tough text...it always is when God endorses genocide...