Posts from December 2012 (Page 2)

We move into week 3 of Advent as we WAIT WITHin the words of Isaiah 12.2-6.  In her blog post on this passage, Audrey West, Assoc. Professor of NT at Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago writes:  “Foreign invaders, political instability, and crises of one kind or another formed the context of Isaiah’s proclamation. The people to whom he was sent and those for whom this book was originally composed lived in a world that was unpredictable and out of…

The unspeakable and prodigious fire hidden in the essence of things, as in the bush, is the fire of divine love and the dazzling brilliance of God’s beauty inside everything. –St Maximus the Confessor

I have spent a great deal of time thinking about fire and living into the question of whether or not fire is a beginning or ending.  One way of reflecting on our text from Malachi for Sunday is to think of fire as the end of times for folks who have not chosen to repent and believe in God.  Another way might be to consider it the beginning of a whole new way of being for ourselves and our community.…

What birth pangs are you experiencing as you wait within Advent for the coming of the Christ child? Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes, And the heart consumes itself, if it would live, Where little children age before their time, And life wears down the edges of the mind, Where the old man sits with mind grown cold While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death, Where fear companions each day’s life, And Perfect Love…

Worship this Sunday will be rooted in Malachi 3.1-4  From this witness of Scripture we are reminded that the people of God have long since been waiting.  God’s promised future is always already not yet.  We, as the people of God in this day, are called to take our place in this season of waiting within. Lori Conrell writes in her blog, “It’s hardly the “deck-the-halls” kind of message that we expect to hear at “the most wonderful time of…