iHOPE

A Place of Warmth on the Longest Night

 In other times, you would have been the keeper of the fire.  Others would have drawn warmth, comfort, and joy from you. But not this year.

This year, your flame is barely flickering. 

Loss will do that. The loss of a loved one, a job, a home, or your health, blows like a cold wind.  Whether it was a recent event or a distant memory that is blowing again, hardly matters. 

Right about now, you could use a warming fire.

On Saturday (Dec. 21) at 7:00, we hold our annual Longest Night Service. It is specially designed for people who find themselves in a season of loss or grief.  No one will try to make you "merry" or fix you.  The Longest Night Service is a place of respite and the offer of warmth. We light candles to honor those we have lost. We find warmth and comfort from one another and recognize Christ in our midst.

If you are feeling out in the cold at Christmastime, there is a warming fire waiting for you. 

The Signs of Christmas

Note: This is a summary of the sermon preached at 9:00 on 12/15. The audio version can be found here.

Joy is one of the signs of Christmas and people work hard at it. Lights, decorations, food, gifts, and clothes are all employed to boost our "Joy Quotient" at Christmas.

John Lewis is a British Department store that has been making extraordinary Christmas commercials with compelling stories for more than 10 years. Like this one…

 

Did you notice there were no products (unless you were looking for a trampoline!), no sales and no bargains mentioned? So, what was this ad selling?

Gifts

Who did you encounter today who revealed a bit of God? Who embodied a bit of the compassion, kindness, generosity, and grace of Christ?

Our practice this month is to take note of where God is being revealed. It is not so much another item for the To-Do list (who needs that?!), as a prioritization of your "To-Be" list. When we begin to see signs of God's presence and work in our everyday lives, we have already begun to celebrate the gift of "God-With-Us" (Emmanuel). 

In this season when our attention is focused on gifts that we will give later, don't forget to notice the gifts that are right in front of us today.

Note: This is a companion to my post on Everyday Spirituality. If you have time, check it out!

Where's Jesus?: The Practice for December- Part 2

The December practice for New Hope is to notice where the work, will, and presence of God "appear" throughout the day. For that reason,  this post  (and its follow-up) will be mirrored in the Everyday Spirituality:5x5 blog, which specializes in helping people recognize and respond to God in everyday life.

In my last post, I outlined a playful way to do the serious work of noticing where and how Christ appears in our everyday lives.  If Christmas is just a way to commemorate a particular day 2,000 years ago, it quickly becomes little more than sentiment and nostalgia. The unfinished business of Christmas is to let the birth of Christ continue to work in and through our lives. Our lives become the way "the Word" (John 1:1, 14) is made flesh today. 

Our practice for December is to notice and celebrate all the ways Christ appears in the lives around us. I chose to make it a daily game of "Where's Jesus?" and it has three parts:

1. Recall the various traits and characteristics of Jesus
2. Notice and celebrate how those traits are 'made flesh' in the lives of people around you. This is an activity that can be done with family, friends, or in your LIFE Groups.

This is a powerful practice. Try it for a week and watch what happens to the way you go through your day. This leads me to the third step and it has the power to change your world ...

Where's Jesus? : The Practice for December- Part 1

The December practice for New Hope is to notice where the work, will, and presence of God "appear" throughout the day. For that reason,  this post  (and its follow-up) will be mirrored in the Everyday Spirituality:5x5 blog, which specializes in helping people recognize and respond to God in everyday life.

 

 

Even if you didn't have children growing up in the '80s, you will likely remember Waldo and the many scenes in which he needed to be "found." His appearance was distinctive in the red-striped shirt and knit cap. It should have been simple, but it wasn't. The noise and distractions of a crowd at the beach, fairground, park,  zoo, etc. could make it hard to pick out a single person no matter how distinctive. Once you found Waldo, of course, it was easy to spot him again and again. You wondered why it took you so long in the first place. 

Our practice for December is to notice where God appears in our everyday lives. This is the time of the year when we celebrate that "the Word became flesh" in Jesus Christ. At the first Christmas, the Divine was embodied (incarnated). This was meant to be more than a point in history to be memorialized every year. At its best, this season (Advent) attunes us to the work of God and is a template for how God continues to be embodied in us as an extension of the work of Christ. 

Which leads me back to Waldo...and Jesus.  Think of this month's practice as a daily, "Where's Jesus?" puzzle.