Category: Winter

4th Day of …

Monday, December 28, 2020

What Word Do We

DO

when the darkness is so overwhelming

and the light of hope so dim?

Isaiah 50:4

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

2 Corinthians 1:4

Who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.

Words of Grace For Today

With a word to sustain the weary, and to console with the consolation we receive from God: are our traditions carriers or obstructions to Truth?

On the 4th day of Christmas, still in the time of greatest restrictions to date to stave off Covid 19 from over-running our health care capacity, still in the midst of the short days and long nights of cold and dark winter, what do we do to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his Love?

Many of us put up and decorate a Christmas tree. What is this all about? At first glance there seems to be very little that connects a conifer tree decorated as we are wont with the Word of God being born as an infant in Bethlehem. The angel or star on top the tree seems to be the loan reference to anything of Christ. So let us ask: where did this tradition come from? Is there something in it’s origins that we can reclaim to bring a more profound meaning to the Christmas Tree, which will call us to hear and tell the old, old story of Jesus and his Love?

Wikipedia gives this: A Christmas tree is a decorated tree, usually an evergreen conifer, such as a spruce, pine, or fir, or an artificial tree of similar appearance, associated with the celebration of Christmas, originating in Germany associated with Saint Boniface. The custom was developed in medieval Livonia (present-day Estonia and Latvia), and in early modern Germany where German Protestant Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. It acquired popularity beyond the Lutheran areas of Germany and the Baltic countries during the second half of the 19th century, at first among the upper classes.

The tree was traditionally decorated with “roses made of coloured paper, apples, wafers, tinsel, [and] sweetmeats”. Moravian Christians began to illuminate Christmas trees with candles, which were ultimately replaced by Christmas lights after the advent of electrification. Today, there is a wide variety of traditional and modern ornaments, such as garlands, baubles, tinsel, and candy canes. An angel or star might be placed at the top of the tree to represent the Angel Gabriel or the Star of Bethlehem, respectively, from the Nativity. Edible items such as gingerbread, chocolate, and other sweets are also popular and are tied to or hung from the tree’s branches with ribbons.

An Angel on top, or a star on top, and lights on the tree speak to the angel appearing to the shepherds, the star the ‘wisemen’ followed to find Jesus, and the Light of the World that shines in the darkness.

The reference to St. Boniface also indicates that Christmas celebrations were intact, and the yule celebrations were moved to coincide with them and thereafter the yule celebrations were ‘christianized’ or made to refer to the celebration of Christ’ birth. Thus the substantial traditions with a few references to Christ.

And is this not how most people live their lives, and God meets us all in this, with a few things tagged on to our lives, so that we take our secular or pagan or ungodly traditions, transform them ever so slightly and they become our ‘Christian’ celebrations, our ‘Christian’ lives.

God walks with us on these ‘christianized’ paths we tread each day, and calls us to remember, to proclaim and to be the Word of Life for the world, the Light of Christ in the dark.

We cannot make ourselves into saints, anymore than we can find a life that consists mostly of things of this world. These things of this world are what God created.

We see them after the fact ‘christianized’, though in truth they were God’s all along, which we tried to claim as our own ungodly, pagan or secular. Doch God is in all and created all, including our ungodly, pagan and secular efforts at life and meaning.

So we have a marvellous Christmas Tree with a star on top and lights all around. What do we tell the children who seek the pickle? Do we give them the wonder of God’s Light? The knowledge of God’s blessing of everything: trees, sweetmeats, gingerbread, candles or lights, angels and stars, hymns and carols?

It is less in what our traditions are, than in how we speak of them, how and what we value in them, and to whom we give thanks, and for whom we work – as we share all that God has given us: joy, sustenance and consolation.

3rd Day of …

Sunday, December 27, 2020

What Do We See?

Birds: A Father and Child Carved from Snow?

The Wonders of Creation?

…

Or dirty creosote drippings from a dirty chimney burning junk wood?

Psalm 40:5

You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts towards us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted.

2 Peter 1:19

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Words of Grace For Today

We may think we can proclaim the great deeds of God, wondrous deeds and thoughts towards us. We can, sort of, proclaim God’s great deeds, though we rarely get the story to reflect the awesome Grace God begins, continues and ends with when God thinks of us.

God ensures the story of God’s Love and Mercy are told in every generation, and at least partially understood by every generation. The stories of God in every age shine like lamps in our dark places, bringing us hope, which is the fuel for life.

On this third day of Christmas, the 1st Sunday of Christmas, we traditionally have services of readings and carols. It provides a bit of recovery time for pastors and gives us time to sing Christmas carols and hymns that we did not on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

What though is Christmas for us, in truth?

A German tradition was discovered by a niece: a pickle is hung and hidden on the Christmas tree. Then the children come in and hunt for the pickle. The first one to find it receives a gift of special treats, chocolates or sweets.

The question by one of the uncles was whether the pickle was a real pickle, for then the smell of the pickle would easily give it away. But no, the pickle in question (now a daze) was a plastic pickle, which then a nephew produced for all to see. A fine plastic pickle with a string through one end to make hanging on the tree convenient.

The tree, is of course, environmentally ‘friendly’, a plastic and reusable tree with tinsel and lights already in place.

The ‘old time’ German tree was a tree out of the woods, a fresh pine or spruce tree. The lights were candles burning with real fire – so no old dried out trees would do. The decorations were of many kinds, none plastic, some wood, some metal, some ceramic (maybe), but more were natural like pine cones dipped in flour-water to look frosty, home-made jellied fruit and sweets, some soaked in rum and/or brandy. The pickle was real as well, and the prize was almost certainly home made sweets. The tree wafted the smell of it’s sap. The decorations filled the house with smells of sweet and delicious and special treats. The pickle’s smell was well concealed by the aroma of Christmas.

But what does this all have to do with Christ? With Christmas?

Nothing, other than it is how families for generations kept traditions about how they gathered and spent time, special time, with each other, playing games, inviting children into simple games of hide and seek, and all partaking of the ‘special’ time, eats, and drinks.

These ‘Christmas’ traditions are not bad or wrong. They simply are not about Christ.

So it is with most of what today we call Christmas, and which so many people during the restrictions of Covid 19 bemoan not being able to partake in.

On this 3rd day of the 12 days of Christmas, what have we done to celebrate God’s wondrous deeds and thoughts towards us? What have we done to keep the lamp shining in every dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in hearts? What have we done to tell with out thoughts, words and deeds the old, old story of Jesus and his Love … for all people?

2nd Day of 12: Dealing Grace to All Creation

Saturday, December 26, 2020

See the Light!

Carry the Light to Heal All People

and Creation Itself!

Jeremiah 33:6

I am going to bring Jerusalem recovery and healing; I will heal its people and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security.

Luke 2:15

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’

Words of Grace For Today

As Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon laid his siege ramps against the walls of Jerusalem to over run it in 589 BCE, and Jeremiah had already prophesied that Jerusalem and Judah would fall to their enemies, King Zedekiah came to him and asked him why he prophesied their demise.

We all know that such proclamations in time of war are dangerous. They can be self-fulfilling by undermining the morale of the people. Jeremiah prophesied as he did, because God called him to; the people had turned from God, become perverse, and it was only a matter of time before their own corruption brought enemies to their walls to conquer them, weak as they had become from within. Few if any heeded Jeremiah’s warnings … and Jerusalem (in 587/6 BCE) and later Judah fell to their enemies … and then other enemies … and more enemies … so that they remained ruled by foreigners when Jesus was born (despite the Maccabean 167-160 BCE and other revolts seeking their independence).

Before Jesus’ birth, more than 500 years since Israel was independent, the people had many stories to remember and to be disappointed in and place their faint hopes in. One such story was of a Messiah who would be born in Bethlehem.

The Shepherds may have known this story, or not. Still, when an angel and then a chorus of angels visit them to give them the news that a saviour is born in the city, they are not fools. They up and head into the city to see the Saviour born and laid in the hay of a cow’s manger.

Why Shepherds? One might surmise that, as ones who lived very rough in the hills as they tended and guarded their sheep, they would not be put off by the poverty into which the Saviour was born.

Yesterday, the Day of Christmas, is the first of twelve days of Christmas. These twelve days give us opportunity to seek out the saviour of the universe – no longer an infant in a cow barn. On our own we will see nothing other than the mundane world, perversions of truth spread to create chaos from hysteria and fear so that evil people can rise to power, … and we will see our only own failures, fears, and dashed dreams.

Guided by the Holy Spirit though we will encounter not only the wonder of God become human, born as an infant Saviour. We will encounter the Saviour, with God’s Grace, healing all people and creation itself, redeeming and renewing them (and indeed us), so that we broken people can be the vessels that carry God’s healing Grace to all in need.

God knows, during this pandemic, there are so many people who need healing, healing from Covid 19 (acute sufferers and long-haulers) from the detrimental effects of physical distancing and isolation, but even more-so from the sickness of the soul that has eaten at the hearts of so many people – long before this pandemic started a year ago. Now the vacuum in the souls of the world is made more obvious.

Pray we encounter the Saviour anew, and that God will make us worthy saints, those who carry the Light of Life to those in need around the earth. May we be those saints who are blessed to bring the Saviour’s healing to all whom we encounter.

Twelve days, a whole hurting creation, and billions who need healing: our work is cut out for us! Thank God it’s God who works through us, healing us as we go!

Facing God, On Christmas, Covid and All

Friday, December 25, 2020

Come

Follow

Where God Will Lead Us

Where God Will Carry Us When We Can Go No Further

Psalm 144:15

Happy are the people to whom such blessings fall; happy are the people whose God is the Lord.

Luke 2:10-11

The angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

Words of Grace For Today

Blessed Christmas

Today is the day we celebrate Jesus’ birth, fully God, fully human.

Whether we know it or not, we are the ones whom God has made to be happy, not for any other reason other than that God has chosen us and blessed us.

Today we can be blessed to be blessings, blessings for all other people.

Let us celebrate, however possible, given the restrictions needed to help many of us survive this pandemic, without remorse or regret that things are not normal, for normal is not needed for us to celebrate God’s surprising blessings.

Advent Ends, Christmas’s 12 Days Begins: Facing Everything, With Grace

Thursday, December 24, 2020

The Light

Guides Us

Onward

Psalm 42:3

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’

Matthew 2:1-2

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’

Words of Grace For Today

Jupiter and Saturn will come within 0.1 degrees of each other, forming the first visible “double planet” in 800 years. This bright star, or one like it, led the wise ‘men’ from the east to travel to find Jesus.

We search for God, like the ‘wisemen’ who may have been women and men. Others deride us for a God they cannot find. We suffer the ‘slings and arrows’ of life and they claim that God has deserted us, or that God never existed anyway.

Searching for God can bring rewards. It brought the wise ones to see Jesus and present him with gifts. Their search also set Herod to look for Jesus, though he would not bring gifts. Instead he kills off all the children in the area who are in Jesus’ age.

Jesus survives only because his parents have taken him and themselves in flight on a dangerous journey, as refugees to this day still take to try to survive.

This day we begin our Christmas celebrations, celebrations that few alive have held or been able to anticipate. Such are the restrictions and safeties of a time of pandemic.

May this day be one of many when we recognize Jesus

in the needs of our neighbours the world over, regardless of colour, creed, or company they hold and keep.

May this day be one of many when we recognize God’s Grace

as the sole source of our breath and hope.

May this day be one of many when unexpected challenges force us to see the Light of God anew in the simplest of things, in the wonders that fill this world all around.

On the night coming, as we celebrate the Light of Christ, may the Joy of God fill our hearts, minds and strength.

Advent’s Last Days: Facing Everything!

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

The Wonders

of Fishers Returned

And Light

Short but Marvellous

Psalm 3:6

I am not afraid of tens of thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.

Mark 10:15

Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.

Words of Grace For Today

Close to Christmas, and enemies have not relented.

And if you do not have enemies who have not relented, then perhaps you have not lived well and righteously, or courageously.

Still we like to say others cannot enter the Kingdom of God, for they are not humble like children before God.

This we say with our pride swelling, for definitely we are God’s favoured and God’s chosen and at least we are assured of great place in God’s Kingdom …

just like the disciples who argued who would be first in Jesus’ rule!

First are those who have nothing left, who like children are fully dependent on their parents, and on God, for their survival,

which is not going to be much longer on this earth

for the powers that be are quite willing to kill off those who stand righteously before them with truth and grace,

testaments to God’s Grace and Truth.

Like children then, let us take these final days to prepare for God to come, as a helpless child in our midst, as a human, suffering all we do in this hard, short and brutish life,

which by God’s blessings alone (not our material wealth or comforts or privilege) is blessed with challenges and meaningful labour, eternal and overfilled with wonders, and filled with kindnesses unending.

Advent Preparations During Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 21

The first day the sun can shine longer than yesterday

…

by a few seconds.

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Life is Filled with Wonderful

Mundane Things

Like Cold, Snow, Trees, Light

From Generation to Generation

All in God’s Hands

Psalm 102:28

The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.

Revelation 1:8

‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Words of Grace For Today

Security is a fleeting illusion, unless one by grace places one’s full trust in God. The security one has then is not in having a comfortable or successful life. Then security is in God’s hands, God who is the Alpha and the Omega (the ‘A’ and ‘Z’ of all.)

When we practice placing our trust in God, which we usually skew into something else, then the ‘habit level’ of our lives moves to a different ‘place’. If we are fortunate (the self made skew not being too extreme) we start each day conscious that God is our all in all, and that all we have and are is God’s anyway, so we ‘give it’ all we’ve ‘got’ by ‘giving it our all’ so that all other people can have life abundant. Then through the day as we make choices each moment, they are at least somewhat informed by this awareness.

The truth is most ‘religious’ people skew the love of God into something that supports their own privilege or position in the world. Rich people interpret God’s blessings as evident in their wealth. Poor people see God’s blessings poured out on the poor. Powerful people interpret God’s blessing as evident in their having power, powerless see God’s blessings in the meek, the lowly, the outcasts, the pure of heart.

And we all desire to have a place in the history of humanity, by not dying and being forgotten, but by making our mark and being remembered for generations. While few can hope to be remembered, most all of us strive to pass on to the next generations some of who we are and what we value.

All this is rather foolish of us, though pretty standard. God keeps calling us to see the world anew, through the eyes of others, through the eyes of Jesus.

We cannot secure our own lives, we all die. We cannot secure our place in history, we all vanish like grass in winter under the snow.

We need not secure our own lives. God already secures us as God’s own children.

The children of God’s children shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in God’s presence.

More we cannot attain. Even this is given to us as a free gift. More we do not need.

So what are we doing this extraordinary Advent to prepare for an extraordinary Christmas?

Whatever we have done this Advent to prepare, whatever we do this Christmas, more than what God has done for us by being born as one of us, is all our own odd skewing of what Christmas is about.

So celebrate, and maybe remember, that what we do is at best a misty, foggy, reflection (in our own warped mirrors) of what God has done, does today, and will do for us, each and every one of us humans, each day.

God takes care of that mushroom cloud of sin and hypocrisy (ours and everyone else’s, too) and sets us re-newed into each moment of each day.

What a life!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 21

Monday, December 21, 2020

Crystal

We Not Only Speak Glorious Words of Thanks,

We See Crystal Clear

How God Works

In and Through Us

To Bring God’s Kingdom Near …

Near to Each Person

Isaiah 29:13

The Lord said: … these people draw near with their mouths and honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote.

1 John 3:18

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

Words of Grace For Today

Walk the Talk!

Talk is cheep, or cheap.

There is still nothing we can do to earn our salvation, and yet !!!

You’d think if a person or a group of people knew that Jesus had done everything to save them from their sins, adopting them as children of God and giving them re-newed life each day, then that person or group would be able to live a bit of the Good News in their lives and share it with other people, not just lip syncing to a song written by someone else while living out the Devil’s wishes for them each day. After all we humans are capable of gratitude, growth and receiving God-given sainthood, or?

Yet again and again in scripture and in real life we encounter the exact opposite: people lip-sync the story of Jesus, while their deeds and banking belie that they value something quite foreign to being children of God. They value their own comfort, privilege and security, all supposedly attainable by their own thoughts, words and deeds … though all that self-attained stuff is just a mirage that covers the devil’s claim on their hearts, minds, and strength!

It is all too easy to see this hypocrisy blossoming like a nuclear mushroom cloud over most every person we meet. The real problem is, if we are at all honest with ourselves, when we stand by ourselves in front of the mirror … we see that ugly mushroom cloud as darker than ever.

Yikes, what are we all about anyway! Can we not somehow live out with thoughts, words, AND deeds what we hope to believe and reflect in our lives?!

The answer is … no. Not one single human can do that, except the one born to Mary and Joseph and laid in a manger. So it is so good that we prepare these last few days to celebrate Jesus’ birth.

Still, what are we to DO?

The answer is simple … pray, and trust that God will transform our hearts, minds and strength so that, at least occasionally, we can recognize the Good News of Jesus reflected in our thoughts, words, AND deeds. It is much like writing or playing sports: if you focus on trying to do it right, it will rarely be possible to actually DO as well as you might. It is in focusing, not on trying to do it right instead of wrong, but in focusing on the moment’s demands, and then into the follow-through (editing or rebounding off the boards or getting down the field and into position … [fill in the correct sequence for your preferred sport’s metaphor]).

We cannot guarantee that we will do God’s Will. We can only trust with thankful hearts that God will take our sinful efforts and make something good come out of them.

Still, we do not neglect our prayers, nor our concerted efforts to effect an abundant life for others, ALL others. This remains our life’s focus, far and above any focus on the ‘success’ of our own lives.

Then, as Jesus has stepped in to replace our tattered abysmal record before God with his impeccable record, we are able to walk humbly before our God as we strive to bring justice to all people in all circumstances.

Taking Advent seriously as time to prepare for Christmas, we see the hope of Advent’s precious blues … and give God thanks that we are able to also recognize ‘the blues’ among the many colours of the rainbows of life.

Facing Covid 19 in Advent: Daily Words of Grace – December 19

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Long Before This Day Started,

God Fully Knew It,

and Wrote Our Stories of It

So that We Could Walk Christ’s Way

In Light

Psalm 139:16

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

Luke 10:20

Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

Words of Grace For Today

Do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you

With this short sentence, the promise is made and then fulfilled that not only God controls all the universe, and Jesus, fully God and fully human, controls everything as well – the precreation chaos of the sea submit to his command, demons recognize him and cower and obey his word, but also the disciples can command the evil spirits to vacate bodies and minds, as they heal with the power of Jesus’ Word given to them!

Today we’d flock to meet and be healed by these disciples. There would be mass hysteria trying to reach them. Imagine how many Covid 19 victims could be healed, and the whole world could be no longer threatened by a small and easily transmitted virus!

The spirits cast out also free people’s minds and souls, as swiftly and effectively. There would be no Trump-itis narcissistic fantasy-land and bullying, no false convictions, and no mental illness – no campaigns of lies and distortions to ruin others, no false testimonies, no false police reports, no ill mothers bringing up their children to value money over all else, including honesty and integrity!

The world would celebrate without end, were this power available to all the children of God, to all the followers of Jesus! All would bow in wonder at God’s works to bring health to all creation!

And then we are told the disciples and we with them, should not rejoice at this power to heal and to save.

Rather we are to celebrate that before we were born our lives were written in God’s ‘book of life’ and our names appear among those saved by Jesus. Before we were anything of anything, any substance or even a dream in our parents’ or their parents’ or their parents’ minds, God fully knew us and all our days.

Even then, as God fully knows all our days, the wonderful times, the good times, the bad times, the great suffering, God chooses to walk with us in and through all that. Even when we walk ourselves right in to living hell, God walks with us! … And God keeps us walking right back out, carrying us if necessary!

There are many stories written, many more told, of lives lived, loves that guided, greeds that destroyed, hates that destroyed, and forgiveness that saved and renewed. Each and all of these stories, and each and all the untold stories of humans’ lives, God knows fully, long before a person is imagined and born, even my story, even yours.

God comes, fully human, born in a manger, so that we have God’s story of living as one of us. So that we will know in Jesus’ story the depth and breadth of God’s love for all the universe, and for each person, even me, even you.

Covid 19 cannot disrupt God’s love, nor ruin Jesus’ story, nor our celebration of it, each Christmas. Lock-downs, restrictions, physical distancing and even illness and death, can disrupt all the trappings we have laid on top of Jesus’ story, sometimes obliterating our ‘view’ of the power of God’s love to drive out the demons from each of us. Nothing can rob us of Jesus’ story nor of God’s Will to save us, each and every one of us humans. Long before Covid 19, God fully knew all about this pandemic, and our living through it, with God walking with us, carrying us when we falter … walking with us through it and back out of it.

Advent is the precious blue sombre time of hope, time to prepare, and Covid 19 is among many other things, driving us to ‘rediscover’ Jesus’ story so that our celebrations reflect God’s Word of Life for all people!

What will your Christmas look like this year? What will your Christmas celebration declare about you and your faith? How will God be seen walking with you? With me? With us each and every one of us?

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 18

Friday, December 18, 2020

Repent?

Is this the Way? Is this God’s Way for Us?

Is this the Way of Christ:

to the Cross to Give All Life Abundant?

Hosea 4:1

Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land.

Matthew 3:2

‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’

Words of Grace For Today

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Repent is to turn around, to proceed in the other direction, in the other manner, to proceed with the Grace of God instead of pounding one’s head against the wall of the Devil’s empty promises in vain trying to make something of life, something that cannot be made … it can only be received …

And God offers it freely.

Beethoven would be 250 years old this year. Overcoming all temptations to decay into decomposition humour, he still connects people with their own powerful and profound emotions and with through these emotions to other people. His 5th and 9th symphonies pound down in all the force of life in bar after bar of melody circling to a full climactic ending, that is both a relief to reach and leaves one wanting more. His pastorale melodies encircle the fog of the early morning’s kiss on the lake and bespeak the yearning that connects us all in the hope of being loved and being able to love purely, simply, profoundly. ZDF provides a tour of the world to places and people touched to the core by Beethoven’s music; Bonn, Osaka, Medellín, Ruhrgebiet, Brisbane, Rsumeb (Namibia), Queensland, Chennai (India.)

Music like Beethoven’s reaches deep into us, moves us, heals us, connects us to other people, creates empathy in us for others, and miraculously sets the world right … if for only a short moment.

This is one way in which the Kingdom of God has come near. It is one way in which God reaches into our hearts and calls us to repent, and moves us to proceed in a manner more fitting the wonders that God created us to be and to know in this tragic and beautiful existence we all know.

Where there is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land (which is everywhere in every generation) let music probe deep into our hearts, minds, and lives so that we may repent and proceed in a new (ancient) direction of walking humbly with our God, sharing the Good News (the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love), and always working for justice for all people.

For this Christ came. This we prepare to celebrate, quietly, at our core, with the midnight darkness of our lives sparkling as our candles of remembering, thanks, celebration, and hope, held by people of all sizes, colours, creeds, and experiences pierce through the darkness.

Light one, two, three, [four] candles to wait for Messiah, let the light banish darkness ….