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Judith Gotwald

Adult Object Lesson: Mark 12:38-44, November 11, 2012

1 Kings 17:8-16 • Psalm 146 •
Hebrews 9:24-28 • Mark 12:38-44

Developing Spiritual Habits

Today’s object is a skill game — paddle ball (a paddle with a rubber ball attached with an elastic string) or a cup and ball toy (bilbo catcher) pictured here.

This lesson can be adapted for use with children or adults.

The lessons in today’s lectionary reference things that are habits in our lives. Habits are a demonstration of an acquired skill. There are good habits and bad habits. Everyone has them!

Practice whichever game you choose until you can paddle a good series or catch the ball with ease. You’ll want to show your skill as you start your sermon — perhaps missing and improving as you talk.

The widow in the Old Testament story is going about her daily routine, knowing that this may be the last time she ever prepares a meal for her son. Along comes Elijah and claims her last morsel. Habits can have predictable results and can be alarming.

The Psalm today is part of a series of psalms that repeat the theme of praising the Lord, beginning with the psalmist’s own voice of praise and ultimately including everything that has breath. Habits can gain momentum.

The tables are turned in the Epistle, where Jesus’ one-time sacrifice is contrasted to the habits of priests who carry the sacrificial animal blood into the temple again and again. Good habits once, but now they are unnecessary. Habits can become useless.

And finally we come to the Gospel story of the widow’s mite. Here, Jesus is watching a ritual take place. One after another, the faithful come to the temple with their offerings. The rich make quite a spectacle of their giving and they are probably accustomed to making their offerings when there is a good audience. The widow is also part of the habit of giving. It is so ingrained that she gives from the little she has with no Elijah promising her an endless supply of oil and bread. Habits can define character.

The point of the object is to demonstrate how with practice the challenges we undertake get easier and easier. Actions that we undertake as challenging become habits. It’s tough to hit or catch the ball at first. Eventually the game is conquered. Muscle memory and balance are imprinted on the brain. Like riding a bicycle, it’s not forgotten. (You could use a bicycle as your object!) Point out that the motivations for the habits also become embedded in our minds. Watch you don’t get too adept at your challenge game! You’ll risk looking like the rich givers—showing off!

You don’t have a reason for hitting or catching the ball except the satisfaction of achieving the goal. What are the motives behind your worship habits? The motives mattered more than the gift to Jesus.

Our faith lives are built on habits—habits of prayer, praise, thanksgiving, attendance and giving. We don’t even stop to think.

If this is your church’s stewardship Sunday, you might point out that the habits of giving need to be reexamined now and then—new talents and skills discovered, new obstacles overcome.

You could point out that habits in giving need updating. $5 in the offering plate in 1970 doesn’t go as far as $5 in the offering plate today.

But mostly, today’s lesson is about the overall value of practicing faith skills until they are part of our lives and we are willing to give to God without measuring the cost to ourselves.

05 Nov 2012

Going Green: Revamping the Church Bulletin

Rethinking the Weekly Church Bulletin

Redeemer Ambassadors have now visited 50 churches. We’ve seen 50 versions of the weekly bulletin.

They are all pretty much the same and most are a mountain of paper to be left in the hymnal rack or tossed at the first opportunity.

The primary purpose of a worship bulletin is to direct people through the service. This is also the primary purpose of the expensive Worship Books/Hymnals sitting in the pew racks.

A secondary purpose is advertising — which these days is better done by email or Facebook. (It’s not the people who are in church that need all the reminders!)

Bulletins can be a creative outlet that provides enriching content—much more than those black and white line drawings that every church uses—the ones with short, big-eyed characters in flowing robes, acting out the Gospel for the day.

If a church is to go to the trouble of reprinting the worship book each week, it should add something to the worship experience.

We have yet to encounter bulletins as helpful as Redeemer’s—one piece of paper (11 x 17) with the entire service printed inside, including words to all hymns and prayers. Full color art from many different genres and religious poetry graced the covers. News, contact info, credits, calendar and even a Bible study or puzzle for the children appeared on the back.

There was no need to reference hymnals, which freed us to use worship elements from many sources.

Since we printed only words, we could easily substitute parts of the liturgy with an appropriate praise song or hymn.

But what about the music? The congregation developed a pretty good ear. The organist played hymns through in their entirety once. Hymnals were in each pew. Hymnal references were provided for those who wanted the music—and that was rarely more than one person.

A Redeemer bulletin was easy to follow for the presiding minister, visitors and even the children. Most important—there was a reason to take a Redeemer bulletin home to enjoy and share during the week.

Recently, a former member who now lives out of state wrote to one of our members and asked for a copy of our bulletins. She wanted to share them with her new pastor. A current member spoke up and said, “I’ll send her a few, I have them all on file.”

Others had often shared that they clipped a poem or image from the bulletin and stuck it to the refrigerator. That anyone kept them on file was a surprise!

It’s been more than three years since our last worship service in our own sanctuary, but when I cleaned my son’s room last week (who is now of age to be moving out). There, neatly folded on his dresser was the bulletin from the last Redeemer worship service —September 20, 2009.

Redeemer bulletins had mileage—even three years after we published our last one!

In this age of “going green,” it is peculiar that we publish hymnals with liturgies printed in them and place them in every pew. We brag that we have the latest and greatest worship book. Then the worship books sit unused in the racks. We reprint the liturgy in bulletins that eat up a ream or two of paper each week, a ton of toner, and wear and tear on office equipment. Preparing these bulletins takes a half day of a pastor’s time and probably a full day of office time.

Church bulletins are a huge investment with little return.

The reason we do this is probably that the hymnals are heavy and require flipping from the liturgy section to the hymn section frequently. They are awkward.

It’s also the way every church seems to do it.

But bulletins with 16-24 pages and fliers spilling out are equally awkward. Some of them were daunting to us as visitors — even with our strong church backgrounds.

Here’s an idea. Fill the hymnals with hymns—nothing else. You may end up needing to invest in fewer copies.

Print each liturgy in a small booklet that is easy to manage and won’t cost more than a dollar or two per copy. Let congregations choose which liturgy booklets they want. They can even create them themselves if they pay the licensing fee. Most churches don’t use more than one or two versions of a liturgy, regardless of how many choices are offered in the heavy worship books. An advantage of this is that new liturgies can be added at any time without waiting 20 years for the next hymnal to be published.

Now your bulletin can be one sheet of paper. Or maybe you won’t need one at all!

Save a forest. Save the church budget.

The bulletin will be easier to follow and allow for the inclusion of more art, poetry and teaching in your worship experience.

PS: We were able to forge the way in developing this because we didn’t have a pastor controlling the process.

Redeemer Bulletins

05 Nov 2012

Worship As Entry into Church Life

All Welcome! Are they really?The sign hangs close to the door of almost every church. ALL WELCOME.

A similar message of welcome will be on the church’s opening web page, usually accompanied by a photo of Christmas Eve worship—as if Christmas worship is representative of the whole church year.

We still expect our worship experience to be the entry point into community life within the Church. There may have been a day when this was true.

That day would have been when most people had some familiarity with religion and sought a new church community only when they relocated.

Today, however, a first-time visitor is often entering our doors totally unprepared for what they are about to experience.

Their first impression will be as if they were watching a foreign film with subtitles in a different foreign language.

  • Liturgies and hymns are laced with words from Latin and Greek and tunes from ancient choral traditions.
  • They will be asked to stand, sit and kneel with little explanation as to why. Obvious perhaps to church goers, but not to today’s visitors.
  • They will juggle bulletins with papers flying out and hymnals that have two numbering systems.

And then comes Communion, where they won’t be sure if they are among those welcome or not. They may be unsure of the local customs and have no clue what this eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ is all about. (Many of those participating don’t know either.)

There is nothing wrong with any of this. Just realize that it doesn’t necessarily communicate to visitors. Although meant to be welcoming, it may be alienating or worse.

If a visitor is not welcome at communion, their first visit to church has been an experience of exclusion.

If communion is a weekly event, they will feel excluded weekly until they are made welcome through some form of initiation. If the Eucharist is a third of the worship service, the visitor has been excluded from a third of the worship service.

This is just something for the Church in a new age to think about as we practice our rituals.

photo credit: 12th St David (taking a breather) via photopin cc
04 Nov 2012

The Difference Between a Carol and a Hymn

If they haven’t started already, they will soon! Christmas Carols will be on every retail store Muzak, the radio, and TV commercials.

There is something about the “sound” of a Christmas Carol that touches emotions immediately. It has nothing to do with being “pop.” Most popular Christmas Carols were written hundreds of years ago.

Part of the thing that distinguishes a “carol” is its seasonal nature. We don’t talk about them much but there are Advent carols and even Easter carols.

Many of them grew from folk music.

But a key distinguishing element of a carol is this. From the very beginning, carols—as differentiated from hymns—were meant to inspire DANCE!

Has your congregations danced to its Christmas music lately?

03 Nov 2012

Prayer Is the Answer. Now What Was the Question?

I had an uncle who was a Methodist preacher. He often said, only partially jokingly, “Jesus is the answer. Now what is your question?”

There seems to be a similar “go to” response in the Church today. When you don’t know what to do—or when you do know what to do but don’t have the courage to do it, there is an easy answer. Promise to pray.

It’s been tough going for our congregation as members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Bishop Claire Burkat of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod went on the warpath against Redeemer Lutheran in East Falls, Philadelphia, including personal attacks on lay members. Acquiring the assets of Redeemer seems to have been part of the plan to fund massive budget deficits from the very beginning of her first term in 2006.

Large deficits have been routine since the beginning of SEPA back in the late 1980s. Giving and attendance were (and still are) in serious decline. There was no plan for reviving small church ministry beyond neglect and waiting for failure. Several congregations folded rather than swim upstream without the cooperation of SEPA leadership.

The assumption of SEPA leadership is that if they neglect ministry for a decade, ministry will fail to the benefit of Synod coffers. Under Lutheran polity this isn’t a given. Congregations can determine where to donate their assets. But Synods are finding a work-around that guarantees they will benefit. Simply declare the congregations “terminated” before they can have any say. This means that the congregations have NO rights within the Church they have served for decades or centuries. They need not even be consulted! Constitutional checks and balances are ignored.

Redeemer was getting the “10 years of neglect” treatment. But it wasn’t going as Synod planned. Lay leadership grew. Alliances were made with several dedicated pastors. Redeemer was in a promising position, with a five-year commitment of a qualified Lutheran pastor, working under a detailed plan that the congregation had spent six months drafting. In fact, our ministry continues to grow, despite the abuse.

But the efforts of lay people are not valued.

And there was that $275,000 deficit budget approved by Synod Assembly at the same time they voted (against Lutheran rules) to take our property.

The deceitful maneuverings which characterized this hostile attempt at a land grab have been a fiasco that Lutheran leadership is unable to resolve without jeopardizing ministry, the livelihoods of lay people and perhaps even the entire synod. And at considerable expense.

It’s a mess. A shameful, unnecessary mess.

And all of this has gone on while the clergy of SEPA Synod have watched.

Our members have approached people who should be in a position to at least open dialog on the issues.

There are fairly specific guidelines for resolution of disputes in the Bible and there are governing documents that could be followed within the Church. But ELCA leaders do not bother. They rely on “wisdom.”

We’ve heard all kinds of excuses.

  • From Bishop Hanson: Just talk it out. I have great regard for Bishop Burkat.
  • From a Synod Council member: We have no intention of negotiating with you. (Synod Council is supposed to represent the congregations.)
  • From deans: Silence
  • From pastors in a position to help: We have to trust the wisdom of the bishop.
  • From pastors who visited Redeemer 30 or 40 years ago: We know your history (as if Redeemer was stuck in a time warp).
  • From pastors who don’t know anything about Redeemer — but voted with the crowd anyway: Sorry! We didn’t know.

Whatever the excuse, it is always accompanied with a sanctimonious, conscience-assuaging promise to pray.

We wonder what these learned church leaders expect to come of prayer.

  • That someone else—anyone else—will play peacemaker.
  • That God will suddenly fix everything without any work.
  • That whatever happens won’t affect them.
  • That miracles will replace gumption.
  • That whatever happens, their jobs will be secure.
  • That they will never be the victims of the type of leadership abuses that have characterized this sad episode (and perhaps others before us).
  • That life in SEPA will go on as if Redeemer, and Epiphany, and Grace and others never existed—and the list will probably continue to grow.

Lutherans pride themselves on an interdependent structure. That means we are supposed to work together.  

Here’s a suggestion:

By all means, keep praying, but recognize that the answer to prayer is probably in getting off your backsides and doing something.

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do
for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ 

02 Nov 2012

Church Decline and the Inability to Say “No”

At the core of democracy is the freedom to say “no.” This freedom is also at the core of Christianity, without which democracy the way we know it today would not exist.

Jesus taught His followers to sort out the demands of the various authorities in everyday ancient Mediterranean life—and they were many—local, religious, tribal, class, Roman. Jesus gave his followers license to say “no.” Yes, it got some of them in trouble. Saying “no” calls for some bravery, some chance-taking.

Every now and then, the Church forgets that “no” is an option, even in Church life. The Church is then taking itself more seriously than its mission.

There is always a temptation to worship the leaders whom we can see and hear rather than the nebulous God they serve but come to represent in people’s minds. The temptation of leaders is to first accept the attention and then to expect the attention. Obedience to man is substituted for obedience to God.

Things can go badly for many for a very long time until one or a few brave souls put their tongues to the roof of their mouths and say “NO.”

Many of these are remembered today as saints. Others are featured in history books. Two of them have similar names — Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Still we easily forget the power of the simplest and most necessary word in almost any language. Wrong will prevail without the ability to say “no.”

We are in one of these unfortunate eras. We have church leaders who look at any controversy in the Church and say. “I’d better not comment.” No response appears to be safe, a ticket to popularity (and reelection and a continuing paycheck).

No response is a devil’s playground.

We have clergy who protect their status in the Church by saying nothing to abuses of power.

We have church members who follow suit and attempt to create an easy-going congregational life where everyone just gets along and never considers taking a stand on anything that might disrupt the good life.

Shun the naysayer.

Substituting for the simple word “no” are laborious Social Statements that committees slave over until everyone can agree  . . . and that collect cyberdust on the national bodies’ websites.

The Church then stands for nothing and people of conviction rightly conclude that passions are of more value outside the Church.

The Church, without the word “no” in its vocabulary, will continue to decline.

Do something about this? It’s our choice: Yes or No.

02 Nov 2012

Teaching Advent Through Poetry

Two Advent Poems Written by Best Friends

1600 years ago two fellows from different walks of life met in Milan, Italy.

Ambrosius had the odd distinction of being elected bishop before he was baptized. He was awarded the position on the basis of character. He was likable! He was not ordained. He had not studied theology. He underwent an early “on the job” training program! Fortunately, he excelled!

Augustine found his way into the Church through a back door, coming from a life of debauchery. His mother, Monica, was devoted to her wayward son. Her prayers were answered but not before he had fathered a child out of wedlock. He was attracted to the church by Ambrose’s sermons.

Both became great teachers and writers in the Church. Both tried their hand at poetry.

One of the problems with Advent is that the hymn traditions of Advent rely on understanding both poetry and scripture. Rare today.

Poetry doesn’t fit our modern attention spans. Modern hymns rarely have more than one verse. Hymn writers have run out of things to say! Our mind’s eye, bombarded with visual images, is losing its imaginative vision.

Nevertheless, there is a teaching opportunity in the wealth of poetry that has been set to music. Advent is so short that we flit from one great poem/hymn to another. Unless we sing in the choir, we never really learn them. They remain foreign to our ears.

Add to that, they tend to be melodically different, clearly belonging to other centuries. It is easy to put them aside to try to understand them next year.

Advent hymns cover a breadth of scripture — not just a Bible story or two. They span the Old Testament right through to Revelation. So while the purpose of Advent is to slow down and meditate, we end up rushing through it.

In an attempt to introduce the theologically deep hymnody of Advent, concentrate on the poetry of these two old friends — known today as St. Ambrose and St. Augustine.

Ambrose wrote “Come, thou Redeemer of the Earth.”

Augustine wrote “Christmas.”

Ambrose’s poem can be studied verse by verse.

Augustine’s poem breaks nicely into couplets (each of which would make nice “Tweets” to your congregation).

Augustine’s poem evokes imagery which is likely to appeal to the modern reader of poetry. It relies on an understanding of theology and is therefore a good chance to explain the Bible’s many and diverse Advent scriptures.

Start with the simpler poem!

You might repeat this poem together responsively before each Advent service, so that it becomes familiar.

Christmas

Maker of the sun,
He is made under the sun.
In the Father he remains,
From his mother he goes forth.
Creator of heaven and earth,
He was born on earth under heaven.
Unspeakably wise,
He is wisely speechless.
Filling the world,
He lies in a manger.
Ruler of the stars, 
He nurses at his mother’s bosom.
He is both great in the nature of God,
And small in the form of a servant.

Come, Thou Redeemer of the earth

Come, Thou Redeemer of the earth,
And manifest Thy virgin birth:
Let every age adoring fall;
Such birth befits the God of all.

Advent means come. But no one expected the Messiah to come this way!

Begotten of no human will,
But of the Spirit, Thou art still
The Word of God in flesh arrayed,
The promised One to man displayed.

Here we have the imagery of John—The Word became flesh.

The virgin womb that burden gained
With virgin honor all unstained;
The banners there of virtue glow;
God in His temple dwells below.

Forth from His chamber goeth He,
That royal home of purity,
A giant in twofold substance one,
Rejoicing now His course to run.

The verse about the Virgin is often cut from Protestant hymnals but without it we don’t really know from what “chamber” Christ is going. It takes two verses to grapple with the idea that Jesus is both God and Man — the twofold substance.

From God the Father He proceeds,
To God the Father back He speeds;
His course He runs to death and hell,
Returning on God’s throne to dwell.

O equal to the Father, Thou!
Gird on Thy fleshly mantle now;
The weakness of our mortal state
With deathless might invigorate.

And then God/Man goes to work to redeem the world.

Thy cradle here shall glitter bright,
And darkness breathe a newer light,
Where endless faith shall shine serene,
And twilight never intervene.

Light and candles are symbols of Advent. Christ brought new light into the world.

All laud to God the Father be,
All praise, eternal Son, to Thee;
All glory, as is ever meet,
To God the Holy Paraclete.

Many hymns end with the invocation of the Trinity. This is no different. Paraclete means advocate. The Holy Paraclete is the Holy Spirit. 

The tune used for this hymn is also an Easter hymn—That Easter Day with joy was bright. It remains an easy tune to the modern ear.

There is a lot of power in these two poems. Take the time with your congregation to dig into their meaning. In other words, use them more than once!

 

02 Nov 2012

All Saints Day in East Falls

Remembering the Saints of East Falls

Today is All Saints Day. This Sunday the remnant of Redeemer will meet for worship in East Falls and pay tribute to our saints on All Saints Sunday.

Just as in most churches that have their own altar to kneel before, we will recall the saints who have walked ahead of us on the path to Glory.

Some congregations will remember those who died this year. At Redeemer, we know the time measured by mankind compares little to eternity. We remember all the important saints in our lives.

We even remember those still living. It is ALL Saints Day! As Lutherans, we believe in the sainthood of all believers, whether living on earth or in heaven.

Today, and as we approach All Saints Sunday, we remind you that the saints in East Falls are still working to build Christian community while the Christians of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) seek to destroy us.

  • We still worship.
  • We still serve.
  • We still share the Gospel.
  • We still help others.
  • We still teach.
  • We still have fellowship.
  • We still witness and give.
  • We still fall short of God’s expectations.

And so do you.

01 Nov 2012

Here Comes Advent — Again!

The First in a Series of Posts
about the Least Understood
Season of the Church Year  

The Problem(s) with AdventCome December, we will once again anticipate the joyous birth of our Savior by rolling out the traditions so well-known to Christians.

We’ll get our Advent devotionals and four-session Bible studies in place, we’ll buy the kiddies paper calendars, and our choirs will start practicing Christmas anthems. For worship, we’ll roll out the pre-Civil War classic Advent hymns.

We have to know we are paddling upstream. Just as the rest of the world is anticipating Christmas with happy songs, we feel the need to look ahead to the passion‚ as if we won’t be celebrating this in its own right in just a few weeks.

Those of us raised in the traditions of the Church will protest the critics of these traditions.

The chronic complainers aren’t particularly loud or noticeable. But they are many.

Mostly, they just stay home until Christmas Eve. Now that they understand!

As for us Christians, we’ll stick to our traditions, thank you very much.

Truth be told, the traditions of Advent are beautiful and deeply meaningful to the few of us who understand them. The problem we have is in communicating them to the vast majority of the world that doesn’t understand them or feel a need to bother.

The church is left with three choices.

  1. Keep on keeping on. Proudly defend the heritage of Advent and hope someone is listening while the rest of us are still standing.
  2. Abandon the past and cater to the modern mindset.
  3. Find a way to communicate what is so important to us.

Choices one and two require less work and are the most popular — with predictable results.

Choice three might actually make a difference. But how?

We’ll explore possibilities during this pre-Advent season.

If you have ideas . . . please share them.

photo credit: samu.zamu via photopin cc
01 Nov 2012

A Tweet A Day for Advent

Advent: A Good Time to Experiment with Twitter

Statistics show that Twitter is one of the most powerful tools of Social Media, out-ranking even Facebook for the purpose of drawing traffic. Yet there is a huge barrier keeping people from using it.

We just don’t think that way . . . (2×2 included).

But Advent might be a good time to start using Twitter. Advent includes a tradition of daily reminders anticipating the coming of the Messiah. There are tons of methods used, including special devotions, colorful calendars with a door to open for each day as we wait for Christmas, and numbered decorations to add to a tree.

If you are at all dedicated to fully using Social Media, consider an Advent Twitter campaign. But start now. Encourage your members to sign up for Twitter accounts and start collecting followers among their friends.

We are going to try this experiment, so we hope you join us. Take some time in the next couple of weeks to become familiar with Twitter, so that you are ready to go with your Advent Twitter campaign come December.

Here are a few links to help you get started:

Remember: it is every church member’s responsibility to spread the Word. Twitter is one way to do this.

The power of Twitter is in retweeting — the people you send a message (or Tweet) should then broadcast it to their friends (retweet). If your Advent campaign is successful, you’ll attract more followers from the followers of your network.

It will be an interesting experiment to measure the mission power of your congregation might have as you encourage members to retweet.

Twitter is totally opt in, so you do not have to feel intrusive. Anyone can stop following at any time.

Here’s our contribution to help make this experiment easy. Here are messages, already measured to fit Twitter’s 144-character limitation. You can Tweet these manually once a day, or if you are already using Twitter, you may have discovered services that allow you to schedule tweets. (Google “schedule tweets”)

Our list of tweets.

Feel free to use our tweets, add to them or reorganize them. Try to include local references from time to time. There are more than enough and more can be added. Most are short enough that you can create a “short link” to your church web site. (bitly.com or tinyurl.com)

NOTE: In some cases, the Bible verses were shortened to fit Twitter’s 144-character platform.

  1. ADVENT WREATH: symbol of victory, an unending circle symbolizes God. 4 candles for 4 weeks.
  2. ADVENT CANDLE 1: HOPE—God will keep his promises.
  3. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.—John 1:1
  4. Gabriel tells Zechariah that he and Elizabeth will have a baby boy named John. They were old and had lost hope.
  5. Gabriel visits Mary and tells her she will have a baby boy. Mary had not yet married!
  6. CANDLE 2: PREPARATION—Are you ready for the big day? God gives you time to get ready!
  7. And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.—Mark 1:4
  8. Advent means coming. God’s Son is coming? Are you ready? How will you get ready?
  9. God loves us and is sending us his Son. How can you show your love?
  10. All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.—Psalm 25:10
  11. Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.—John 14:6
  12. CANDLE 3: JOY—But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.
  13. Elizabeth says to Mary: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!
  14. Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices… for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name.—Luke 1:46-49
  15. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.—Ephesians 2:17
  16. CANDLE 4: LOVE—God is sending Jesus to earth because He loves us.
  17. Imagine this: The wolf will live with the lamb . . . and a little child will lead them. (and there’s more read Isaiah 11:6-9)
  18. Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife—Matthew 1:20b
  19. To Joseph: Name the baby Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
  20. Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, which means the Lord saves.
  21. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.—Ephesians 2:17
  22. Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.—John 14:6
  23. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son.—John 1:14
  24. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul. Show me your paths and teach me to follow;
 guide me by your truth and instruct me.—Psalm 25
  25. Herod sent the Magi to Bethlehem and said, “Report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”—Matthew 2:8
  26. But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.—Galatians 4:4
  27. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.—Romans 6:23
  28. Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness;
 come before him with joyful songs.—Psalm 100:1,2
  29. (A favorite summary of Advent from St. Augustine): You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in You.
photo credit: Jorbasa via photopin cc
31 Oct 2012