We will have two services Sunday. Plus a post-evening-service feast. Plus getting the building ready. Plus the holidays. Plus a surprise appearance by my dog jumping through yet another window. It’s a busy time. I don’t know if I will get it all done or how it will all turn out. Advent is a time of waiting, a time of mystery, a time of not knowing. That can easily translate into a time of anxiety. But this is the week of love.
Love overcomes anxiety. I don’t know how it will all turn out, but I know that I am loved – by my family, by my friends, by my church. That love both inspires me to try a little harder and to know that it will be okay even if I fail. Love provides comfort and confidence. Love sustains us in the waiting and the unknowing. On Sunday morning, we will celebrate a love that carries us into a new year and new possibilities, a love that is the love of all loves.
On Sunday evening, we will celebrate the light coming into the world. The prophets speak of a world plunged into shadow. This is sometimes regarded as a remarkably prescient vision, that there will be this one time when everything seems bad. But this is the season of short days and long nights. It is the season of economic turmoil, wars and rumors of wars, weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the cycle that humanity rehearses over and over again. Somehow, in the midst of that, out of that, because of that, something new and beautiful is born. On Sunday evening, we will celebrate the breaking of the light over the horizon and our journey into a new day.
Please join us Sunday morning, 11am at Church in the Cliff, 1719 W. 10th St., as we celebrate (and practice!) love. And join us again in the evening, 6pm at our house, 221 S. Edgefield Ave., as we celebrate God’s becoming in the world. There will be a feast after the service. Wear stretchy pants.
Grace & Peace,
Scott