Advent Diary...almost closed

Tomorrow night will be The Wheatland Mission's last celebration of Advent/Christmas for 2005. After this we will move into a brief celebration of Epiphany and then prepare ourselves for the Great Lent. This time of preparation and anticipation has been really valuable to me personally. I am forced to think more carefully and clearly about this season and the way I enter into it, along with the way my family, and now my church, participates in the season.

We are going to hear the story of Symeon and Anna. The two old people awaiting the announcement of the Messiah's arrival. They understood that his entry into the world would not occur in the way most expected. They were both perfectly unsurprised by Jesus' arrival in the temple, not as a great and powerful ruler, but as an infant. One carried in by his parent who would be utterly helpless without them. They knew.

May God grant that we all gain a better set of eyes to see the many ways in which God is entering into our world. Grant that we would rejoice in seeing his salvation and grant that we might better come to understand just exactly "his salvation" is.

Christmas Gift

It is just after midnight and Christmas Eve has given way to the earliest moments of Christmas morning. The house is quiet and the dog has finally stopped crying. I am listening to the Chieftians sing the Christmas song Don Oiche Ud mBethiel and Burgess Meredith is narrating. It is moving. Especially in this silence.

Worship last night was again quite wonderful. In fact, I would contend that it was the best service The Wheatland Mission has had to date. (Saying this betrays a certain hypocrisy within me that views the weekend service as the point of our church rather than an expression of our life.) We sang Christmas songs, read the Christmas story (Moser did great), and we lit candles after sharing in communion. It was a wonderful way to prepare our hearts for Christ's coming ... again.

Slowly, but surely, we are shedding the burden of carrying the story of the world and carefully picking up the story of Christ in order that we might tell it as we should. Bless our hearts, our heads and our tongues as we speak it clearly. The first steps, however, are reclaiming the calendar for Christ. We don't seek to reclaim it as some reaction to the supposed "war on Christmas" but in response to our realization that we are shaped by the world in ways that we are not yet aware. We blithely begin to live in, and to tell, the world's story rather than allowing ourselves to be shaped by Christ's story and, in turn, telling that story. The calendar and a renewed sense of Christian time is one way to fight back against our lulled into indifference.

Snow

It snowed last night and is snowing still. This is a good thing.

The dog loves the snow and has turned what was a beautiful pristene ground cover, in our back yard, into a dirty white mess. However, there are few things as cool as seeing Shelby run through the perfectly white background with his long gold hair.

Be Courteous

Dear Wireless Headset User,

I appreciate the fact that technology has come so far as to allow those of us who regularly use cell phones to do so without holding the entire device to our ears. Hands Free technology, as it is often referred to is a great asset to those whose livlihoods require the use of such phones all the time. It is also very helpful for those who are on the road a lot. I am glad that such devices also help keep our roads safe.

However, I implore those of you who have these clever little contraptions to not use them in public. Of course I don't mind if you speak on the phone in public but please go to the effort of holding the receiver to your ear. Yes, I recognize that it can be a bit of a burden some time and one's arm can become quite tired. However, with recent technological advances, not unlike the one that allows you to speak into thin air while someone around the globe responds, our cell phones are much lighter. Go to the effort and lift, the hefty 3 oz. device to your ear and save us the trouble of wondering if you are talking to yourself, to someone in your immediate vicinity, or to your buddy on the other end saying, "this is so cool. I don't even have the phone up to my ear."

Trust me. It is kind of wierd standing in line with someone and assuming that they are talking to you, wondering what the conversation is all about, only to discover that they have this little plastic and metal ear creature clinging to the other side of their head.

The wieght of being a normal person can be a bit too much to bear, I realize. The use of the ultimate hands free device however keeps one's friends and neighbors at bay. You separate yourself from them through the use of bluetooth, Wi-Fi, pixie dust, or whatever it is that makes your little ear crab work. It makes you elitist. Sorry, I know that this is hard news to hear but it is nonetheless true. It does sound odd to call someone who works for T-Mobile, Primerica or Cox Cable elitist but that is exactly what this device does. It separates you from the rest of us not based upon your wealth, nor your education, nor upon the people that you know. Rather, you are elititist based upon your ability to get by without using your limbs like the rest of us. Forgive me for how harsh I am being but I trust that you will give me a call later and let me know that you took this to heart. You will be calling from your hands free device no doubt. However, in doing so I know you will at least being holding the little thing to your ear, all .5 oz of it, just like the women in the Petticoat Junction phone operator scenes. Such a courtesy will not go unnoticed.

Sincerely,

Prodigious Blackberry Thumb Typer


P.S. For those of you who have to accompany such individuals into public places. We are on your side. It must be annoying to be in someone's company who liesurely and with indifference leaves your presence and drifts off into cyberspace. Please know that you are invited to come and sit with those fully engaged individuals who are perusing the internet wirelessly on their laptops in oblivion to the world around them.

Advent Diary

Tonight we are celebrating the first and second weeks of Advent. We are starting late and not able to celebrate all of Advent as I had hoped but we are still going to get the most of these two weeks before Christmas. The fact that our people are beginning to talk about Advent almost as much as they are Christmas is encouraging to me. It means that this idea of "Christian Time" is starting to sink in and we are starting to get it, even if it is just a little bit.

The most remarkable thing about the Christian Year is that we are celebrating the life of Christ through a long drama of worship. From the end of November until Easter we celebrate very specific things about his life and, in some ways, reenact them. This is formative for us. No longer are we just putting this stuff into our minds but we are forming our actual lives around them. We are shaping our minds, our hearts, our bodies and perhaps most importantly we are forming our imaginations. Shaping all of these around the model of Christ. Whether it is a tree, a nativity scene, ashes on our forehead or stations of the cross they all take on the important purpose and value of forming us from the inside out.

So, as we journey toward Christmas and the celebration of the Incarnation we need help in anticipating. Rather than being fearful of getting all our Christmas shopping done we have to take advantage of the time and wait. Wait. And wait some more. We are changed in the waiting. We are transformed through the anticipation. We are reminded in our anxious waiting of the deliverance that has come to us all, once and for all, through a helpless baby named Jesus.