Piloting Faith: Waiting isn't passive...
A Word for the Day...
This Sunday was the start of a new season in the church calendar called Advent. Advent is the season just before the birth of Christ, which of course, we celebrate on Christmas Day. It is this “in-between” season, where we do not quite have the baby Jesus yet, but we know he is on his way. So we spend four weeks preparing, exploring themes of hope, peace, love and joy...and maybe taking some time to slow down, pray and watch for God to appear.
Sometimes we say that Advent is about waiting, but that implies that we are just sitting around, waiting for the time to pass. Advent isn’t passive. Lived well, Advent is the time when we are most active, most alert, most awake, most intune with the world because we are expecting God to break through into our lives.
A couple of years ago, I went to hear Anne Lamott host a book reading of her book, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair. She wrote it after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, in an attempt to make sense of such a senseless tragedy. One of my favorite lines from the book is, “There can be meaning without things making sense.” The woman who introduced her said that reading Anne Lamott was like tasting “literary wasabi.” What a beautiful way to put it. At the reading, Anne chose to read to us about her definition of hope. She read:
“Every time we choose the good action or response, the descent, the valuable, it builds, incrementally, to renewal, resurrection, the place of newness, freedom, justice. The equation is: life, death, resurrection, hope. The horror is real, and so you make casseroles for your neighbor, organize an overseas clothing drive, and do your laundry. You can also offer to do other people's laundry, if they have recently had any random babies or surgeries.
We live stitch by stitch, when were lucky. If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching. And maybe the stitching is crude, or is unraveling, but if it was precise, we’d pretend that life is just fine and running like a Swiss watch. This is not helpful if on the inside our understanding is that life is more often the cuckoo clock with rusty gears.
My pastor, Veronica, one Sunday told the story of a sparrow lying in the street with its legs straight up in the air, sweating a little under its feathery arms. A warhorse walks up to the bird and asks, “What on earth are you doing?” The sparrow replies, “I heard the sky was falling, and I wanted to help.” The horse laughs a big, loud, sneering horse laugh, and says, “do you really think you are going to hold back the sky, with those scrawny little legs?”
And the sparrow says, “One does what one can.”
What a great definition of hope: just being open to doing what one can and inviting God in to do the rest.
- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight
Prayer for the Week
As streets fill with shoppers
Bright lights and tempting offers
Christmas songs and children’s laughter
You lead us along a different path
To a desert river and a Prophetic voice
A call to repentance
A call to service
A call to immerse ourselves
In living water that will never run dry
A call to prepare a way in our own lives
For the Savior of the world to enter in
To know the touch of tender mercy
And rest in your forgiving love.
Amen.
