All of us celebrate the end of one year with a mixture of joy and sadness and look forward to the new with both hope and fear. As we stand on the edge of a new year today let us do all that we can to make sure that hope and promise triumph over sadness and discouragement.
Many blessings for 2017.
Andy Wade —
As I reflect over this past year with Mustard Seed Associates I am filled with thankfulness.
I see God’s shalom flooding our little community as the outgoing MSA board and incoming transitional board met for a common purpose, to move us faithfully into the future. The grace, support, and encouragement of the outgoing board was simply amazing. To Mark Mayhle, David Vandervort, and J.Paul Fridenmaker, a hearty thanks for years of support and guidance!
Our incoming board has poured hours into walking us through this process of change. Greg Nelson, Forrest Inslee, Andi Saccoccio, Greg Abell, and Derek McNeil have contributed invaluable guidance, insight, connections, and encouragement. We simply would not be where we are today without their leadership. My heart is overflowing with gratitude.
Our leadership transition from Christine to me began on August first and is now complete. I could not have imagined a smoother or more gracious transition of leadership. I am truly indebted to Christine and grateful for her friendship and direction over the years.
August also marked the 25th MSA Celtic Prayer Retreat. In 2017 we are planning for major changes to the retreat, including partnering with other organizations to expand and deepen our time together.
Finally, our Godspace Community Blog continues to inspire, encourage, and challenge as writers from nine different countries bring their unique insights to living as followers of the way. 2017 will see significant changes to the blog that will enhance our readers’ experience and facilitate deeper interactions between authors and between readers and authors.
I am grateful for the vision and leadership of Tom Sine who planted the first mustard seed, a seed which would grow and flourish into a tree providing shelter and fruit around the world for over 25 years. I am grateful for his voice challenging and speaking into my life for more than thirty years.
- I am grateful for Christine’s unique leadership style, which shaped MSA into the organization it is today.
- I’m grateful for the many board members over the years who helped support and guide MSA along this journey.
- And I’m especially grateful for all of you, faithful friends and fellow mustard seeds, growing hope, peace, healing, and love in neighborhoods around the globe.
Shalom,
Andy Wade
Director
Mustard Seed Associates
In many ways this week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day is a week caught in the middle. In the Christian calendar the new year started with Advent. And yet by the Gregorian calendar the old year is still coming to a close. It seems this is an excellent opportunity to look both backward and forward.
As Christians, there’s another way we are caught in between times. Christ has come and his Kingdom has infiltrated the present time. The world is not the same, as God’s power and love shatter the darkness and open for us a new way to live. And yet there is still brokenness, pain, division. All is not well, even though everything has changed. We see this reality in the world around us, and we see it within ourselves.
This week between Christmas and the New Year reminds us of this mystery: Christ is born yet the impact of this truth has not yet fully transformed our world. Now is a time for honesty as we wrestle with how to unravel what this means. The Apostle Paul captured this well when he lamented:
For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. Romans 7:17-20 – The Message
Jesus has died and risen. The Holy Spirit fills our lives. And yet, we still struggle right along with the world around us. Let’s take this time to reflect. But let’s not reflect as those who have no hope. Let’s look for God’s in-breaking into our lives and communities. Let’s reflect in ways that empower us to trust God more even when we don’t get it right. Let’s reflect in ways that move us closer to God’s intentions for shalom and further from our inclination toward self-interest.
Looking back, where have you seen God at work this past year:
- In your life?
- In your family?
- In your neighborhood and community?
- In God’s world?
At each intersection of faith and life mentioned above, what has made your participation in this change possible? What has hindered your participation?
As you reflect on this, look forward. How might you better join the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom during the coming year? What do you need to be aware of and change to more courageously and effectively join with God and others to bring the light, joy, peace, love, hospitality, and celebration of God’s Kingdom:
- In your life?
- In your family?
- In your neighborhood and community?
- In God’s world?
This short reflection is not so much an invitation to make New Year’s resolutions as it is an invitation to a deeper level of discipleship, spiritual formation, and living more intentionally into the Kingdom of God already present yet still coming in its fullness. This is also an invitation to join with others in discerning the way forward. We do not walk alone, we walk together as communities of faith.
Seize the moment, this moment in between times. Take advantage of this holy space between Christmas and the New Year and discover new ways to spread the love of God to the world around you.
For some of us at least, if we are really honest, we would rather ignore the part in the Christmas story about Herod’s massacre at Bethlehem. Enough to manage the shock of God’s outrageous risk in entrusting the rescue of his world (and universe) to two unknowns – at least one a teenager – and the precarious nature, especially at that time, of childbirth. How do we begin to process the cost not just to God, but to the nameless families in Bethlehem?
It is not just the historical outrages that we shun, however. Aleppo, the Yemen, countless other places where babies and children die at the hands of our violence and greed – our senses and emotions feel assaulted by the horror and so we close down the emerging thoughts and feelings (and often silence the TV or skip sections in the paper).The reaction is understandable, in our perceived helplessness. The scale of suffering causes our compassion to implode: if we felt the full pain of it we would, surely, be subsumed with grief?
I have no answer. But I do wonder if it may help us, whether looking back to Herod or out to our world, to remember that this is essentially the story of individuals. Each one unique, known to God, and loved by him, however different from that it must feel in the maelstrom of pain.
Perhaps a little like this…
Grandmother in Bethlehem
I wasn’t ready to become a grandmother.
Somehow it signalled so much:
The gradual dwindling of my own youth
Cemented by this one act:
Denial of my own mortality
Somehow eroded by this new title.But then I saw him
And it all changed.
Tiny toes, first blue
From traumatic delivery
Then glorious pink
And my heart burst
With relief and pride
And deep protectiveness.
A love like no other.I was holding him
When the soldiers came.
Never had I so cursed
Female weakness.
I tried to hold him,
Screamed as they pushed me aside
Like the has-been I felt.I would have died to save him.
And now I only wish I could.
This post is part of our reflections on Advent and Christmas 2016.
by Christine Sine
It is the second day of Christmas – the 12 days starting with Christmas day that mark the celebration of the birth of Christ.
In the sixth century it was decided that celebrating Christmas just for a day didn’t provide enough time to celebrate all the joy that Christ’s birth brought into the world. They made Christmas into a twelve day festival that ended with a feast on the Eve of Epiphany on January 5th to celebrate the coming of the wise men and the emergence of God’s eternal kingdom. Yep that’s right, for those of us who are Christ followers, the 12 days of Christmas begin with Christmas Day they don’t end there as many malls would have us believe. In countries where this understanding of Christmas has not been co-opted by the commercialism of our society Christmas trees are not decorated until Christmas Eve and remain in the house sparking with light and life until the Eve of Epiphany.
So what are we celebrating this Christmas season?
For many of us this has been a challenging year and we are not sure that this message of God’s peace is really being birthed in a world in which hate and violence seems to have the upper hand. Memories of Aleppo, Berlin, Brexit, political ugliness make us wonder if peace is possible at all.
Yet in the Christmas message there is a message of such hope that it changed the world 2,000 years ago and continues to change it when we take it seriously.
What do we learn from the Christmas story
We need to listen to the angels.
The angels came to the shepherds with an unbelievable message – the Messiah was born in their neighbourhood and they were invited to come and meet him.
Earlier in the story the angel Gabriel came to Mary with an equally unbelievable message – she who was a virgin was pregnant and would give birth to a son who would be the saviour of the world.
What is most remarkable is both Mary and the shepherds listened and believed the angels. They listened to a message of peace and hope when the world around them was in chaos. They believed a message of peace when they lived in world in which the Roman empire maintained its power with violence.
What we forget is that the heavenly messengers reaffirm this message of peace every Christmas. In the midst of a world of violence God’s peace has been birthed and will be birthed again and again and again until the world is transformed. We need to listen and believe.
We need to Let Go Our Fears.
We live in a world filled with fear. Fear of the other who is different. Fear of violence against us and our countries. Fear of loss of economic stability. It is hard to let go our fears but again the angels come to us and say “Be not afraid”.
The shepherds were terrified by the angels yet somehow found the courage to see beyond their terror, believe the message the angels brought and respond. It could not have been easy for them. Not only were the angels scary, but going into the village must have been scary too. They were the despised, the rejected, the homeless ones. Not the kind of people that most of the villagers would have welcomed. Certainly not the ones who would be welcomed to see a newborn baby.
It is easy to make excuses for why we don’t expose ourselves fully to the light of Christ. Letting God find us in the hidden places we retreat to when we are afraid to show what we are really like can be terrifying. To draw close to the Christ who is being birthed in our midst is scary. It means stepping out of our comfort zones into a new world in which we don’t always feel comfortable.
Christmas Invites Us to Believe the Unbelievable
The shepherds believed the unbelievable. Not only was the Messiah born in their humble neigbourhood, but they were welcome, in fact encouraged to come and meet him. How profoundly redemptive this message must have been for them – they, the despised and unwelcomed by society were welcome at the bedside of the king of Kings.
Mary and Joseph believed the unbelievable too. They believed that his child conceived out of wedlock to their humble family would bring down the rich and powerful and raise up the poor and the marginalized.
The wise men from the East also believed the unbelievable – that they as foreigners would be welcome at the birth place of the one who was destined to be king of the Jews.
In the Christmas sermon we heard preached a couple of days ago, John Dixon, speaking about the birth of Jesus said
God has stepped onto the world stage, at the lowest point imaginable. At the very moment Augustus is flexing his muscles and Herod is shaking his fist, God, we are told, enters the mess, humbly, from below. And he does so in order to turn the whole thing upside down.
He goes on the say:
Everything about the story – indeed, the whole story of Jesus – says that God will reverse the mess by first getting his hands dirty. He will mend the world by first being injured. He will enter the noise, only to transpose it into a beautiful tune. Mary’s song will become the world’s song. And joy will pierce the sadness, fully and forever.
And it is true. Joy will pierce the sadness fully and forever. This is the Christmas promise. May we all take time to listen, let go our fears and believe once more the unbelievable story of God.
Artwork: Pastel painting “Milky Way and Brolly” by Keren Dibbens-Wyatt using a public domain reference photo by the Space Telescope Science Institute.
I have been revisiting some of the books that enchanted me as a young girl, ostensibly as research for my own writing, but in fact more truly because in my middle age I am hankering for the simpler joys. Having read all the Anne of Green Gables books my county library had to offer (I should be receiving the next one today if my husband took any notice of my Christmas list) I started on another series written by the same wonderful Canadian author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, about Emily of New Moon.
Emily is a little girl with a sensitive soul, and every so often, she senses something she calls “the flash.” It is a glimpse into eternity, into the essence of beauty, and it comes unbidden at various moments:
“It always seemed to Emily… that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside – but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it, and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond – only a glimpse- and heard a note of unearthly music….. It had come with a high, wild note of wind in the night, with a shadow-wave over a ripe field… with the singing of “Holy, holy, holy,” in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she was writing down a “description” of something. And always when the flash came to her, Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.” (page 8, Emily of New Moon, Virago Press 2013, originally published in 1923)
Montgomery is a wonderful writer with a great gift for vivid “descriptions” herself, and for delicious characterisation and dialogue. In Emily’s ability, she has captured, for me, something about the existence of holy magic; that truly awe-inspiring hint of heaven we can be privy to now and again, as we see a rip in the fabric of the ordinariness of things, or maybe even the divine essence reflected to be almost incarnate in that very ordinariness.
We have been looking on Godspace during this season of Advent with an eye for where this glimpse of the otherworldly might be found in the hectic and commercialised run up to Christmas. We have been exploring whether it is possible to reclaim the peace and joy only Jesus can give us from the midst of the chaos. I know that we can. More importantly, perhaps, I know that those who don’t know the Lord yet can catch that reality that is so much deeper than our existence out of the corner of their eyes, or on the edge of their senses: from hearing a carol, from sitting in a crowded church watching children fluff their angelic lines, from contemplating the glow of a candle. These “flashes” really do have a chance to shine through at this time of feasting and gifts, because something in us is searching for them. Christmas is when we know we are supposed to find the magic. And all too often it seems beyond our grasp, and we are disappointed. Santa didn’t visit, we think, he never brought me what I really wanted.
But one year, if we are ready and hungry for more than mince pies and turkey, and never mind whether we have been naughty or nice, if there is that moment of wanting something more, we may well be granted a glimpse of the star of wonder, and nothing will ever be the same again.
For that wonder is never more obvious to us than at Christmas, when the ordinary and the heavenly co-exist with a daring unknown on other feast days. The King of Kings, wrapped up and lying in the livestock’s food trough. A weary young unmarried mother, who is also the virgin handmaiden of God, destined to be Queen of heaven. A worried, unsure step-father to God’s flesh, skilled woodworker, yet unable to provide decent refuge for his family just when it was needed most, his carefully crafted world turned upside down. A small town lit up by a majestic star, and the brightness of angels, that will soon be grief-stricken by the murderous actions of a jealous Herod.
The glory and the guttural mixed and held together, the curtain fluttering that in thirty-three years will be ripped in two. The contradictions contained in this nativity scene are stretched as far as the east is from the west, and yet, in the centre, right where I might sometimes just catch my breath at a glimpse of its golden beauty caught on the edge of cheap tinsel, is an unearthly sense of wonder, just like the flash in Emily’s sight, that cuts through to my very core through all the commercial, plastic nonsense, and shows me the Christ child, and such beautiful, holy mystery, that my heart leaps with the joy of it, deep and fleeting at the same time, in perfect paradox.
Merry Christmas to all, and may God bless us, every one.
This post is part of our 2016 Advent series.
Christmas greetings from Tom and Christine Sine in Australia.
The peace of God of rest on you,
The love of God shine through you,
Let Christ be birthed afresh in you
This day and every day.
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