Christmas is only a couple of days away. This week I am lighting the love candle to add to those of gratitude, peace, joy and hope that I have lit in past weeks. The light shines brightly in the early morning darkness, reminding me of how Christ’s light shines in some of the darkest parts of our world.
Sometimes we look around us in despair and long for the coming of Christ’s light in all his fullness. Then we catch glimpses of where that light has already entered our world and it dazzles us with its brightness filling our hearts with gratitude, hope, and joy.
We watch the unsung heroes whose lives make a difference in places of grief and despair. People like Sandra Lako, a physician who works in Sierra Leone. I first met Sandra when she was six years old, ministering with her family on board the mercy ship M/V Anastasis. Her whole life, like that of her parents Rene and Marianne who now work in Haiti, has been dedicated to those less fortunate than we are.
Sandra has lost several colleagues to Ebola, and lives and works under the constant threat of its deadly grip. Sierra Leone has banned Christmas and New Year gatherings this year and Sandra has cancelled her own personal celebrations with friends and family in the U.S. Yet Christ is being birthed in that country because of the commitment that she and her colleagues have made. Pray for them and light your own Christmas candle for them.
We watch those who struggle with their own heavy burdens of illness, death and injustice and still manage to shine like bright Christmas stars in our midst. Like my friend Niki Foster Hibbert, undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. The doctors only expect her to live for around three years, from Niki’s perspective 1,000 days to share blessings. Sometimes these blessings are filled with joy, other times with heartache. I am following Niki’s daily journey on Facebook, laughing and crying with her and her family and friends. It is a beautiful though obviously painful journey which is touching the lives of many and filling all of us with Christ light.
So as you gather round the manger this week, whose light shines in the darkness for you? Who do you think of that has filled you and those around you with Christ light?
I wrote this prayer for Christmas last year and used it as the Christmas eve prayer in A Journey Toward Home. I found myself reflecting on it again this morning and thought that some of you might appreciate it too.
Today’s Advent post is written by Ryan Harrison. When Ryan isn’t dreaming up ways to reach out to her community and participate in Kingdom building, she’s working and writing (and writing when she should probably be working).
nativity – Andi Harisman Indonesia
I decided to brainstorm my guest list, the way one might brainstorm wedding or party guests.
Manger Guest List:
- People who don’t think like me (as long as they don’t crowd me)
- People who don’t act like me (people who act more hateful, more judgmental, more foolish, less empathetic, less kind than me)
- People who need the manger more than I do (those who need a reminder that Christmas isn’t about shopping or parties, but about worship)
- People who need to repent for their sinful ways more than I do
- People who don’t feel the weight of justice and mercy the way I do
What an incredibly insensitive (at the least) and hurtful guest list; I’m ashamed to admit it’s mine. But when challenged to think honestly about who we would invite to the manger, that’s the list that emerged. I thought of all the ways the manger could be kept neat and tidy, by keeping those who thought differently at arms’ length, over there by the stable. I thought of all the ways the manger represents the upside-down of the season, and all the people who needed a little bit more upheaval in their thinking about God, King and Country. I thought of all the people who just could not fathom the King of Israel, the Redeemer of Israel being laid to bed in the pungent smell that seeps into the skin and the dust that cakes on layers thick. I thought of all the people who held onto the shreds of power the way a baby twists his mom’s hair around his fingers and in between his knuckles, matting it in sticky drool. I thought of all those who ignore the rending hearts, the seam-ripping sorrow that fills the air in cities across the world. I thought that they could all crowd in close to the manger to see the newborn King.
But the person I didn’t think about, the person who most needs to be invited to the manger is me.
I need the manger.
I have a pit in my stomach and I don’t think it’s from too many Christmas cookies. My inability to admit that I am the one in need of a manger has crept up on me and it’s settled in, rooting itself into my stomach the way a hedgehog burrows deep into the dirt. I am the one who needs the upside-down Emmanuel. I need the upside-down of the King who welcomes sinners and tax collectors into his presence but also Pharisees in the dark crevices of the night. I need the upside-down King who isn’t afraid to tell his disciples that they have it all wrong, that their empty arguing about first and last isn’t the way of the kingdom—even after they’d known so long, seen and heard for so long that it wasn’t the way. I need the upside-down King who says, ‘just one more step’ to the man who really isn’t willing to follow Him so far, after all. I need the upside-down of the One who loves the deserter-denier, who calls out beloved instead of betrayer. I need the upside-down King who tells me I’m holding on to my life too much and the only way to keep it is to lose it: gradually, step-by-step for the sake of others and sometimes all at once for them, too.
I need the manger. I need to be invited to rejoice over the tightly swaddled baby, the light that destroys the darkness, all-creation-turned-upside-down Emmanuel. And then perhaps, my guest list will reflect God’s heart and not my own.
- Story by Mustard Seed House
- Music by Lacey Brown, In Mansions and Church of the Beloved
- Reflection by Tom Sine, Mustard Seed Associates
- Meditation by Christine Sine, Mustard Seed Associates from Light for the Journey
- Produced by Ryan Marsh, Church of the Beloved
Join us here at the Mustard Seed House as we celebrate our annual Advent II Homecoming party. Listen to Tom Sine reflect on coming home to the kingdom of God and Lacey Brown’s beautiful song What Happens When God Comes Close.
Or right click this link and save to your computer. Advent Podcast Four
This is the last of four Advent podcasts produced by Ryan Marsh of Church of the Beloved for the Godspace blog during Advent. We hope that you have enjoyed the series as much as we have. We would love to receive your feedback as we consider other podcast series for the future.
And don’t forget our other Mustard Seed resources including these beautiful prayer cards that we have put together. Your purchase of these resources is one way to help support the Godspace blog and the ministry of Mustard Seed Associates. If you have enjoyed this series and would like to consider an end of year donation to Mustard Seed Associates to help us develop more resources that would be appreciated too.
Listen to previous podcasts hosted by Ryan Marsh and Christine Sine:
First week of Advent with Tara Ward and Chelle Stearns listen here,
Second week of Advent with Aaron Strumpel, Dwight Friesen, and Donna and Jim Mathwig listen here
Third Week of Advent with Karen Ward, Tacey Howe Wispelwey and Mary September listen here
You may also like to check out these Advent Mediation Videos
If you are just tuning in on this you may also like to watch the Advent meditation videos:
Alleluiah the Christ Child Comes
The Coming of the Lord is Near
Enjoy – have a wonderful Christmas and a blessed New Year.
I am; yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes:
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems …
From ‘I Am’
Written in The Asylum, Northampton
John Clare (1793-1864)
Blue Christmas is a feast for those for whom the longest night of the year might hold some particular emotional or physical significance; a feast for those for whom darkness is perpetually threatening to overwhelm the light; a feast for those for whom the phrase ‘the dark night of the soul’ holds a special resonance; it is a feast for all those who find themselves unable to celebrate.
It is a feast to welcome in the unwelcomed.
In the last six months the depression that permanently lies under my own skin has become acute again, so this is a feast of particular pertinence to me this year. I am fortunate to be spending today with my parents.
But what of those whose families struggle to support them? What of those whose families reject them, for whatever the reason? What of the families who are missing a beloved part this Advent because support systems were not in place to help when they were most crucially needed? What of those who have been ‘released’ to the ‘care of the community’?
‘Many translations of Luke’s “Magnificat” (Luke 1:46-55) use the wonderful phrase “God has regarded me in my lowliness” (1:48). This French-based word regardez means to look at twice, or look at again, or look at deeply. Mary allows herself to be looked at with God’s deeper and more considered gaze. When we do that, God’s eyes always become more compassionate and merciful. And so do ours if we regard anything.’(Richard Rohr, online meditations)
Blue Christmas is a feast then to be hospitable to myself, to bring all my own grief to the manger and expose myself to the searing Love of God’s gaze; and it is a feast to bring others to this place too, reaching out to those who feel love-less at this time. As Godspace discussed at length in the summer, ‘Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place … It is … the liberation of fearful hearts.’ (Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out)
Am I offering a space where those who meet me find themselves looked at compassionately, so that the Spirit’s work of loving liberation may begin or continue? Further, is there honesty in my artistic work which reaches out on an emotional register, perhaps creating just even a small moment of emptiness which the Spirit may freely fill in? As Amy Winehouse said so brilliantly ‘Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen’: Creativity is God’s integrating response to all grief.
As a photographer I am always considering the interplay of physical light and non-light, and all stages in between. Shade and shadow dance their way through my work, drawing my eye further into an exploration of what is called ‘darkness’, both inside and outside me. (The abstracts that accompany today’s post are all details of IPhone photos that drew me in the further I looked.) I take spiritual comfort from the knowledge that God dwells in the dark. Indeed God deliberately entered into darkness, being born in a stable hewn out of rock; and rose out of a cave, ensuring all may hope to be so transformed. Further, the very name of God we can repeat so blithely at Christmas, Immanuel, is the specific promise that the Living God is with us in the darkness.
I have spent much of this year mulling over Barbara Brown Taylor’s brilliant book Learning to Walk in the Dark. As part of her research she went to sit in the Organ Cave, Virginia, where she picked up a small stone that had gently sparkled next to her. Later it looked ordinary. It is only by turning off all the lights (deliberately deciding to enter a state of darkness) that she realises the paradox: ‘the stone is alive with light, but only in the dark’:
While I am looking for something large, bright and unmissable holy, God slips something small, dark, and apparently negligible in my pocket. How many other treasures have I walked right by because they did not meet my standards?
Those who ‘dwell in darkness’ have much shimmering beauty to share, even in, most particularly in, their, our, my, howls of pain. If only there were ears to listen, and eyes to see, and hands to hold. If only we had the courage to sit in the dark. If only we welcomed the darkness. Then God might indeed be born in us again this day.
Kate Kennington Steer is a writer and photographer with a deep abiding passion for contemplative photography and spirituality. She writes about these things on her shot at ten paces blog (http://shotattenpaces.blogspot.co.uk).
Today’s prayers come from John Birch’s new book The Act of Prayer
Scripture:
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16: Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26; Luke 1:46-55; Romans 16:25-27;
Opening Prayer:
Through our worship today,
bring us nearer,
in our Advent journeying,
to Bethlehem’s stable,
expectation and celebration.
Adoration
We will sing of your love for ever,
and proclaim your faithfulness to every generation,
for your word is dependable, your promises secure.
A child is to be born within one nation but for all nations.
Our God will be revealed,
the Son of David born in humility.
Love will come down to earth
as servant-king and vulnerable.
We will sing of your love for ever,
and proclaim your faithfulness to every generation,
for by grace incomparable our salvation is here.
Confession
As we celebrate the gift of love within a manger
and remember that Jesus Christ came for our salvation,
forgive us,
if our hearts are cold and faith is hard to find.
Bring us back to the mother,
Mary, who bore the child who would be king.
Remind us of her gentleness,
her faithfulness when asked to be
the blessed one through whom
the divine would walk upon this earth.
Oh, that we should demonstrate such faith!
Thanksgiving
When you come to us
with gentle whisper or mighty wind,
and ask what seems impossible to human minds,
as you did with Mary,
may our response not be to hesitate,
make excuses or run away.
but to echo instead those trusting and beautiful words,
‘I am the Lord’s servant;
may your word be fulfilled in me.’
For Mary’s faithfulness
and her life of service
we thank you, Lord.
Today’s post in the series Welcome to the Manger Who Will You Invite? is contributed by Lynne Baab who has written many books and articles on Christian spiritual practices. Her latest book is The Power of Listening. Visit Lynne’s website and blog for numerous articles she’s written on spiritual practices.
The author’s husband on a Christmas hike in Dunedin, New Zealand, on the top of Flagstaff, 666 meters or 2185 feet
Who do I want to bring to the manger this Christmas? Who might otherwise be excluded or ignored? Here’s my somewhat odd answer: my body.
Of course, my body isn’t actually separate from myself, but sometimes it feels like it is. Part of that comes from the Christian emphasis on spiritual things. Our redemption in Christ often seems to be more focused on our souls and spirits rather than on our bodies. Another part of my sense of separation from my body comes from my struggles with weight my whole life, which have often contributed to a view of my body as a bit of an enemy rather than as a beloved part of myself.
My conviction that Advent and Christmas are a good time to focus on the significance of our bodies in God’s grand story comes from living in the Southern Hemisphere for the past few years. This Advent is my seventh in New Zealand.
I come from Seattle, where Advent evenings are pitch dark before 5 pm. Here in Dunedin during December, there is still light in the sky at 10 pm. In New Zealand, the red and green colors of Christmas take new forms: strawberries, local zucchini and red peppers cooked together, and lettuce from our garden paired with bright red tomatoes. These are healthy, light foods. Favorite activities of New Zealanders during Advent and Christmas include walking on beaches and hiking in the mountains, sailing and surfing, gardening and strolling among the roses in the Botanic Garden. Here, our physical bodies are not smothered in heavy sweaters and down coats during Advent and Christmas. Bodies seem alive and real this time of year, nurtured by healthy food and lots of physical activity.
At first, a Christmas season full of long, sunny days seemed very weird indeed. I know people in Florida experience sunshine at Christmas, but I seldom had. I missed the candles in the dark evenings, and all that imagery of Jesus as the light shining in the darkness. I missed that sense of hunkering down inside with delicious smells of cooking in the background and green and red decorations in the house. Now the red and green show up in healthy foods, and we focus on the beauty of the light outside and all the growing things we can see from our window even in the evening.
I have come to see the new pattern as a gift, a part of my growth in bringing my whole self, including my body, to Christ in worship and submission. When we think of the incarnation, we remember that Jesus took on flesh in order to redeem us. He didn’t want to redeem just our souls and spirits. Our bodies are an integral part of our selves, and therefore an integral part of our redemption. I celebrate that reality much more profoundly at Advent in the Southern Hemisphere than I ever did up north.
As I walk among the December roses, I remember that God made those gorgeous blooms, just like God made my body, soul and spirit. At this time of celebrating the incarnation, remembering the beauty of creation helps remind me why the incarnation was necessary. Truly I long to return to the purity of what God made, before all that beauty was marred by sin. Truly my whole self – body, soul and spirit – is broken and needs redemption in Jesus.
Yes, this year I want to bring my body to the manger, to bow in worship and surrender, giving my whole self to Jesus.
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