4th Sunday of Advent – Joy
Reading: Isaiah 62
Navigating our emotions can be a tricky thing, especially when we find ourselves falling in love with another person. Within a couple months of when we started dating, on a romantic stroll down Homestead Drive in Mount Hope – complete with a light Christmas snow falling – I told Hennie that I loved her and wanted us to get married someday. We had hinted at the possibility before then, but that was the first awkward moment of me laying all my cards on the table. My gushing emotions that night started a conversation that led to our formal engagement the following September and to our wedding the year after that. Continue reading
Advent marks the beginning of the Christian calendar, a way of marking time through the story of our redemption in Jesus Christ. The year begins with a season of waiting and expectation as we celebrate Jesus’ birth and anticipate his return.
Longing for Advent
“Another luxury for an idle imagination is the writer’s own feeling about the work. There is neither a proportional relationship, not an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress and its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.” -Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Every now and then someone lets you in. They open their door and, with a bit of vulnerability, allow you to see and hear what they are experiencing. Several years back, a middle-aged couple in our church opened their door, when they told me: “We’ve been members here for 12 years and we still feel like outsiders.” They weren’t complaining as much as they were inviting me to stand next to them as they shared their story of our church. 
Muddied Prayers 