Finding Rest and Peace

I pray that you are well and are finding ways to enjoy this “brisk” winter weather, and I ask your prayers and support for those who are struggling in these winter months, both physically and emotionally.

This Sunday past, I preached a sermon about the sovereignty of God as it relates to our prayer life and our prayers – about how God is not our “errand boy” when it comes to asking for what we want and how God is calling us to conform to God’s will, so we pray, “thy will be done” in the Lord’s Prayer. It’s important and enlivening to try to pray with God and see that the way God answers prayers gives us better clues about what God’s will may actually be in our lives and in the lives of the world around us.

I thought it was a pretty straightforward message and might prove helpful. After the service, a long-time and faithful parishioner came up to me to talk. They stated that they really enjoyed the message and appreciated the teaching and sentiments expressed (I liked the sound of that.) Then their tone of voice turned more serious and quiet as they asked, “How do you pray like that? I mean you have a seminary education and all, so it must be easy for you. I have never known how. Can you teach us so that we can pray with God?”

My heart went out to this pillar of our community and I drew them aside and told them this secret, “It’s not up to us. It’s up to God." All we have to do and all we can do is try to come to God. He will take care of the rest. Whether you read the Bible as a way to come to God or sit quietly and seek God’s presence; whether you read prayers or say prayers out loud or sing your prayers; God will come and make Himself known to you.

In other words, if you want to be in a relationship with God and find real rest and peace and fearlessness, seek God. Come to God. Be quiet with God. Sing to God. There are any number of ways, but the critical truth is that you and I have to come to God for God to be with us. God has this “thing” about not overpowering our free wills, that’s true, but if we will seek Him in some place in our lives, He will do the rest.

So, if you’re feeling a little fearful about your life or you’d like to have a living relationship with God or if you want to deepen that relationship, come to Him. He may not make Himself known immediately, but He will draw you close and you will know Him in your life.

Grace and Peace and good Praying.

WFA

Tie the Cat

"Be still, then, and know that I am God."
Psalm 46:11


I pray that you are well and are finding time in this new year to spend time with God. So many of us want to live the Christian life, to be connected with God, and feed our faith instead of our fears, but often, other people and activities compete for time with God. The result of not spending time with God is that our lives are less than they could be. We miss out on noticing how connected God is in our lives, and our fears grow. So this week, I invite you to "tie the cat." Here's what I mean.


A certain woman decided that she wanted to have a spiritual life. She began by setting aside fifteen minutes at the very start of the day to read the Bible and to pray. This particular woman shared her life with a very affectionate cat, who, during this time of prayer, rubbed against her and too often distracted her from her time with God. So she began her prayer time by tying the cat's collar to her bedpost so she wouldn't be distracted from her time with God.


Her son, watched his mother grow in faith, peace and understanding, and swore that when he became an adult, he too, would set aside time with God to grow in the faith. His life was a little busier than his mother's life and he could only spend ten minutes with God each morning. He began his prayer time by tying up his cat, then opening the Bible and praying. His life changed dramatically from the time he spent with God and the son grew as a Christian.


The granddaughter grew up with a faithful, praying grandmother and father and vowed that, she too, would be a person of faith. Her life, though, was so distracted and busy that she had even less time for God then her father. So, early each morning she would rise, tie up her cat, and jump in the shower to get ready for her day.


Like all relationships of value, spending time with the person or persons you love is crucial. And it's not always the quality of time we spend. More often, deep relationships form with the quantity of time we spend with the beloved. A good amount of time spent with a partner, a child, a friend, and especially with God, almost always yields a deeper love and understanding, as well as a greater sense of peace and purpose.


So, tie the cat in your life and go into your room alone to spend time with the Lord. Walk away from one of your distractions and activities that overfill your time and be still in the presence of God. Your fears will fall away and that peace that passed understanding will fill your soul and bring you closer to a life that's really life.

Grace and Peace,
WFA

Heart Healers

"Everyone will know you are my followers, if you love one another." John 13:35


I pray that you are well want to invite you to a renewed sense of who we are and what we are about as followers of Jesus.

Everyone, including you and me, is walking around with a hole in their heart that can be filled by only one thing. Some of the holes are little. We're feeling a little lonely or left out. Something in our life didn't quite go the way we wanted it to go and we're disappointed. We're under the weather or aren't quite sure what's coming next in our lives and have a heightened sense of anxiety as opposed to peace.

Some of the holes are large. We have big holes in our hearts when we are grieving over the death of someone we love. We have large holes in our hearts when we there are troubles in our lives or in the lives of those we love. Our holes grow large when we're unemployed or underemployed or when the road ahead seems difficult and God seems somehow absent.

All of us have holes in our hearts and everyone you and I meet has some hole that is waiting to be filled with love and compassion from God and from God's followers - you and me. That's what Jesus claims to be the mark of discipleship, our love for one another.

And you know that makes a lot of sense with all of us walking around with holes in our hearts. We have an opportunity to help God fill other people's holes and hurts by showing them love and allowing God to fill the hole in our hearts by receiving love from others.

So the next time you see someone acting out or being rude or looking sullen, remember that that's the expression of the hole in their heart and find some way to offer love to them. And the next time you come to St. David's to worship or to participate in some activity or fellowship event, look for some way to love another person to help fill up their heart hole. If we will, then we will be known as Jesus' disciples and we will become heart healers and open ourselves to God healing our hearts at the same time.

Grace and Peace,
WFA

Fearless Seeking

"Wise men from the east came asking, 'Where is the child born to be king?' Matthew 2:1

I pray that you are well and that your Christmas was both joyous and loving and that you are beginning to consider how you will be living in this new calendar year. For many of us, the New Year is a time to reconsider our lives and to make plans and resolutions about how we intend our lives to be better, richer, more fulfilling or, alternatively, more peaceful, less confusing, and more in line with the life we believe God is calling us to lead. It is both exciting and daunting to look ahead to our lives in the coming year and I have one strong word of advice: be fearless. Oh right, that's our theme for the year at St. David's Church, Fearless: Living our Lives in Hope.


Be fearless in the knowledge that God is with you and is calling you to become the person He created you to be. Be fearless in the knowledge that though you and I will certainly fall short at times and have to struggle through some difficulties. But we are not alone, God is with us. Be fearless in striving and seeking to reach beyond yourself to find new ways of living because God is ready to empower you to do just that. Be fearless in loving God and loving others. That is what we are made for and we never fail at that.


Be fearless, like the Wise Men who sought the Christ child, who sought the nearer presence of God, by setting aside their lives and seeking Him with all their heart. It's an interesting part of the Nativity Story to me, these Wise Men. For though we don't know much about them, we do know enough to say that once they set their sights on their goal, their resolution, their star, they did whatever it took to reach it. They left their lives behind. They traveled an incredible distance. They faced a ruling power who was at odds with their quest. They arrived and they found what they sought - the Christ child.


As you read through their little story in the second chapter of Matthew's Gospel, one gets the sense that they were at peace with their quest and that nothing would keep them from accomplishing it, fearlessly.

So, as we begin the New Year, I encourage you to be at peace as you set about your life and especially as you seek God's presence. Remember, God is with you and He will never leave you to seek alone!
 
Grace and Peace,
WFA

Christmas All Year Long

Introduction: Christmas Begins Tomorrow

Finally, finally Christmas has come, and the busy world around us is hushed for the moment; the frenzied activities of the days and weeks of preparation are ended, or almost; the fears and darkness and uncertainties of the world are set aside and the great promise of the season of life opens before us as we gather together this night to worship God; open our lives anew or for the first time to the gift of Christmas. To open our lives to the gift of God’s love for you and for me, and to remember God’s love for the entire world.

I love Christmas. I love the sights and sounds and smells of Christmas. I love filling up the space between the floor and the Christmas tree with presents. Stuffing stockings so full that the hooks on the mantle won’t hold them. I love the thought that our extended families and friends are receiving little signs of our love for them though the mail; Thank God for the internet. I love the Christmas cards and the greetings of the season; I love seeing how many of you are doing; how beautiful your families are, and the creative ways we express the progress of our lives over a year. I love the food - too much; I love the special cookies and treats, the dinners and gatherings. I love the gracious fellowship and friendship that Christmas inspires.

I love, too, the way that people reach beyond themselves at Christmas time. I love how we reach beyond our families and friends to do something for someone else. How many of us do something for someone we may never meet this side of heaven? The gift to someone who may never give us something in return-food for the homeless in Norristown and Philadelphia; Christmas presents from our Christmas pageants for children who may receive no other presents this Christmas; World Gifts for the children and our partners in Guatemala and in Uganda; letters and packages to our men and women in uniform around the world.

But even more than the physical gifts that reach beyond our homes and around the world, I love the gentle kindnesses we show to one another in this season. Like the gentle consideration to the widow or widower on their first Christmas alone who receives a phone call, a visit or are invited to come for Christmas dinner with people who offer love to fill the cracks in their hearts. There’s something in the air at Christmas time. A freedom, an openness, a fearlessness to reach beyond ourselves to others to share our gifts with others and show them just how important they are to us, how much we cherish and love them, even if we don’t use the words.

Ahh, but the spirit rarely lasts. The season of unchecked generosity and unafraid love passes all too quickly like a dream or a fleeting thought. And some time Christmas night, when we’ve eaten our fill, put the presents away, and hung up on the last phone call to a family member or a friend, we’ll begin thinking about when the tree should come down. Our thoughts and our energies will begin to turn toward the next day of our regular lives and the rest of the year. Christmas will come and Christmas will go and we’ll pick up where we left off from our colder, quieter, more fear-filled lives putting Christmas and the spirit of love and generosity back in the box and allowing the spirit and love of the season to simply drift away.

But that’s not what God has in mind for us at Christmas. For God, Christmas is not a brief season of love and generosity that we pick up for a time and then set aside for our real life. For God intends that the gift of Christmas, God with us, to be our real life and this Christmas Day is only a beginning.

The Baby in the Manger

Every year at Christmas, in the midst of all of our other activities and celebrations we stop for a moment to gather together around the manger in Bethlehem, drawn in some way to the gentle poetry of Luke’s Gospel about the birth of Jesus and that first Christmas centuries ago. We are also drawn to the hope of the world, drawn to the hope of God revealed to us in the form of this baby child, born in a stable.

With no room in the inn where respectable people would stay, we enter the dusty, noisy, fragrant stable with Mary and Joseph and Jesus.We hear the pronouncement of the angels that a Savior has been born and walk with the poor, scared shepherds to Bethlehem to try to catch a glimpse of what started all of this. And it’s here, in the oddest, dirtiest of places that it all begins. Like our hearts and our lives, which are not always the cleanest, tidiest of places, God first reveals Himself in Jesus in a common stable. God comes to the lowest place to remind us that however muddy, sinful and fear-filled our lives may have become, He’s willing to come to us and to dwell in us — to be with us.

And what we don’t see fully as we linger by the manger on Christmas Eve, what we don’t know when we first make room for Jesus in our hearts, we find out soon enough. And that is that Christmas is only a beginning. For this child who is born in the lowliest of places grows up to be a Teacher, the likes of which the world has never known. A Teacher who will show us the way for living our lives today. This child born in a stable grows up to be a Healer who cures the lame who comforts those who mourn and who will bring healing and comfort to our lives today. This child grows up to show us how to live fearless lives, trusting in God moment by moment; becoming the persons God created us to be.

And this child in the manger grows up to show us the face of God, the face of the God who loves us so much that He will do whatever it takes, even suffering death on a cross to take away our sins, giving us a resurrection that promises us life beyond the door of death to draw us close, to save us, to love us. The child of Bethlehem grows up to promise to be with us always. He promises to send His Spirit of love, hope and forgiveness to dwell in our hearts so that the love He shares with us we can share with others at Christmas and every day of the year.

You see, Christmas — Christ coming into the world — is not an end in itself, not something that happened once upon a time that we remember fondly once a year. Christmas is the beginning of the promise of a life lived with God now and always for there is no place and no life and no one that is not worthy of His presence. If we are willing, He will come to us. He will come and make His home in our hearts tonight and always, so that we may keep Christmas every day of the year.

Christmas All Year Long

Keeping Christmas every day of the year may be a lot harder than it sounds. Certainly it doesn’t mean that we need to decorate our houses with trees and lights and manger scenes and Christmas stockings on the mantle day in and day out. It doesn’t mean that we need to give and receive physical presents every day, or send cards and flowers and fruitcakes to everyone we know (and you can definitely keep the fruitcakes to yourself, anyway.)  Keeping Christmas throughout the year means that we make room for Christ to enter into our lives in some way, and that we remember Christmas is both Christ’s birthday in the world as well as a new birth for our lives.

Keeping Christmas throughout the year means that you and I remember this truth and make a place in our lives, however grungy or inelegant they are at the moment, that we make a place for Christ — for God — to dwell with us so that we know His love and generosity each day and can share that love and generosity with others fearlessly and hopefully all through the year.

Keeping Christmas throughout the year will look different in all of our lives, but the Spirit and love and gift of Christmas that we know this night is ours always. It is ours when we open our lives to God’s presence and the Christmas love and spirit we share will not fade from our lives, but only grow stronger as Christ comes to live in our hearts.

So this Christmas may God grant you the gift of the light of Christmas, which is faith;
The gift of the belief of Christmas, which is hope;
The gift of the warmth of Christmas, which is love;
The gift of the radiance of Christmas, which is truth;
The gift of the joy of Christmas, which is God.

May be peace in your heart and over all the earth, and good will for all in God’s love this night and every day through the year.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to All!

Introduction: God Welcomes Everyone

Merry Christmas! That’s got to be one of the sweetest greetings of the whole year: a greeting of hope, a greeting of joy and good humor, a greeting of love. And it’s a greeting that draws our hearts and our thoughts in some way to this night with Mary and Joseph, with shepherds and angels, and most importantly with the child, lying in a manger — with Jesus.

Every year we’re drawn in some way by the gentle poetry of Luke’s story about the birth of Jesus and that first Christmas in Bethlehem; drawn to the hope of the world, drawn to the hope of God to the hope and the light that pushes away the darkness of our fears revealed to us in the form of a baby child, born in a stable. Now some of us are drawn to the manger this night because we believe in our heart of hearts and in the way we live our lives, we believe. We believe that God came down in human form to show us who God is and to save us from ourselves, to save us from our sins and our loneliness and our fears, to save us so that we can really live.  We believe and are here this night to pay homage, to give thanks, to offer our lives anew for this great gift of God’s love revealed in the child. And I bid you Merry Christmas!

Now others of us are drawn here because we once believed & we’d like to believe again; we come with some kind of remembrance of the love, the peace and the hope that comes to us only from God’s presence and love at work in our lives.  We long to know and to live that fearless reality again. We’ve come because we long for our lives to be different. We want to know in our heart of hearts that God loves us and that we are His. We come, hoping for God to touch our lives, our souls, our hearts — to touch us in some way with His grace and goodness. And I bid you Merry Christmas!

And others of us are drawn here tonight because,  Although we’ve never believed or even hoped to believe in Christ as Savior; or to become involved in a Christian community and Christian life; we still respect the tradition or honor the wishes of family and friends. We come because we wouldn’t by our absence tonight, spoil the holiday for our loved ones. And I bid you all a very Merry Christmas!

Welcome this Christmas Eve, for behold, along with the heavenly hosts of God; behold, I bring you tidings of great joy for all people — for those of us who believe, for those of us who long to believe again, and for those of us who are here for other reasons. Fear not, for all of us a Savior has been born; for all of us a gift has come into our world and it’s good news; better still, it’s saving news. Christmas, the coming of God into our world as one of us, reveals God’s love for all people, for everyone, including you and me, and it’s a gentle love; a love that overcomes our fears, but a love that won’t overcome our free wills.

For God has not come to us tonight in His power and glory to force us to love Him. Instead God comes in the form of a baby child, helpless to overpower anyone; but willing to offer His love, His hope, and His saving grace for everyone. And we are just the people He wants to touch tonight — people He loves enough to come for Himself.

We Are in the Story

That God has come in human form for all people is one of the most incredible parts of the story tonight. And we know that God has come for all of us because we’re all there; we’re all there in the story. There are believers in the story, at least two of them – Joseph and Mary. Joseph sets aside his fears and believes. Believes that this child would be the Savior of the world, the Son of God. He had received a powerful message in a dream and was willing to take Mary as his wife and to care for the child as his own. Mary allowed the power of God to take away her fears because the angel had announced God’s favor on her — God’s love for her — and she’d been willing to offer herself in return to bear this child. The child who would save the world and offer the way back to God.

There are also people there in the story who once believed or who wanted to believe again. Every day people who were keeping watch over their flocks by night, watching, looking, longing for something more, ready to accept God’s grace and promise of a new life if offered. Even though the angels terrified them they overcame their fear and followed the angels’ calling and went to Bethlehem in the hope that their longing would be fulfilled.

And, like some of us here tonight, there are people in the story who didn’t believe at all. People who had no idea anything important was taking place in Bethlehem.  From Emperor Augustus and the Governor, Quirinius, to some of Mary and Joseph’s fellow travelers in Bethlehem to be registered by Rome for the census. It was just another day in their lives.

And the Christ child comes for all of them in the story;

         He comes without regard to their position in life,

         He comes without regard to their beliefs and practices,

         He comes without regard for whether they deserved God’s love or not,

         He comes for His own purposes,

         He comes to take away their fears and lift their burdens,

         He comes to draw them to a life that’s really life.

And He comes for all of us here tonight, too in the stories, in the reality of our lives. He comes to let us know that we are all His and He loves us. He comes to you and to me tonight to take away our fears, to lift our burdens. He comes to offer you real life, life in all its abundance.

God Showing Love as We Show Love

Now, like most of you, I like to communicate my love in some outward way. It doesn’t really do much good to keep our love quiet or hidden away. People won’t know the depth of our feelings if we keep them to ourselves.  And so we communicate, we show our love for others.

Whether it’s a friend to a friend, a couple falling in love with one another, parent to a child, a child to a parent,  we want to communicate our love and the most common way is to say those three words, I love you.  Or to use some other words that let’s  those we love know that they are in our hearts.

But we also like to act in some way to show our love for another person. We offer our hand in friendship; we give a hug or a kiss, make a special dinner on a birthday; send a card or give a Christmas present. We spend time with people we love, listening and talking, and sometimes just being quiet together. If we have love in our hearts for another we become pretty good at finding physical ways to show our love for them so that they know they have our hearts in some tangible way.

And it’s the same for God. God wants to communicate and show His great love for us in words and deeds. God’s communicated His love in thousands of ways throughout history — through the wonder of creation and the gift of your life and mine; through words in the scriptures and through human representatives who have a word of God’s love for us.    But apparently the wonder of creation, the gift of life, the words weren’t enough for us to really know God’s I love you.

So God did something new, something surprising; something mysterious, something very physical.          God communicated His love for us by taking every ounce of that love every beautiful sunrise and sunset, every word of hope and promise and sent it to us in the most fragile and vulnerable of packages in the form of someone like us.

           

You see, Jesus Christ is nothing less than the full and physical communication of God’s I love you in word and in action for all people,  not merely for those who believe but for those of us who once believed and for those of us who have never believed or just aren’t sure. Whoever we are, whatever we believe, however we’re living our lives, God loves us and wants to communicate His love for our lives tonight and to give His love to you and me, just as we are, in our own lives. It’s what draws us to the manger, it’s what draws us here tonight. It is a love that we don’t deserve, that we can’t earn. And best of all, it is a love that we can’t lose, because it comes to us as gift from God, as the greatest of gifts for all people.

Receiving God’s Love

So whether you’re here tonight because you believe or because you want to believe again or because other purposes, not wholly your own, have drawn you to the manger. Remember that this story is your story, too, that the Lord of life who came that first Christmas night is here at our sides, beckoning us into a life with Him now offering us the gift of His love; and a life free from fear.

So now may God grant you the gift of the light of Christmas, which is faith. The gift of the belief of Christmas, which is hope; The gift of the warmth of Christmas, which is love; The gift of the radiance of Christmas, which is truth; The gift of the joy of Christmas, which is God; That there may be peace in your heart and over all the earth and good will for all in God’s love this night and every day throughout the year. 

Merry Christmas!

Light in the Darkenes

"The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." John 1:5

Dear People of St. David's,

I pray that you are well and that as the great day of Christmas draws steadily closer, that your plans and preparations are coming together. I pray also that your hearts are light and open to the coming of God among us this Christmas.

This has been a very hard week for light hearts. For along with the cares and struggles of our every day lives and long running conflicts and dangers around the world, the darkness that is still in the world broke out in such violent horror and death last week in Newtown, Connecticut that we are all still reeling. There are no words to describe the sadness and the heartbreak of the loss of so many young, innocent lives. The waste and brokenness caused by the actions of one person sent shockwaves around the country and through all of our hearts. It's enough to make you wonder about God's creation and the ongoing darkness and outright evil that flare up in our lives all too often.

But it is into just this kind of darkness that God's light shines. Sometimes we have a tendency to wrap Christmas up into neat little packages and into a celebration that rarely touches the struggles and darkness in the world and in our lives. We have nice decorations and Christmas worship services and we have times with family and friends that don't always reach into or even touch on the darkness around us. But the light of Christmas is not just another decoration at mid-winter. The light of Christmas, Jesus the Christ, shines light upon the real darkness of human sin and brokenness. The light of Christmas stands in opposition to a power that is seeking to undo and thwart God's purposes in our lives and in the life of the world. The light of Christmas came into the world in another dark moment and comes to us in our darkness. It is a light that seeks and one day will overcome the darkness we know all too well this week.

So, as we put the finishing touches on our Christmas holiday this year or race to the finish on Christmas Eve, look to the light. Invite the light of Christmas to shine on the dark places in your life to bring healing and hope and thankfulness. Invite the light of Christmas to fill you and direct you to be a person who brings light. Then find some way to let that light shine through you to others at St. David's, in your families, in your work or at school, and in every place where the shadows of darkness linger in our world. God's promise is that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.

May the blessing of the Light of Christmas be yours and may we all allow that light to shine through us so God can use us to bring more and more light to the world.

Merry Christmas!