Advent Reflections
Stir-up / Traditional Holiday Food
“Stir up,” from the Latin “excita,” reminds us of God’s power moving in the world, but the stirring up also connects Advent to preparing time-honored recipes for the season. In older versions of the Book of Common Prayer, the collect for the final Sunday before Advent asked God to “stir up thy power…and come,” and so that […]
Patience
While Advent is a season of hope and expectation, it is also a time of patience as we anticipate the realization of our hopes in the birth of Jesus. We are called to wait for God to come in his own way in his own time, admitting our weaknesses and need for Him. It takes […]
John the Baptist
John the Baptist prepares the way for Jesus Christ as the Son of God, calling for a return to God and repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins. He calls for a rejection of worldliness and uses baptism as an act of purification. John the Baptist’s message of atonement and preparation helps us reflect […]
Hope, Expectation
Advent is a season of hope: for the coming of the Christ Child, for a light in dark days, for peace that passes all understanding. It is a time to remember the longing of the Jews for a Messiah and the lineage and events leading to the birth of Jesus. Christian hope calls us […]
Color
Advent, from the Latin word adventus, which means “coming,” is considered to be the beginning of the Church Year. A new season of the church brings with it a change of liturgical color. The long green season after Pentecost gives way to either purple for repentance, introspection, and renewal, or blue for The Virgin Mary, […]
Life-giving Choices: Advent Meditation, 12/25/2012
I’ve been pondering lately, just what does it mean to make a “life-giving” choice? Does it mean to nurture relationship with others rather than focus on my own ends, no matter how noble? To acknowledge the individual-ness of others, even if it tramples on my own? How does one discern that a choice is “life-giving” […]
Tonight … Advent Meditation, 12/24/2012
Luke 1:67-79 By: Amy Real Coultas It’s Christmas Eve! We’ve been waiting and preparing and hoping and wondering and longing for this night for weeks now. Tonight we join in Mary’s last moments of waiting. Tonight we, the church, are like young Mary – very pregnant, stretched full with impossibility made possible, full of confusion and wonder […]
God Surrounding Us With Love and Hope: Advent Meditation, 12/23/2012
Luke 1:39-49 By: Vivian Taylor The summer after I graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, I was in the running for a grant that would have paid for most of my schooling at a Baptist seminary where I was enrolling in the fall. I was in the National Guard, and one of […]
My Soul Magnifies the Lord: Advent Meditation, 12/22/2012
Luke 1:46-56 By: Jason Sierra When I was little, my brother and I had a cassette tape with a dramatic telling of Jesus’ birth story on it. I would listen to it night after night for months on end as I fell asleep, the rhythms of the story making their way into my dreams. Actors […]
Season of the Red Cups: Advent Meditation, 12/21/2012
Psalm 33:20-22 By: Joe Chambers We’re seven weeks deep into the Season of Red Cups, an eight-week celebration of secular Christmas that starts in early November, marked by the introduction of red Starbucks coffee cups, and seems to get bigger and bigger every year. It’s loud, distracting, and it can even be a little bit […]