Everyday Hope

Every day can be like Christmas in its love and its peace if our hearts open up and make room for love. The holy child is waiting to be born in every instant, not just once a year. Marianne Williamson

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. Psalm 51:15 AMP

So, here we are in this first week of the season of Advent.

 

My life took a turn six weeks ago that, while not totally unexpected, surprised me none-the-less.  The church that I have worked for over the past seven and a half years, struggling with giving, eliminated my position. 

Boom!  Just like that I was out of a job. 

It was time.  I had said years ago when I took the position, that five to seven years would be about right.  If we hadn’t made a difference in that time, it was not possible and it would be time to “shake the dust off my feet and move on.”

It has been a tumultuous year…retirement (sorta, kinda) of an old staff member, new staff member totally ill-equipped for the position, church literally torn up as new roof and re-working of the sanctuary took place, old staff person back – temporarily, new equipment in place and working, new staff member in place, son is very ill, budget problems at the church…manufactured budget problems, but budget problems none-the-less.  Gotta have a secretary.  Gotta have a custodian.  Can’t change the minister until the Bishop and Cabinet make the switch.

 

Program director can go.

Really.  I was OK with it.  Not ok with the way they did it, but ok that it happened.  It was time. 

These were the same issues they were dealing with when I walked in all those years ago.  Same people causing it.  Obviously, not much learned here. 

As the pastor said to me one day, “Where is Christ in all of this?  Do they not know him? There is someone waiting in every corner to attack.” And he was right.  He was discouraged.  I was disheartened.  We had worked so hard.  He likened himself to the Apostle Paul.  I have tended to think of myself as Elijah.  Not that we are that holy, please don’t misunderstand, but that they just never seemed to catch a break.  They worked and worked to help others know Christ and they ended up in prison again and again.  They had to run away and hide so as not to be killed by the queen.  All because they knew the Lord and they wanted others to know him too.

But you can’t make people learn.  I know this.  Years of teaching has taught me this lesson.

So, I have lost my job and, more than that, I have lost my church.

 

God continues to provide and next week I will start a new job in a new place.  While it will still be a few weeks before we will be able to physically move there, the work will begin and I am looking forward to going back to my early childhood days in a new state and city.  New challenges.  New friends.

And I look forward to being able to attend the church of my choice, rather than having to be at work.  I look forward to NOT being responsible for the details that get overlooked by the volunteers so that it all flows seamlessly.  I look forward to worshiping God and relaxing in his sanctuary.

It did not go unnoticed by me that this past Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent.  And, while I have not attended church outside of my living room, I have worshiped God right here in my own sanctuary, the place he has given me to lay down my head for the past six years.  Andy Stanley has been leading me through The Bible for Grownups.  If you haven’t seen this study, I would encourage you to do so.  It’s not about the Bible stories that we’ve all heard since we were children.  It’s about how the Bible came to be The Bible.  I’ve taught a big part of what he teaches here, but he puts it together so much better than I ever could.

 

And it made me think.  The first Sunday of Advent.  The Sunday of HOPE.  That’s a good thought for this Sunday in my life.  I think I’ve spent the last year or more trying desperately to hang on to hope…for my church, for my son, for my future. 

And then I had lunch with one of my young friends.  He, too, is struggling with this decision…how does the behavior of some of these people fit with what we have taught him (church people are still people – completely fallible and every one of us struggling to get through the day looking at least a very little bit like Christ).

 

Every day can be like Christmas in its love and its peace if our hearts open up and make room for love. The holy child is waiting to be born in every instant, not just once a year. Marianne Williamson

So when I read this quote by Marianne Williamson, someone I have followed for over thirty-five years, that little flame in my heart flickered and I asked the question, “Why do we wait for this one month out of the year?”

Christmas is about love and peace.  Wars have stopped for just this one day to remember.  People spend four weeks in parties and concerts and caroling and baking and shopping and …

Why is this?

Jesus didn’t come so we would celebrate his birthday once a year; so we can have big parties and celebrations.  He wasn’t opposed to parties and celebrations but if we make these things the pathway to Christ, then we’ve really missed the purpose of his coming.

For over four hundred years people had been crying for the Messiah.  They wanted to be saved.  They envisioned the leader riding in on his stallion, bringing his vast army to very publicly defeat everything bad in their lives.  “PLEASE save us,” they cried.  And they waited.  Few had hope.  Most had determined, like me – I’m afraid, that this was it.  This was all there might ever be.

And then a baby was born.

 

Not at all like they had assumed it would happen and because it didn’t happen the way they thought it would, many wouldn’t believe it.

But it did.  And if we make it all about that night, we have missed his message.  Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy.  If we know him, not of him, but really know him, we are filled with these things.  Even when we begin to wonder if perhaps we’ve been wrong about all of it, when we know him that little flame is still there and he reaches down into our very being and reminds us.

 

“I know,” he says.  “I’ve been where you are.   I know how tired you are, how discouraged you are, how painful this has been.  I know and I’m here.”

Instead of filling every moment of this season with all the ‘stuff’ we normally do, what if we were to take this time and be still with Him?  How would our season of Advent and our remembrance of the birth of our Savior be different, if we hadn’t worn ourselves out doing all the things we all do?

I have HOPE that each one of us will find that time and place to be still with him and when we do, then we’ll praise him every day, we’ll celebrate him every day, we’ll honor him every instant of every day.  And then…

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. Psalm 51:15 AMP