Dear Faith Family,
Our Advent journey this year has taken us not only through the familiar stories leading to the first Noel but also through some less-than-familiar stories! Stories told to help awaken our attention to the end's beginning. An ending that begins by mending, restoring anew what once was and will forever be.
Four stories calling us to:
HOPE: Seeing through The Little Match Girl, a story that, in the end, life is something for which we long, something more, better, and comfortingly familiar...
PEACE: Seeing through The First Christmas Tree, a story of a life saved into a new way of living...
JOY: Seeing through The Three Skaters, a story of the energy in new life that spills over into abundance for others, and...
LOVE: Seeing through Christmas Day In The Morning, a storied reminder to reawaken into action what is missed and made mild in our daily duties and seasonal routines.
Woven together, these stories give us a complete vision of life, true life. Life with God and one another as it will be, as it can be, as it is because of the One whose once, future, and continuous arrival "moves hope, peace, joy, and love into the neighborhood" and declared, "It is finished." Having nearly completed our Advent journey, might we open our ears and our hearts to one last prophetic charge to find our end in the end's beginning:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God,
and whoever loves has been born of God
(begun of God)
and knows God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God,
because God is love.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us
(moved into the neighborhood),
that God sent his only Son into the world,
so that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we loved God
but that he loved us
and sent his Son
to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God;
if we love one another, God abides in us
and his love is perfected
(completed, brought to its end)
in us.
(1 John 4:7-12)
May we see in this season's stories, symbols, and spirit a vision of the life we are (re)born into because Jesus was born, died, and lives forever. And, as the prophets of old dared to dream, may such vision compel us to live the life we see in Him until all can see what we've received.
Love you, faith family! Praying you have a truly Merry Christmas!
God bless!