4th Sunday in Advent

Our readings for 4th Sunday of Advent are:

1. 2 Samuel 7: 1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16
2. Psalms 89: 2-3, 4-5, 27, 29
3. Romans 16: 25-27
4. Luke 1: 26-38

• Why are you here?
• "What's the use?"  Especially when things do not turn out the way that we had planned/hoped, we want to know whether there was any purpose or reason behind what did happen.
• Think of a great disappointment in your life.  How did that change you?
• Looking back on it now, if you were to live through that same disappointment now, how might it change you?
• How many other decisions about how you responded to a disappointment would you like to change?
• How can you prepare for your next disappointment?

• Litany of saints
• God has taken care of His people through the centuries in many ways, maybe most notably in the form and person of His various saints and prophets who have arisen to call His people to deeper awareness.
• Who are some of your ancestors in faith who have gone before you, preparing the way in one way or another for who you are today?
• Do you ever thank God for them?
• Who do you think is looking up to you, right now, and gaining inspiration from the life that you are leading?

• Finding holiness in obedience
• Why do you try to obey God?
• You know that if you do, things will work out in the end?
• You know that if you do not, people will get hurt?
• You know that this is the way for you to be most fulfilled as a person?
• You love God and you want to get closer to Him.
• Come up with some answers of your own, and rank them.
• What does that tell you about your relationship to God?

• Jesus among us
• God comes to you in a dream, and tells you that He has a very important message for you, and that He is going to send Jesus Himself to your door to deliver that message.  God doesn't tell you when Jesus will come, or how to even recognize Him.
• How would you prepare?
• How would you know that this person at your door was Jesus for you?
• How would you receive them?
• What makes you think this is just conjecture?

• Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. Where is God inviting me to be transformed through my sufferings?
2. Who is that great cloud of witnesses cheering me on right now?
3. How can I deepen my prayerful obedience to God?
4. Where is God talking to me right now?

Making Time

Sacred art is replete with nativity scenes

In which everyone is stock still.

I've seen young infants in action, 

I've seen their parents striving to keep up with their needs.

No one is ever that calm around a baby,

Unless one or both of them is asleep.

So, just what are these icons meant to portray?

What inner reality beckons?

Maybe those scenes depict contemplation.

The picture of prayer

Prayer conducted after all of the immediacy of the day

Prayer that picks up the scattered moments,

Weaving them back together into the larger whole,

Seeing the unseen for what it was,

Camouflaged against the backdrop of the urgent and necessary,

Hidden in plain sight, yet accessible to anyone with eyes to see.

A silent invitation to each of us,

To take nothing for granted in the busyness of life.

To see the grander scope of the incarnation,

In the next spoonful of food offered to the hungry

In the welcome given to those with nowhere to go,

And the light offered to those who realize they are lost.

Shalom!