Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009: CHRISTMAS EVE

Dear Jesus, 

Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go. 

Flood our souls with your spirit and life. 

Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly that our lives may only be a radiance of yours. 

Shine through us

and be so in us

that every soul we come in contact with

may feel your presence in our soul.

Let them look up and se no longer us

but only Jesus. 

Stay with us

and then we shall begin to shine as you shine, 

so to shine as to be light to others. 

The light, O Jesus, will be all from you. 

None of it will be ours. 

It will be you shining on others through us. 

Let us thus praise you in the way you love best

by shining on those around us...Amen.

-Mother Theresa, in Words to Love By

Friday, Dec. 25, 2009: CHRISTMAS DAY

"G.K. Chesterton said, 'When a person has found something which he prefers to life itself, he (sic)) for the first time has begun to live.' Jesus in his proclamation of the kingdom told us what we could prefer to life itself- and it would work! The Bible ends by telling us we are called to be a people who could say, "Come Lord Jesus" (Rev. 22:20), who could welcome something more than business as usual and live in God's Big Picture. WE all have to ask for the grace to prefer something to our small life itself because we have been offered the shared Life, the One Life, the Eternal Life, God's Life that became visible in this world in Jesus. We do not get there by being correct. We get there by allowing the connection. It is like a "free wireless" connection! 

The kingdom is finally to be identified as the Lord Jesus himself. When we say, 'Come Lord Jesus' on this Christmas Day, we are preferring his Lordship to any other loyalty system or any other final frame of reference. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not! If Jesus is Lord, then the economy and the stock market is not! If Jesus is Lord, then my house and possessions, family and job are not! If Jesus is Lord, then I am not! That multileveled implication was obvious to first-century members of the Roman Empire because the phrase, "Caesar is Lord" was the empire's loyalty test and political bumper sticker. They, and others, knew they had changed "parties" when they welcomed Jesus as Lord instead of the Roman emperor as their savior. 

What we are all searching for is Someone to surrender to, something we can prefer to life itself. Well here is the wonderful surprise: God is the only one we can surrender to without losing ourselves. Henceforth, humanity has the right to know that it is good to be human, good to live on this earth, good to have a body, because God in Jesus chose and said, "yes" to our humanity. Now go and utterly enjoy all remaining days. Not is it "Always Advent" but every day can now be Christmas because the one we though we were just waiting for has come once and for all. 

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Isaiah 52:7-10 (click link for scripture)

-Richard Rohr, in Preparing for Christmas

PREVIOUS DEVOTIONS

Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009

“I believe that the single most important consideration during the sacred season of Advent is intensity of desire. Paraphrasing the late Rabbi Abraham Heschel, “Jesus Christ is of no importance unless he is of supreme importance.” And intense inner desire is already the sign of his presence in our hearts. The rest is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps many of us are in the same position as the Greeks in John chapter 12.w ho approached Philip and said, “We would like to see Jesus.”

The question addressed to each of us is: How badly?

Pray for the grace of desire to see the living Lord.

SCRIPTURE TEXT: John 12:20-26 (click link for scripture)

Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2009

“One day Saint Francis and Brother Leo were walking down the road. Noticing that Leo was depressed, Francis turned and asked: “Leo, do you know what it means to be pure of heart?”

“Of course. It means to have no sins, faults or weaknesses to reproach ourselves for.”

“Right,” said Leo. “That’s why I despair of ever arriving at purity of heart.”

“Leo, listen carefully to me. Don’t be so preoccupied with the purity of your heart. Turn and look at Jesus. Admire him. Rejoice that he is what he is – your Brother, your Friend, your Lord and Savior. That, little brother is what it means to be pure of heart. And once you’ve turned to Jesus don’t turn back and look at yourself. Don’t wonder where you stand with him. “

-From Lion and the Lamb by Brennan Manning

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Matthew 18:1-9 (click link for scripture)

Monday, Dec. 21, 2009

Isaiah 7:14

No one can celebrate

A genuine Christmas

Without being truly poor.

The self-sufficient, the proud,

Those how, because they have

Everything, look down on others,

Those who have no need

Even of God- for them there

Will be no Christmas.

Only the poor, the hungry,

Those who need someone

to come on their behalf,

will have that someone.

That someone is God.

Emmanuel. God -with-us.

Without poverty of spirit

There can be no abundance of God.

-Oscar Romero

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Isaiah 7:14  (click link for scripture)

It’s tough to be on the receiving end of love, God’s or anybody else’s. It requires that we see our lives not as our possessions, but as gifts. And “nothing is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people than grace,” said John Wesley. Today, pray for the grace to see your poverty so that you can also see the gift of the baby.

Friday, Dec. 18, 2009

The price for real transformation is high. It means that we have to change our loyalties from power, success, money and control (read: “our kingdoms”) to the Lordship of Jesus and the kingdom of God. Henceforth, there is only one thing that is Absolute and, in relationship to that, everything else is relative – everything – even the church…even our nation, even national security, even our wealth and our possessions, even our identity and our reputation. All of our safety nets must now be of secondary, or even tertiary importance or even let go of, because Jesus is Lord! Whatever you trust to validate you and secure you is your real god and the Gospel is saying, “Will the real God please stand up?

From Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Luke 3:1-14  (click link for scripture)

What are the real gods in your life? What gives you false happiness and fulfillment and prevents you from letting God’s truth break into your life?

Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009

Go to the lost sheep of Israel…, Jesus tells his disciples during their evangelism training session.  It reminds me of St. Augustine’s famous prayer:

“Late have I loved thee, beauty so ancient and so new!

Late have I loved thee!

Thou wast within me, and I stood without.

I sought thee here, hurling  my ugly self on the beauty of they creatures.

Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee.

Thou hast called me, thy cry has vanquished my deafness.

Thou hast shone, and they light has vanquished by blindness.

Thou hast broadcast thy perfume, and I have breathed it; now I sigh for thee.

I have tasted thee, and now I hunger for thee.

Thou hast touched me, and now I burn with desire for they peace.”

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Matthew 10:1-10   (click link for scripture)

Pray for the people of LaSalle Street Church as we seek to be a community hungering and thirsting for God.

Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009

Come Lord Jesus,’ the Advent mantra, means that all of Christian history has to live out of a kind of deliberate emptiness, a kind of chosen non-fulfillment. Perfect fullness is always to come, and we do not need to demand it now. This keeps the field of life wide open and especially open to grace and to a future created by God rather than ourselves. This is exactly what it means to be “awake” as the Gospel urges us.

When we demand satisfaction of one another, when we demand any completion to history on our terms, when we demand that our anxiety or any dissatisfaction be taken away, saying as it were, ‘Why weren’t you this for me? Why didn’t life do that for me?’ We are refusing to say, ‘Come Lord Jesus.’ We are refusing to hold out for the full picture that is always given by God.

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Revelation 22:17-21   (click link for scripture)

From Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas

Our brothers and sisters in Tanzania kneel with us in praying, “Come Lord Jesus.” Pray for Jacob Mwaigaga, Johanes Msuya and Yusto Jonathan, all pastors who will be joining Pastor Laura in March

Monday, Dec. 14, 2009

Compassion is expressed in gentleness. When I think of the persons I know who model for me the depths of the spiritual life, I am struck by their gentleness. Their eyes communicate the residue of solitary battles with angels, the costs of caring for others, the deaths of ambition and ego, and the peace that comes form having very little left to lose in this life. They are gentle because they have honestly faced the struggles given to them and have learned the hard way that personal survival is not the point. Their caring is gentle because their self-aggrandizement is no longer at stake. Their is nothing in it for them. Their vulnerability has been stretched to clear-eyed sensitivity to others and truly selfless love.

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Isaiah 53:1-5 (click link for scripture)

-From Healing of Purpose by John E. Biersdorf

Pray for Pastor Laura, Rev. James Kearney, and Rev. Tobin Wilson, the American pastors who are part of learning and leading with our TZ pastor friends.

Sunday, Dec. 13, 2009

[What I am suggesting here ] is that everything in your life is a stepping-stone to holiness if only you recognize that you do have within you the grace to be present to each moment. Your presence is an energy that you can choose to give or not give. Every experience, every thought, every word, every person in your life is a part of a larger picture of your growth. That’s why I call them crumbs. They are not the whole loaf, but they can be nourishing if you give them your real presence. Let everything energizes you. Let everything bless you. Ever your limping can bless you.

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Luke 21:25-36 (click link for scripture)

-From A Tree Full of Angels, by Macrina Wiederkehr

Our lives are busy, our schedules are full and our resources are extinguished. Pray for God’s grace to watch, to wait, and to be present.

Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009

“Our Father, give us the faith to believe that it is possible for us to live victoriously even in the midst of dangerous opportunity that we call crisis.

Help us to see that there is something better than patient endurance or keeping a stiff upper lip, and that whistling in the dark is not really bravery.

Bless us with the greatness of humility, that we may feel no shame in expressing our need of a living God. Forgive the pride that causes us to strut about like knights in shining armor when we know full well that we are but beggars in tattered rags.

Plant a seed of faith in us today and nurture it that it may grow. Then, trusting in thee may we have the faith that goes singing in the rain, knowing that all things work together for good to them that love Thee. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Luke 21:25-36 (click link for scripture)

From Letters from the Desert, by Carlo Carretto

Pray for the students and teachers who attend Olarash School, outside Kisongo, TZ.

Friday, Dec. 11, 2009

In a very real sense we are earthbound creatures, caught always in the rigid context by which our experiences are defined. The particular fact or experience which we are facing at the moment, or the memory of other particular facts or experiences from other moments - these are our openings, these are the doors though which we enter into wider meanings, into wider contexts. When our little world of particular experiences seems to be illuminaed by more, much more, than itself, and we seem to be caught up into something bigger than our litle lives, we give to such moments special names...At such times, we know that we live our way deeply in the present only to discover that we are invaded by the Eternal.

Sensitize our spiris, our Father, that we may tread reverently in the common way, mindful that the glory of the Eternal is our companion. May we shrink not from the present intensity of our experiences lest we turn away from the redeeming power of Thy Perfect Love. Amen.

-From The Inward Journey, by Howard Thurman

Pray for TZ Pastor James Kasanta who is organzing the Pastor's Training Retreat from Kisgongo, TZ.

Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009

Jilted Lover

Many people carry around the image of God as an impersonal force, something akin to the law of gravity. Hosea portrays almost the opposite: a God of passion and fury and tears and love. A God in mourning over Israel’s rejection.

God uses Hosea’s unhappy story to illustrate God’s own whipsaw emotions. That first blush of love on finding Israel, God says, was like finding grapes in the desert. But as Israel breaks trust again and again, God has to endure the awful shame of a wounded lover. God’s words carry a tone surprisingly like self-pity: “I am like a moth to Ephraim, like rot to the people of Judah” (5:12)

The powerful image of a jilted lover explains why, in a chapter like Hosea 11, God’s emotions seem to vacillate so. God is preparing to obliterate Israel – wait, now God is weeping, holding out open arms – no, God is sternly pronouncing judgment again. Those shifting moods seem hopelessly irrational, except to anyone who has been jilted by a lover.

Is there a more powerful human feeling than that of betrayal? Ask a high school girl whose boyfriend has just dumped her for a pretty cheerleader. Or tune your radio to a country-western station and listen to the lyrics of infidelity. Or check out the murders reported in the daily newspaper, an amazing number of which trace back to a fight with an estranged lover. Hosea and God demonstrate in living color exactly what it is like to love someone desperately and get nothing in return. Not even God, with all power, can force a human being to love.

Virtually every chapter of Hosea talks about the “prostitution” or “adultery” of God’s people. God the lover will not share the beloved bride with anyone else. Yet, amazingly, even when she turns her back, God sticks with her. God is willing to suffer, in hope that someday she will change. Hosea proves that God longs not to punish but to love.

Philip Yancey, Meet the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan), 396

World Vision's mission asks God, "May our hearts be broken with the things that break your heart." May that be our prayer today as well.

Dec. 9, 2009

I CARE AND AM WILLING TO SERVE AND STAND WITH OTHERS TO SAVE OURCHILDREN AND NATION

Lord I cannot preach like Martin Luther King, Jr.

or turn a poetic phrase like Maya Angelou or Robert Frost

but I care and am willing to serve and stand with others for children.

I do not have Harriet Tubman’s courage

Or Indira Gandhi’s and Eleanor Roosevelt’s political skills

but I care and am willing to serve and stand with others for children.

I cannot sinf like Fannie Loue Hamer or Aretha Franklin

or organize like Ella Baker and Bayard Rustin

but I care and am willing to serve and stand with others for children.

I am not holy like Archbishop Tutu, forgiving like President

Mandela, or disciplined like Mahatma Gandhi

but I care and am willing to serve and stand with others for children.

I am not brilliant like Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, Albert Einstein, or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or as eloquent as Sojourner Truth and Booker T. Washington

but I care and am willing to serve and stand with others for children.

I have not Mother Teresa’s or Dorothy Day’s saintliness,

The Dalai Lama’s or Cesar Chavez’s gentle tough spirits

but I care and am willing to serve and stand with others for children.

God, it is not as easy as the sixties

to frame an issue and forge a solution

but I care and am willing to serve and stand with others for children.

My mind and body are not so swift as in youth

and my energy comes in spurts

but I care and am willing to serve and stand with others for children.

I’m so young

nobody will listen

I’m not sure what to say or do

but I care and am willing to serve and stand with others for children.

I can’t see or hear well

speak good English, stutter sometimes

and get real scared, standing up before others

but I care and am willing to serve and stand with others for children.

Lord please use me as You will to save Your children today and tomorrow and to build a nation and world where no child is left behind and everyone feels welcome.

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Luke18:15-17 (click link for scripture)

Marian Wright Edelman, The Sea is so Wide and my Boat is so Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation (New York: Hyperion), p. 104-105.

Pray that today you might be willing to stand alongside the vulnerable wherever you find them.

TUESDAY: Dec. 8, 2009

A new name

We all need to be told that God loves us, and the mystery of the Annunciation reveals as aspect of that love. But it also suggests that our response to this love is critical. A few verses before the angel appears to Mary in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, another annunciation occurs; an agel announces to an old man, Zechariah, that his equally aged wife is to bear a son who will “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” The couple are to name him John; he is known to us as John the Baptist. Zechariah says to the angel, “How will I know that this is so?” which is a radically different response from the one Mary maes. She says, “How can this be?”

Mary’s “How can this be?” is a simpler response than Zechariah’s and also more profound. She does not lose her voice but finds it. Like any of the prophets, she asserts herself before God saying, “Here am I.” There is no arrogance, however, but only hold fear and wonder. Mary proceeds – as we must do in life – making her commitment without knowing much about what it will entail or where it will lead. I treasure the story because it forces me to ask: When the mystery of God’s love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? Do I ask of it what it cannot answer? Shrugging, do I retreat into facile clichés, the popular but flase wisdom of what “we all know”? Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say something new, a “yes” that will change me forever?

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Luke 1:8-23 (click link for scripture)

Kathleen Norris, Annunciation. From Watch for the Light (Farmington: Plough Publishing House).

Please pray for the young girls of Kisongo/ Makuyuni region of Tanzania. They are often sold at young ages as wives to older village men. The family typically gets a goat in return for their daughters.

MONDAY: Dec. 7, 2009

A new name

The job of any preacher, it seems to me, is not to dismiss the Annunciation because it doesn’t appeal to modern prejudices but to remind congregations of why it might still be an important story. I once heard a Benedictine friend who is an Assiniboine Indian preach on the Annunciation to an Indian congregation. “The first thing Gabriel does when he encounters Mary,” he said, “is to give her a new name: ‘Most favored one.’ It is a naming ceremony,” he emphasized, making a connection that excited and delighted his listeners. When I brood on the story of the Annunciation, I like to think about what it means to be “overshadowed” by the Holy Spirit; I wonder if a kind of overshadowing isn’t what every young woman pregnant for the first time might feel, caught up in something so much larger than herself. I think of James Wright’s little poem “Trouble,” and the wonder of his pregnant mill-town girl. The butt of jokes, the taunt of gossips, she is amazed to carry such power within herself. “Sixteen years, and / all that time, she thought she was nothing / but skin and bones.”  Wright’s poem does, it seems to me, what the clergywoman talks about doing, but without resorting to ideology or false assurance that “its’ okay.”  Told all her life that she is “nothing,” the girl discovers in herself another, deeper reality. A mystery; something holy, with a potential for salvation. The poem has challenged me for years to wonder what such a radically new sense of oneself would entail. Could it be a form of virgin birth?

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Luke 1:26-35 (click link for scripture)

Please pray for Abel Noah, Selemani John, Wilbard Loishaye, Maliaki Laizer, TZ pastors who serve HIV/AIDS ophans

SUNDAY: Dec. 6, 2009

imago Dei

How do we make places that are hospitable to the Word of God? How do our lives become a home for God to dwell?

I’m thinking about this as I prepare this Sunday’s sermon from Malachi. John Calvin wrote this about the refiner’s fire: “The power of the fire, we know, is twofold; for it burns and it purifies; it burns what is corrupt, but it purifies gold and silver from their dross.”

What is it that stands in need of purification? And what will be consumed by flames in the process? After purification, what is it that God reckons as precious metal? Calvin thought that the refiner’s fire would serve to correct the corruption of the priests and others who serve in the church. But purification has another possible purpose as well, in addition to the removal of impurities. When silver is refined, it is treated with carbon or charcoal, preventing the absorption of oxygen and resulting in its sheen and purity. One writer has suggested that a silversmith knows that the refining process is complete only when he observes his “own image reflected in the mirror-like surface of the metal.”

Is the imago Dei, the image of God in our souls becoming more visible through the refining going on in our lives?

Pastor Laura S. Truax

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Luke 1:26-35 (click link for scripture)

Saturday  |  Dec. 5, 2009

A different kind of peace

Advent continues; our ruminations go deeper. We wait, watch, wonder if we will ever know peace. Will we find peace in our own souls? Will there be peace on earth? Peace is the traditional theme for the Second Sunday of Advent – nor just peace as the absence of violence, bur peace that passes understanding, peace the heals and makes whole, peace that allows the wolf to live with the lamb and the leopard with the kid, peace that allow a little child to lead the people and bring them back into full communion with God, peace that ensures there will be no more hurting or destruction on God’s holy mountain because the whole earth will be full of the knowledge of God (Isa. 11:6-9)

Randle Mixon, Feasting on the Word. p. 33.

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Luke 1:68-79  (click link for scripture)

Friday  |  Dec. 4, 2009

Wishing while waiting

But there is more. Waiting is open-ended. Open-ended waiting is hard for us because we tend to wait for something very concrete, for something that we wish to have. Much of our waiting is filled with wishes: “I wish that I would have a job. I wish that the weather would be better. I wish that the pain would go.” We are full of wishes, and our waiting easily gets entangled in those wishes. For this reason, a lot of our waiting is not open-ended. Instead, our waiting is a way of controlling the future. We want the future to go in a very specific direction, and if this does not happen we are disappointed and can even slip into despair. That is why we have such a hard time waiting: we want to do the things that will make the desired events take place. Here we can see how wishes tend to be connected with fears.

But Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were not filled with wishes. They were filled with hope. Hope is something very different. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes.  Therefore, hope is always open-ended.

Henri Nouwen, Waiting for God. From Watch for the Light

(Farmington: Plough Publishing House).

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Still waiting…Isaiah 40:28-31 (click link for scripture)

Thursday  |  Dec. 3, 2009

Patience

A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always epecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her. Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were very present to the moment. That is why they could here the angel.  They were alert, attentive to the voice that spoke to them and said, “Don’t be afraid. Something is happening to you. Pay attention.”

Henri Nouwen, Waiting for God. From Watch for the Light (Farmington: Plough Publishing House).

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Psalm 27  (click link for scripture)

Wednesday  |  Dec. 2, 2009

Breathing Space

Probably the reason I love Advent so much is that it is a reflection of how I feel most of the time. I might not feel sorry during Lent, when the liturgical calendar begs repentance. I might not feel victorious, even though it is Easter morning. I might not feel full of the Spirit, even though it is Pentecost and the liturgy spins out fiery gusts of ecstasy. But during Advent, I am always in synch with the season.

Advent unfailingly embraces and comprehends my reality. And what is that? I think of the Spanish word anhelo, or longing.  Advent is when the church can no longer contain its unfulfilled desire and the cru of anhelo bursts forth: Maranatha! O Come Lord Jesus! O Come, O Come Emmanuel!

--  Heidi Neumark, Breathing Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 211. From Feasting on the Word.

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Jeremiah 33:14-16  (click link for scripture)

Tuesday  |  Dec. 1, 2009

The Journey Begins In Rome

The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem actually begins in Rome. Caesar Augustus was concerned about many matters in his kingdom. One of them was its size. Roman men were not marrying and not having children. He imposed penalties for those not contributing to the growth of the kingdom.

One way to monitor the growth was with a census.

The census would work an Advent blessing. It had been prophesied the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). Caesar had expected the census would be one of the marks of his greatness. He listed it as eighth among the thirty-five “Acts of Augustus.”

He might well have expected his death would be noted by the number of years since the

founding of Rome. Instead, the baby that would be born in Bethlehem because of his

census would cause his death to be marked by that birth.

As we begin our Advent journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, we are reminded that what

may seem like the innocent events of government, under the blessings of God, have a

profound impact on how God’s grace is released into the world. This act of Caesar had a

profound impact on God’s grace to us.

There are many governments involved in many decisions these days. Many of them appear to have no impact on the message of God’s love for us and His people, but they do. We give thanks for God’s blessings on the acts of leaders and their governments in times’ past.

We pray He might bless those acts and decisions of government these Advent days. For as He acted to release His love in the days of Caesar Augustus, so He acts to release His love to us and through us today.

--  Lutheran Chaplain Vern Gunderman

SCRIPTURE TEXT: Luke 2:1 (click link for scripture)