In recent weeks you have read here that you are a blessing and we can’t go alone! Those things are both true and yet, we still ponder what should we do? Share this email with others you know who are asking this same question.
Between Sundays for Week of December 16, 2024
John the Baptist knew something about honestly naming the state of the world as it is and not sugarcoating his words. “You brood of vipers!” he exclaimed as he looked at the world around him and spoke with urgency to any who would listen to his warnings of the wrath to come. “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees!” Even now the fires are burning.
And how did the people around him respond? According to Luke 3:7-16, group after group responded in the same way. The crowds, the tax collectors, and the soldiers all asked some form of the question: What should we do? People responded to John with the question that rises at some point from all of our lips when we come face to face with the chaos and sin of the world around us: What should we do?
What should we do? In today’s gospel, in each instance, John looks at the people before him and sees them as the blessing they are to God, he understands that preparing the way of the Lord will take more than his solo efforts and he cannot go it alone. John looks at each group who hears his preaching and speaks to us across the centuries and says in essence: do the good that is yours to do.
We can’t do all the things and trying to will leave us burned out, exhausted and cynical. But today’s gospel invites us to consider, what is the cause, the circumstance, or the situation that raises your passion or tugs at your heart? There’s a good chance that is your work to do.
Doing our work can feel futile. We ask, “who am I in the face of such monumental challenges?” You are a blessing who knows you cannot go it alone and so you will do the good that is yours to do trusting that when God sets out to do new things, ordinary people like you and me, will need to be part of the equation!
Long before John walked this earth, God’s prophet, Isaiah, made God’s promise clear: When “you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness . . . the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your needs . . . and make your bones strong.”
When we do the work that is ours to do, God promises light, sustenance, and strength for the journey.
P.S. On Tuesday, December 17 at 7 pm we gather in the sanctuary for our annual Longest Night service for anyone who is struggling to find hope, peace, joy, or love during this season. Please share this invitation with your neighbors.
P.P.S. Watch Sunday’s worship service as we mark the third Sunday of Advent as we await Christ’s coming. View past services on the Share in Worship page of BLC’s website!
Faith Connection at Home
Patty Chaffee
Family Faith Formation Coordinator
Maybe none of it matters.
Maybe you can’t make a difference.
Or maybe that watermelon seed you spit out over the summer will grow into a green orb, full of sticky sweet fruit. Maybe the rain will nourish it. Maybe your mother’s hands will pull it from the vine, slice it into wedges, and place it on the dining room table. Maybe the neighbors will come over and chomp into that soft pink fruit, juicy water running down their chins. Maybe you will laugh at the shared experience, at this garden-grown communion, and maybe the stars will shine brighter that night.
People say the problems of the world are too big to make a difference, but surely those people have forgotten the fruit that grows from one little seed.
Poem by Rev. Sarah A. Speed | A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org
Ponderings
This year’s Extended Advent theme – Words for the Beginning – is accompanied by quilt images. This poem, by Jane Wilson Joyce, is worth pondering. (You can see Joyce’s poem and read more about her by following the link below.)
From Quilt Pieces (Gnomon Press, second printing, 2009).
The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia
is cracked. California is splitting
off. There is no East or West, no rhyme, no reason to it. We are scattered. Dear Lord, lest we all be somewhere else, patch this work. Quilt us
together, feather-stitching piece
by piece our tag-ends of living,
our individual scraps of love.
