December 3, 2021
Grace and peace to the saints of FPC:
At Hanging of the Greens, as we gathered around the firepits in the dark, Kerry shared this meditation:
I’ve been thinking about the story of God’s coming to be among us... Emmanuel, God with us….thinking about the people who were part of the story of the coming of the baby Jesus…
John the Baptist, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, wise men…and it struck me that they all had one thing in common.
They all had to get up and go somewhere.
John the Baptist had to go to the desert…Mary had to go to her cousin Elizabeth’s home…Joseph had to go to Mary and marry her…Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem…shepherds had to go find the manger…wise men had to go to a far off land...and then they had to go home by a different way…and then after that, Mary and Joseph had to go to Egypt.
Everyone involved in the coming of God to earth had to “go.” They all had to move in a particular direction, towards somewhere, something, someone. And so, as a result, in order to go, they had to leave – had to leave somewhere, something, someone.
John the Baptist had to leave the way normal people lived to go into the desert. Mary had to leave her mother and father’s home. Joseph had to leave behind his old view of Mary, and his old vision of what his life with her would be like…then he had to leave his kin and his carpenter business...
Shepherds had to leave the familiarity of the fields, leave their job. Wise men had to leave the path they knew and strike out on an uncharted route. Eventually, Mary and Joseph had to leave their country-- with a newborn infant, and become refugees, strangers living in a foreign land.
So much of the story of this baby’s coming depends upon people going, getting up and moving, striking out, shaking off the old ways of living or thinking or seeing things. It appears that God comes to us in Christ, but if we want to find him, meet him, enjoy the beauty of him…
…we must go. We cannot stay where we are, or how we are. We must get up out of the grooves of our lives, step off the well-worn paths of our days, leave behind the familiar, the expected, the known, and go. Go where the angel, the messengers of God, the whispers or dreams or annunciations of the Holy Spirit send us.
So our Advent symbol this year is a green stoplight. A sign of going. Put it somewhere where it can nudge you to think, and listen: where do I need to go? Where is God sending me? What do I need to leave behind? What different direction is God pointing me towards? What new path am I being told to take so that I can find myself in some holy space, meeting the One who comes?
158 – that is the number of times the word “go” appears in the gospels. 1,308. That is the number of times the word “go” appears in the Bible. This Advent, let us prepare for the One who comes by being willing to go.
Kerry and Carter