A Message from Pastor Deborah Birkeland
A BLESSED ADVENT AS WE “AWAIT” THE CHRIST CHILD!
Waiting…our culture simply doesn’t understand the gift of waiting! Did you notice that Christmas décor and shopping enticements were visible right after Halloween this year? Consumerism can’t wait until “Black Friday” it seems…giving Thanks isn’t the priority before we are invited to spend, spend and spend some more! And did you notice that some stores opened up on Thanksgiving eve, or by midnight so that those shoppers that would rather stay up late than get up pre-dawn for the sale prices could get a head start? Is it no wonder the police had to be called to settle disputes in shopping center parking lots when people are deprived of sleep just to get the “best deal” on the latest “must have” gadget?
Do I sound sarcastic? Yes, I guess that I am. For I feel robbed, or at least, I think my Savior feels robbed! When did our culture’s celebration of Christmas push the “Christ” completely out of the picture? Happy Holiday’s bah humbug! I want our ADVENT season back!
Advent is a true gift of God’s compassion and grace. To know the quiet and dark night of “waiting” makes the amazing light of Christ’s birth on Christmas Eve so much more precious. To wait and ponder the promises and hopes and dreams of God in our heart; to anticipate His gift of joy while yet preparing IS important, isn’t it? I believe it is.
As many of you know, the Birkeland family has recently experienced the death of “Susie,” our niece in San Francisco who succumbed to cancer at age 45. Her passing has touched us profoundly as a family because she was like a daughter/sister to us. Her passion for life, and her ability to love profoundly and deeply was displayed by the tender way she smiled and touched the homeless people who shared her inner city neighborhood. Her poetry and art captured a vision for God’s peace that found beauty in the “waiting” amid life’s realities. If there was an “urgency” that shaped Susie’s writing, it was an urgency for understanding, compassion and justice for those in our society pushed to the margins, or within the holocausts of war that ravage our world. Susie showed me how to “wait” on love, and to trust it even through the ravages of cancer. What a Christ-like gift she was in my life. Christ was truly born in her heart of “waiting.”
I know that nearly every family within our community and in this troubled world could share a similar story of loss, struggle with illness or crisis, or down right frustration with the places where life forces us to “wait” upon the mercy and help of God. I just hope and pray that we aren’t mesmerized by our culture’s messages to go a bit crazy and spend, and rush, and demand fulfillment of our desires into such materialistic frenzies that we don’t value to quiet, simple, deeply emotional, yet truly life-giving places of “waiting” and “watching” for the coming of Christ and His eternal love. There is no price tag attached to the gift God brings to us in Jesus. It can’t be found in a store, or on line, but, in the quiet…the waiting…the ADVENT of our amazing, Almighty God.
Blessings and Peace to you and your loved ones this Advent.
Pastor Deb Birkeland
Waiting…our culture simply doesn’t understand the gift of waiting! Did you notice that Christmas décor and shopping enticements were visible right after Halloween this year? Consumerism can’t wait until “Black Friday” it seems…giving Thanks isn’t the priority before we are invited to spend, spend and spend some more! And did you notice that some stores opened up on Thanksgiving eve, or by midnight so that those shoppers that would rather stay up late than get up pre-dawn for the sale prices could get a head start? Is it no wonder the police had to be called to settle disputes in shopping center parking lots when people are deprived of sleep just to get the “best deal” on the latest “must have” gadget?
Do I sound sarcastic? Yes, I guess that I am. For I feel robbed, or at least, I think my Savior feels robbed! When did our culture’s celebration of Christmas push the “Christ” completely out of the picture? Happy Holiday’s bah humbug! I want our ADVENT season back!
Advent is a true gift of God’s compassion and grace. To know the quiet and dark night of “waiting” makes the amazing light of Christ’s birth on Christmas Eve so much more precious. To wait and ponder the promises and hopes and dreams of God in our heart; to anticipate His gift of joy while yet preparing IS important, isn’t it? I believe it is.
As many of you know, the Birkeland family has recently experienced the death of “Susie,” our niece in San Francisco who succumbed to cancer at age 45. Her passing has touched us profoundly as a family because she was like a daughter/sister to us. Her passion for life, and her ability to love profoundly and deeply was displayed by the tender way she smiled and touched the homeless people who shared her inner city neighborhood. Her poetry and art captured a vision for God’s peace that found beauty in the “waiting” amid life’s realities. If there was an “urgency” that shaped Susie’s writing, it was an urgency for understanding, compassion and justice for those in our society pushed to the margins, or within the holocausts of war that ravage our world. Susie showed me how to “wait” on love, and to trust it even through the ravages of cancer. What a Christ-like gift she was in my life. Christ was truly born in her heart of “waiting.”
I know that nearly every family within our community and in this troubled world could share a similar story of loss, struggle with illness or crisis, or down right frustration with the places where life forces us to “wait” upon the mercy and help of God. I just hope and pray that we aren’t mesmerized by our culture’s messages to go a bit crazy and spend, and rush, and demand fulfillment of our desires into such materialistic frenzies that we don’t value to quiet, simple, deeply emotional, yet truly life-giving places of “waiting” and “watching” for the coming of Christ and His eternal love. There is no price tag attached to the gift God brings to us in Jesus. It can’t be found in a store, or on line, but, in the quiet…the waiting…the ADVENT of our amazing, Almighty God.
Blessings and Peace to you and your loved ones this Advent.
Pastor Deb Birkeland
posted by CUZED at 10:10 AM
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