Advent, 2019
Dear Friends,
As I sit down to attempt writing this month's missive, I am profoundly distracted. What is usually a quiet morning here at the church is interrupted today by the business of people outside my study door and out in the hall. They are busy sorting, arranging, moving, re-arranging, laughing and groaning and oohing and aah-ing over treasures new and old, jams and jellies and relishes and things that warm your hands and heart. Yes, it is Fair Week.
I was trying to explain the implications of Fair Week to someone the other day and used the image of the church as a giant snow globe. During Fair Week the church – and everything in it – is picked up and shaken, and for a few days the halls are filled with all the wonderful sights and smells and sounds of the finest Church Fair on the Seacoast! But as with a snow globe, eventually things stop moving and things settle down. But almost nothing falls back to exactly where it was before.
This week as we transform this space to prepare to welcome hundreds of guests to our fair, things get put away. Things get moved upstairs to be out of the way, and sometimes they are stuck on a shelf in the back of a closet, and sometimes they get boxed up and find their way into our collection of Attic Treasures. During Fair Week, everything moves. Everything. And wither it goes, we do not always know. And this is good. It helps us learn what is essential, and what is not. We transform this place for our Evergreen Festival even as we prepare ourselves for a new season in the church year.
Yes, Advent is again upon us. Again.
Advent – the coming – a season of preparation and transformation for the new thing God is doing in our lives and in the world. It's a season of preparation filled with surprises and interruptions in which God invites us to put old things away and bring new things out. And we do this knowing that, sometimes, for us to take hold of something new, something old must be released. We must remain open to the new thing God is doing, knowing that we will not always know where that will lead us. And that is good. Unsettling for some, exciting for others, but good.
Oh look! Someone just came in with another box! I wonder what's in it... I'll just go say hello.
See you in church. You won't recognize the place!
Brad
Dear Friends,
As I sit down to attempt writing this month's missive, I am profoundly distracted. What is usually a quiet morning here at the church is interrupted today by the business of people outside my study door and out in the hall. They are busy sorting, arranging, moving, re-arranging, laughing and groaning and oohing and aah-ing over treasures new and old, jams and jellies and relishes and things that warm your hands and heart. Yes, it is Fair Week.
I was trying to explain the implications of Fair Week to someone the other day and used the image of the church as a giant snow globe. During Fair Week the church – and everything in it – is picked up and shaken, and for a few days the halls are filled with all the wonderful sights and smells and sounds of the finest Church Fair on the Seacoast! But as with a snow globe, eventually things stop moving and things settle down. But almost nothing falls back to exactly where it was before.
This week as we transform this space to prepare to welcome hundreds of guests to our fair, things get put away. Things get moved upstairs to be out of the way, and sometimes they are stuck on a shelf in the back of a closet, and sometimes they get boxed up and find their way into our collection of Attic Treasures. During Fair Week, everything moves. Everything. And wither it goes, we do not always know. And this is good. It helps us learn what is essential, and what is not. We transform this place for our Evergreen Festival even as we prepare ourselves for a new season in the church year.
Yes, Advent is again upon us. Again.
Advent – the coming – a season of preparation and transformation for the new thing God is doing in our lives and in the world. It's a season of preparation filled with surprises and interruptions in which God invites us to put old things away and bring new things out. And we do this knowing that, sometimes, for us to take hold of something new, something old must be released. We must remain open to the new thing God is doing, knowing that we will not always know where that will lead us. And that is good. Unsettling for some, exciting for others, but good.
Oh look! Someone just came in with another box! I wonder what's in it... I'll just go say hello.
See you in church. You won't recognize the place!
Brad