Words 11.25

 Beginning draft – more coming soon

Words Twice a Week        11.25

If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church.  Click here.

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving.  And are ready to start off on a new liturgical year.

Some introductory thoughts and questions on some of the lessons for Sunday – the First Sunday of Advent.

Jeremiah 33.14-16

+ The days are coming when the Lord will fulfill the promise.  But those days are not (were not) here yet – Israel was going through hard times.  How about us?  What kind of times are going through?  Is our life shaped by the reality that Jesus has come, or by the hope/expectation that he will come again, or simply by the promise of God to be with us until the end, and in fact to be the One who shapes that end?

+ note the theme of righteousness.  God’s promise to David had rested on David’s sons being righteous.

Psalm 25.1-10

+ I don’t know – a lot of good stuff here, but it just seems to be one statement after another. I’ll have to look up in a book to see what this is all about.

1 Thessalonians 3.9-13

+ Another stewardship passage – How can we thank God enough for you and for all your faithfulness!

+ and a pandemic psalm – if only we could be together face to face!

Luke 21.25-36

+ There will be signs.  What threatening signs do you see today?  What hopeful signs?  Here’s a nice little piece on signs from Robert Raines – God speaks to us in [God’s] own special sign language – a baby.  Not much.  A small December child.  A baby is birth, beginnings, potential without guarantee.  A baby is helpless but not hopeless.  A baby is someone to watch.  A baby is the future appearing now.  Are there baby-signs from God signaling hope to us watchers on the hillside?

+ “When you see these things start to happen” – What “things” or signs would you act on, what would you do?

+ What things suggest that the kingdom of God/Abode of God/Time of God’s Peace is near?

+ “this generation will not pass away before these things happen” – how do we understand that?

+ “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with...the worries of this life.”  don’t be so concerned with the dangers and threats and sorrows that you miss the sparks of hope?

+ 

That’s what I got for now…..

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