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One thing I know: peace is not a dove! I've watched the doves peck & jostle for position at the feeders often enough! No, Peace is a personal, hard won place to live. To me, peace comes with being brave enough to accept reality. Not looking too far forward, or backward at all. I am thankful for our Monday calls, and texting chats as it helps me stay positive. Peace to you all. --donna
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Peace is something that is easy to talk about, but not always to feel. Especially when we hear about the suffering going on around the world. But today, as I look out my window watching the beautiful snow fall, that is exactly what I feel. I’ve opened my shutters to the picture window so that I can fully enjoy the beauty! Peace to all on this lovely sabbath.
--Jeanette A few months ago, I was asked to participate in the adult education program at our new church in Round Rock. I suppose it was only a matter of time. Actually, I was delighted to be asked, because this is one area of religious life that I enjoy. There are five of us on the teaching team, so I'm only expected to teach about six or seven times this year. Coincidentally, our current course is titled SHALOM, and my chapter last week and this is appropriate for Advent. It moves from Old Testament perceptions of peace the past several weeks into "Good News From God!" in the New Testament. The curriculum's author contends that peace is the central message of the Gospel. I don't wholeheartedly agree with him, yet he makes a good case. Peace is what the Israelites were hungering for throughout their history. It's what we hunger for today. And the ultimate peace-bringer and peace-maker is Jesus. Our book's author claims reconciliation is making peace (restoring harmony) with God, and reconciliation is what Jesus accomplished on our behalf through his life and death. I can see his point (and since I have to teach this idea in a little over an hour, it's a good thing!) Another of his arguments is that most epistles begin and end with a prayer for peace for the audience, because that was the most important message. I extend this hope for peace to each of you as well. This is how we'll end today's Sunday School session: "The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord lift his countenance upon you, and give you peace. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you." Peace, sisters!! --Janice This year due to COVID-19, sharing the peace every Sunday morning by text during the service has made it more meaningful for me and had a greater impact. Somehow it is more deliberate than just saying to whoever is around on Sunday morning when in church in person. There is a large group of people who are part of this for me. There is the group of Wise Women, one other friend from church and her family and then the Bookworms book club from church. I know I will connect remotely with all of these people on Sunday morning. If I can't “be” in church I still know that about 10:30 the messages will start to arrive. It is a constant in this changing year. Peace has also come as I listen to Christmas or Advent programs that organizations like Texas Lutheran and the National Lutheran Choir have provided online. That would not happen if I had to travel to these locations. Last night I heard “O Holy Night” and it brought to mind a member of Fellowship who used to sing it each Christmas and he had a wonderful voice. Today I received a Christmas card with that very song and its history. At one point it was banned in France because the lyricist was a socialist and the composer Jewish. It was introduced to the US by an abolitionist because of the line - “Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother.” It was sung to break the fighting on Christmas Eve during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. It was also the first music played over the airwaves on the radio. Some of my peace is knowing I have like-minded friends to talk with each Monday and to share texts with during the week. This has been such a blessing this year. I thank God every day for you and for the technology that made this possible. All of this has helped to bring peace to me in this turbulent year. --Carolyn As a young girl I would often muse that if everyone was just nice to each other, there would be no war or ugliness in the world. In the 60’s that was supported in songs like “Give Peace a Chance”, “Peace Train,” “I’ve Got Peace Like A River.” Seemed so easy. Now I wonder at how naive I was in thinking a whole world could get along when brothers and sisters, spouses who married because of love, and people who attend the same Christian churches, cannot get along. Love. A very difficult word to live. Peace. It will never come into being without a radical philosophy of Love across human kind. Remember when the image of earth from the moon showed us all how small we were, and united in this blue planet? It brought hope that peace could be attained. Who even thinks about that any more? Instead, I find that peace is something I must attain in my own heart. I do what I can for justice. I do what I can for family. I do what I can to calm the uneasiness of living in this anxious world. This time of year I can find that peace in the sacred music of Christmas, in the giving I see all around me, in the white lights of night that are lighting my neighbor’s homes, in the beautiful messages I receive in my Christmas cards. I send you, my friends, the peace of dark nights, the peace of soft falling snow, the peace of knowing you are loved. --Cynthia There are many things that I hope for - some small, some large, some for the world, and some just for myself or the people that I love. I know from personal experience that you don’t always get what you hope for. I did not receive every birthday or Christmas present that I wanted. Many more years with my loving husband didn’t happen just because I hoped that he would be cured of his lymphoma. But those disappointments and hardships have not kept me from being hopeful that life will continue to be a wonderful journey or that I, in small ways, can bring pleasure into a few lives. --Jeanette I've been thinking about hope and what it means. I know that it's necessary for life because someone who is truly without hope would have no reason to keep going. I know that we wouldn't celebrate the birth of a child if we had no hope. Despite all of life's disappointments we continue to hope. Pretty amazing when you think about it.
I'm wondering if there's an important difference between hoping for something and hoping in something/someone. If I hope for a particular outcome, my happiness may be too connected to that outcome. But doesn't the Bible say that we should hope "in" God? I'm not sure what that means but it sounds like a better option. Is it the same as trust or faith? Maybe it simply means that I can entrust my hope to God, who sees all outcomes. This seems like something worth pondering. --Terese I've shared before that as my world has become smaller, so have my Hopes. Advent is a season of the Church I pay attention to because it is all about Hope. The candles we light, one after the other, guide my thoughts to hope and joy. I don't read much devotional material, and my continuing conversations with God are usually thoughts of thankfulness or petitions for a better attitude toward life. I gave up on giving the Founder of the Universe a list of my wants/needs & ideas of how things should be run, long ago. But I have been reading a 2005 Advent companion from the Roman Catholic church that I found, again, in my Christmas box. On the first Thursday of Advent I read this: "While everyone else might be complaining or be stressed out, or indifferent or self-absorbed, we are called to be mighty signs of hope, people who believe the answer is not in giving up, but rather standing WITH each other." Father G. E.S. Malovetz. The word WITH stood out to me. It is difficult to feel the support of others while we are isolated in our own little spaces. My hope for the coming times, weeks, months, year, is that we will be able to again stand with each other holding actual hands, not just virtually, and pray together in circles of faith. I hope to find a community of faith that I can join. I hope to continue to be inspired to share my worldly goods and empty our house of things we no longer need/use. I hope I will be cured at last of my greedy desire to collect and have too much stuff. I hope my desire and inspiration to make art will grow. I hope Chris and I can continue to live together. Small hopes for continued joy. --donna Emily Dickinson said, “Hope is a thing with feathers.” That’s such a good description, because it’s here, and then it flies silently away. And then it lands in another spot. My hope for the future is that whatever I/we choose to do, we won’t have to do it at a distance. I need people, and interactions, and this Covid has been devastating. I feel that this will become better in the coming year, but very slowly, and that as seniors we will probably have to live cautiously as the new normal. I do look forward to bike rides on my new Christmas bike ( I received yesterday from Ed.) I have great hopes that I will be able to meet in person with my friends and family. And I hope to travel once again, probably by car, to visit our family and friends throughout the US. In this line, I am hopeful that Kent and Katherina will remain in the US, and not move to Germany. That may be wishful thinking, but it gives me hope to think it. --Cynthia Advent is the season of hope, and for the first time in several months, I feel hopeful about the new year. There will be a new administration, and there is the promise of a vaccine on the horizon. Even if those things are still a ways off, at least I can hope for them. It's been a while since I dared hope for anything beyond today. Beyond those two things, I have hope for a less divisive society. I hope my neck won't be twisted every few hours by reading the news of some insane or downright hateful tweet by the president. I hope we can return to ordinary interactions with each other, including touch. I hope to be able to worship together again, in person. I hope to return to a few regular volunteer activities in the community. I hope to have a polished memoir manuscript ready to market or publish on my own. These are a lot of hopes for a new year, so I think I'll back up a little and focus today on the hope of Advent: the coming of Jesus into our world. That's more than enough for today. --Janice |
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