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LENTEN DEVOTIONALS
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Why Musings?
- The Musings Page will be a place to consider thought-provoking, evocative, sometimes polemical but not overtly political, writings, quotes, ideas, and poetry on the Christian life in all its facets: spiritual, religious, ethical, and practical.
Lagniappe
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Shiver of Fear
posted on December 17, 2011 by Musings
We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear the God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Filed under: Advent, Christmas, Faith
Touching the Deep Places
posted on December 16, 2011 by Musings
The tamed piety of the conventional church wants an innocent baby who comes gently into our secure lives and keeps everything benign and friendly. It may be conventional and it may be tame, but it is not biblical and it is not Christian. Advent is about both hope and hurt; pain and risk, as well as excitement and joy, are part of the adventure. Christ comes touching those deep places our culture too quickly covers over with glitzy wrapping paper and “Frosty, the Snowman.”
Kyle Childress quoted in Sacred Seasons: Advent/Christmas 2011 by Seeds of Hope Publishers
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Filed under: Advent, Christmas, Faith
Locating Our Lives in the Abandoned Places of the Empire
posted on December 13, 2011 by Musings
Everything in our society teaches us to move away from suffering, to move out of neighborhoods where there is high crime, to move away from people who don’t look like us. But the gospel calls us to something altogether different. We are to laugh at fear, to lean into suffering, to open ourselves to the stranger. Advent is the season when we remember that Jesus put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. God’s getting born in a barn reminds us that God shows up even in the forsaken corners of the earth.
From: Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro in Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals
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Filed under: Advent, Christmas, Community, Faith
A Note on Advent
posted on December 2, 2011 by Musings
Advent, meaning “the coming,” is a time when we wait expectantly. Christians began to celebrate it as a season during the fourth and fifth centuries. Like Mary, we celebrate the coming of the Christ child, what God has already done. And we wait in expectation of the full coming of God’s reign on earth and for the return of Christ, what God will yet do. But this waiting is not a passive waiting. It is an active waiting. As any expectant mother knows, this waiting also involves preparation, exercise, nutrition, care, prayer, work; and birth involves pain, blood, tears, joy, release, community. It is called labor for a reason. Likewise, we are in a world pregnant with hope, and we live in the expectation of the coming of God’s kingdom on earth. As we wait, we also work, cry, pray, ache; we are the midwives of another world.
From Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals
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Filed under: Advent, Faith
Standing at the Door
posted on December 18, 2010 by Musings
Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. Revelation 3:20
Christ is still knocking. It is not yet Christmas. But it is also not the great final Advent, the final coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate goes the longing for the final Advent, where it says: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). Advent is a time of waiting. Our whole life, however, is Advent—that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: “On earth peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.” Learn to wait, because he has promised to come. “I stand at the door…” We however call to him: “Yes, come soon, Lord Jesus!” Amen.
Excerpt from “The Coming of Jesus in Our Midst” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
