The way of peace

This was written December  17, 2017. Today is the first day of spring and we are having our biggest snow this year. I found the time to actually get this posted. Enjoy.

Sitting here in the grey cold of the 3rd Sunday in Advent, the joyful candle is lit. (I'm still cold.)

A local United Church of Christ congregation has become a favorite place to worship. I probably get there once a month. This was a good Sunday to go. A retired pastor leads the service once a month. He has an amazing gift for speaking truth in the most gentle and loving ways.

The scripture we worked with today was from Luke. Zechariah had regained his voice after losing it when he blew off the angel Gabriel (God's messenger angel) saying he and his wife were too old for this promise of a baby. He regained his voice after the surprise baby was born and he wrote the name "John," as in John the Baptist, down as informed by the angel's visit. Only then did he regained his voice.

There is so much to that about doubt, bitterness, loss of heart, and, ultimately, humility. I was thinking as the pastor retold that story, that God basically was saying to Zechariah, "You go and think about who is in charge here," when he lost his voice.

The primarily focus today was on Zechariah's praises to God once he received his voice. How amazing that his view was on tender mercy and hope in the face of life's challenges ending with this as a path of peace.

Luke 1:78-79English Standard Version

because of the tender mercy of our God,    when the sunrise shall dawn upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Last week, I was up early and got to see the dawning of the sunrise in the southeastern horizon. A bright reddish-orange ball of fire arising. Gorgeous. Optimistic. We made it through another day and night to the dawning of a new day.

Something about the words of kindness, hope, love in the midst of the cold, hard times of winter, ...life. Both Partner and I were quietly crying, tears rolling down our faces. Such medicine, these words. 

What does it mean to be faithful to the hope and love of a Power greater than me or us? Zechariah had been faithful and good and was a little bitter and disbelieving. 

In the Advent seasons, when the past has fled, unasked, away
and there is nothing left to do but wait,
God, shelter us.
Be our surrounding darkness;
be the fertile soil out of which hope springs in due time.
In the uncertain times, help us to greet the dawn and labor on, love on,
in faith awaiting your purpose hid in you
waiting to be born in due time. 

There is a special kind of silence in this prayer written above by Ruth Duck that was used in today's service. The dark shows up where there appears to be no movement, no hope, and time isn't ours. Important life is forming, maybe completely undoing and being something else entirely. We are being reformed.

My own prayer goes like this:

Lord, give me the strength to be patient with what I don't have control over
and an ability to appreciate the winter dawn as the potent day it is with its' deeper night wrapped around it. Sometimes these days are covered in ice and snow and grey skies  that fool me into thinking that each day is just like any other day - a time to keep the pace of peak sunshine and weather going as if I were immortal and the days long.

Help me remember that people across time and cultures slowed down for storytelling, and "chillin" out, a kind of medicine in its own right. May this time of story and renewal  be deeply healing. May those with eyes to see and ears to hear absorb what is needed, what prayer God is answering. May our feet be guided into the way of Peace. May our souls be filled with love and new life. 

         Amen (may it be so).