"What if, instead of doing something, we were to be something special? Be a womb. Be a dwelling for God. Be surprised."
- Loretta Ross-Gotta
Dear Grace Friends and Families,
Singing. Marching. Shopping. Social Gatherings. Giving. Family. Friends. Boar's Head Feast. Lessons and Carols. For the last several weeks we have been about all of these things. We have been living into the season of Advent - preparing ourselves for the birth of Jesus.
We have been busy, busy, busy. I pray that some of our busyness has been about what it means to welcome Christ into our lives. What it means to gather as a community knowing that God chose to dwell among us by sending his son to live in our midst.
I love gathering as a community in all of the ways listed above. I love that at this time of the year, there are many things happening that remind me that God cared enough to send his son.
Our world can be such a wonderful place that is filled with hope and peace, and it is a challenging world. God needs us to be reminded of the gift that was given to us. A gift that came with the responsibility of being Christ in the world around us.
The poem/reflection that is listed below is one that always jumps out at me. It challenges me and all of us to be God's womb. WOW! What would the world look like if we did that?
I pray that we all have a blessed Christmas. I pray that as individuals and as Grace community, we become a dwelling place for God where all feel welcomed and loved. Where we all take that welcoming spirit outside of ourselves.
Blessings to you,
The Rev. Shawn M. Schreiner
"What if on Christmas Eve people came and sat in the dim pews, and someone stood up and said, 'Something happened here while we were all out at the malls, while we were baking cookies and fretting about whether we bought our brother-in-law the right gift: Christ was born. God is here!' We wouldn't need the glorious choruses and the harp and the bell choir and the organ. We wouldn't need the tree strung with lights. We wouldn't have to deny that painful dissonance between the promise and the hope of Christmas and a world wracked with sin and evil. There wouldn't be that embarrassing conflict over the historical truth of the birth stories and whether or not Mary was really a virgin. And no one would have to preach sermons to work up our belief.
All of that would seem gaudy and shallow in comparison to the sanctity of that still sanctuary . . . A peace would settle over the planet like a velvet coverlet drawn over a sleeping child. The world would recollect itself and discover itself held in the womb of the Mother of God. We would be filled with the fullness of God even as we filled the emptiness of the Savior's heart with ours.
The intensity and strain that many of us bring to Christmas must suggest to some onlookers that, on the whole, Christians do not seem to have gotten the point of it. Probably few of us have the faith or the nerve to tamper with hallowed Christmas traditions on a large scale, or with our other holiday celebrations. But a small experiment might prove interesting. What if, instead of doing something, we were to be something special? Be a womb. Be a dwelling for God. Be surprised."
