This Advent, I’m centering myself in Isaiah 30:15: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” What God asks seems so counterintuitive. Not in productivity or control, not in strength or giftedness do we find success or even find God. We encounter God in returning and rest, quietness and trust. These words signal to me surrender: to cease resisting God and to trust God with whatever is before me. What is before me is waiting; how fitting that it’s Advent, a season of preparation and waiting. Some of the things for which I wait seem cliché in the Christmas season — I’m waiting for God to make things right in the world, I’m waiting for justice and peace, for wholeness and a world shaped by love. These are real hopes for which I wait, and for which I actively wait, as I work for justice and peace. But some things are nudging me to surrender to the wait, without working for that which I seek.  For nearly two years, my husband and I … [Read more...]

During this Advent, I am reading through the Book of Revelation every week. Sure, it’s a helter-skelter time for a pastor, but I can manage three chapters every morning, sipped with my coffee. Of course, my reading is hardly the stuff of a peaceful daily devotional. Dragons and beasts and plagues, oh my! For insight into this cryptic book of the Bible, I lean on the scholarship of Brian Blount, president of Union Presbyterian Seminary. Though Advent entails waiting, a key to Brian’s exegesis is the role of an active witness. The word “martyr” originally meant “one who witnesses.” This double-meaning of martyr calls to mind those whose lives were lost at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, those who died al-Kiddush Hashem — sanctifying God’s name. One of these martyrs is named Rich Gottfried. The story goes that, last winter, he slipped on the ice and broke both his knees; yet he was soon back at shulin his leg braces and continued to lead the chanting of the Haftara. My Hebrew is not … [Read more...]

Each Advent we light candles of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. We wait, and we pray until the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus arrives and with fanfare, we welcome a baby who is the Savior. If we are really attuned, we know we wait not just to celebrate Jesus’ birth but also the day of the Second Coming. The day when perhaps finally we can forever have hope, peace, joy and love. This Advent, I find myself waiting on and praying especially for peace. It seems that we now only imagine peace to come about when we all finally agree with each other. When the one of us who has shouted the loudest and longest wears the others down, we will finallyhave peace. The world would be so peace-filled if everyone could just see that I am right and start agreeing with me! Yet the peace we are called to and the peace we wait on isn’t so much about agreeing with one another as it is living into the kin-dom of God. It is the sort of peace that comes when we set aside our differences, find our … [Read more...]

In her inaugural novel, “Wise Blood,” Flannery O’Connor pictures her protagonist restlessly sitting on a train. “Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car. The train was racing through tree tops that fell away at intervals and showed the sun standing, very red, on the edge of the farthest woods.” Leaning forward. Peering out. Looking back. Carried onward. This is Advent. Advent calls me into dreaming of newness within my own heart and family and neighborhood and society. Advent calls me into active, though no less uneasy, persistent hope for newness. The prophet Isaiah dares me to dream. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). In our day, the air thickens with anxiety and anticipation, a far … [Read more...]