It is 5:00 am and Geoff is making coffee at the YMCA where some guys come in from a night on the steet, eager for the warmth. Their stories are burdened with the weight of brokenness and injustice. As Geoff learns and tells these stories, we are awakened to the need for healing and change.
Ryan listens to the stories of men recovering from addictions, and though he cannot share the conversations, his faithfulness helps to open our eyes to the struggles around and within us. Will prepares some vegetables from the garden he has shared with Ryan, along with a cut of steak from a side of beef collectively purchased from a local farm. These are decisions made in awareness of some of the disturbing realities concerning what we eat, and we as a community are awakened by these choices.
Advent is a time of awakening to the need for salvation.
(There's more)Our senses are aroused to the realizations of the need for change in our world and the need to for transformation in our lives. The Scriptural stories for this week describe a Creation with which God has entrusted us.... a Creation good, fruitful, and abundant; and yet a Creation marred by our unfaithfulness, causing selfishness and alienation and death. We see Noah aroused to action by judgment, God awakening the patriarchs to a new way of life in covenant, and Joseph's all-too-sobering encounters with the pervasiveness of injustice.
From Randy and Edith's reminder to us of the need for healing among Native American peoples, to Melissa's travels to serve in the orphanages of Zimbabwe, to the Brown family's political and personal involvement in bettering thier local neighborhood, we are awakened by one another to both our need for salvation and our call to participate in that salvation.
I encourage you to both fast and feast in that reality. See last year's posting for some particulars, but in general, continue to press one another along in the need for Jesus. Post a comment below on how you have been awakened this advent, and let's share some stories together Sunday evening.
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2 comments:
All examples of the work of shalom happening on a daily basis...the world is made complete by our willingness to be faithful in the smallest daily details of love and life...thanks Clinton
I was noticing in the creation stories that when Adam and Eve make their bad choice, God curses the serpent and the earth, but not humans. Hooray....sort of. I gave that idea some time to sink in: because of you, the earth is cursed. Then I ate my cereal flakes and anonymous yogurt, participating in that curse again.
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