Month: December 2024

Hope

Ordinary Courage 

What are the grounding practices we can lean on when life brings us challenges? Another way to ask this question is this: how do we find courage to keep going in the face of trials or challenges? The spiritual practice of prayer is one of our best tools for finding hope amidst the hardships in our lives. Recently, a friend of mine who is not a church goer, asked me: “Do you have a regular devotion or prayer time? In the morning or evening?” My answer was: “I pray by doing different things, like walking in the forest, driving, being with my dog in the quiet of my home.” To me, it seems like I’m always praying. 

Prayer likely looks different to all of us. For me, singing and poetry, walking and working with my hands are all forms of prayer; how I find hope and the courage to keep going. Sometimes, all I have the strength for is lighting a candle. In my most stressful moments, I find that I need to rearrange my space and move furniture, which often gives me a chance to see something new or see something old with new eyes. This has been true for me for a long time. Some of my most prayerful moments have been when I’m outdoors, among trees, or when I’m moving my body or working with my hands. 

I’m curious about some ways you find to pray. Do you prefer the peace and quiet of your own space, or do you like to go outside? Think about some ways you pray and feel free to call them out. Part of being courageous is being open to prayer and possibility (with God’s support).  

In my life, I’ve walked a lot of ground. I’ve even run and hiked many local hills and mountains, which was at that time a way of praying. I’ve since had to learn other ways to pray because my body doesn’t allow me to run. When I lived in the hills just north of Jefferson nearby, it was my habit to run about 7-10 miles from my house out into the country roads. One road was quite a rollercoaster ride when we drove on it. But when I ran on it, it was a new kind of challenge. Running downhill wasn’t much trouble and I felt good, like I was flying. Once the incline changed though, I found myself more winded. . . taking deep, slow breaths and slowing my pace a little bit.  

This is what life is like too. We all have those times when things are going along fine. There are no surprises, and we coast along without much effort. But then those challenging times come along and suddenly we need more strength to keep going. In the scripture today, we heard that Daniel was a friend of King Darius even though they prayed differently. The others in power around King Darius noticed this and plotted to have Daniel killed, out of jealousy. From Daniel’s perspective, nothing had changed, he kept praying to God. But the ‘hill’ he was traveling on suddenly got steeper for him because by praying to God, he was surely headed to a horrible death.  

TNH wrote: “When we climb the hill together, we don’t need to make an effort; we enjoy every step. Walking like that, if we are free of the past, free of the future, we can touch the kingdom of God with every step.” 

Praying and sharing God’s love with each other helps us walk like that, I think; sharing the effort of walking uphill together makes it possible for us to reach the top. By praying, we can ask God to share in our effort and I truly believe that God answers our prayers by sending/guiding others to act as the feet and hands of God. God sends others to walk with us during those uphill stretches of life.  

Daniel prayed, Darius fasted (a spiritual practice), and Jesus persisted in teaching about love and sharing with each other. All three hoped for something. Daniel hoped for the freedom to pray to God; Darius hoped his friend Daniel’s life would be spared; Jesus hoped his own life could be spared and that his teaching might continue. These hopes took all three of them on uphill journeys. All of them sought the help of spiritual practices to aid in their uphill journeys. 

Daniel, Darius and Jesus must have had a lion’s share of courage to face what they did, respectively.  

I did a word study in preparation for this message. I was reminded that the root word of Courage is ‘cor’ in Latin. In the Middle Ages the word Courage was used to describe “the heart as a source of feelings, spirit, confidence.” It originally meant “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” 

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to follow God’s calling and purpose, relying on God’s strength and guidance. 

In her book, Gifts of Imperfection, Brene Brown talks a lot about courage.  

“Over time the definition of courage has changed and today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic. Heroics is important and we need heroes, but I think we’ve lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we’re feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage.  

“Heroics is often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world that is pretty extraordinary.” 

Can you imagine the courage of these three people? Daniel persisted in his spiritual practice of praying three times daily even after the decree was put in place making it ‘illegal’; Darius, after realizing the trickery involved, joined Daniel in his own spiritual practice of fasting, hoping to save Daniel from death by lion. And Jesus—Jesus responds to his inquisition by Pilate by reacting calmly and with a sense of peace, using Pilate’s own words against him. When asked if he was indeed the King of the Jews, Jesus says, “You say I am.” Pilate can’t fault him for those words. But the people accuse Jesus of instigating an uprising. We know Jesus prayed to God in the garden, asking for his life to be saved. 

As we all know, sometimes what we ask for in prayer doesn’t come to us the way we think it ought to or how we hoped it would. Romans 8:24-25 says: For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. And Hebrews 11:1 says: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 

This is what I think: it takes courage to have hope—the kind of hope Daniel, Darius and Jesus had. In our lives it’s easy to lose the thread of hope; to lose patience with having hope because hope is for that which we cannot see. It really seems impossible.  

Today I brought a visual way for us to pray, and to envision hope in our own lives. I live near some really big redwood trees and when I take my dog Pearl out for walks, their beautifully curved branches litter the ground. For me, they are irresistible and I usually come home with a small handful for projects of some kind. Often I release them back into the wild when time passes and I still haven’t done anything with them. But last week I was praying and thinking of you all. And I had a great idea! 

My idea is for each of you to choose a piece of cloth/string and as you tie it to this beautiful, curved branch, pray for hope in your life. If you’d like, take a second one and pray for hope in the lives of others. Since this is the first Sunday of Advent, Hope is our special focus. Next week, there will be a different focus–love. The next time I speak in two weeks, our focus will be joy and I plan to bring something for us to add in this display to represent joy. The fourth week of Advent will be peace.  

Let’s be like Daniel, Darius and Jesus in our HOPE this week. Let’s pray even if it feels like we can hear the hungry lions. Let’s pray even if we feel as if the hill is too steep. If we pray together, the lions’ mouths will be shut fast and step-by-step the top of the hill will be achievable. It’s only alone that those seem impossible. With God—it is possible. 

Joy!

When I was young, Christmas was a time for ‘dressing up’ in my family. We wore our ‘good’ clothes to church and to special Christmas events. I loved the feeling of joy that surrounded these opportunities. My mom created a sense of joy in our home by decorating and inviting my sisters and I to help in the decorating. I have fond memories of getting the boxes out of the attic, unpacking them, and then spreading the garlands, bows and tinsel all around the house. We had a few different nativity scenes to put in different rooms too. Once we had the tree up, unpacking all the beloved ornaments was an activity all its own. Still today, as I talk about this, I feel the joy of the season coming through me.

I grew up on a beef feedlot just a few miles from here, on Eicher Road. By this time of year, my parents were finalizing plans for creating more than 100 ‘meat packages’ to distribute to friends and neighbors. This meant that my sisters, brothers, and I would gather around the kitchen table, wrapping sausage and chipped beef in freezer paper, then in red cellophane. We would add a bow, and place some of each type of meat into a basket. These special packages would be loaded into the car and off we’d go to deliver them over the next handful of days leading up to Christmas.

It was a special thing to grow up this way—with a sense of generosity and abundance to be shared with others. I loved being part of this joyful sharing. Some neighbors on Eicher Road have lived there more than 50 years and I know they received that many Eicher Christmas Meat packages. The most beautiful part of this is what happened next—neighbors would appear at our house with packages of all kinds of treats! Cookies of every sort, including Donna Rietz’s famous chocolate covered peanut butter balls! Our kitchen counter held plates and baskets of homemade treats!

I bring all of this into this message for the third week of Advent because we celebrate the Joy of Jesus’ birth, and the Joy of Jesus’ life and message: Share with others, help each other, ALL ARE WELCOME. In the scripture reading from Isaiah we hear the words, “The year of the Lord’s favor” which might ring a bell for some of you. It’s a reference to the ‘year of jubilee’.

Jubilee was historically a time when everything was set back to its starting place and I think there is something so beautiful about this idea. It seems like a relief to know that things can return to they way they started, rather than just getting worse and worse, or more and more confusing.

I am a nanny for a little boy named Nathaniel, who is 3 years old. He loves to play with his wooden train tracks and we often build entire worlds when we are together. It’s always different. He usually doesn’t want to put the wooden train set away, to preserve this world he built. But his mom has taught him that at the end of each day, the house will be ‘re-set’ to it’s ‘put-away’ state, and tomorrow everything will start afresh. Nathaniel has learned that this is a helpful way to go about building his train worlds because with each new day, he remembers how to build the parts he really liked about his previous world but can forget about the parts he didn’t care for, or that weren’t as he wanted them to be. In this way, he is exponentially growing and learning.

Another personal connection to this idea is from my one-day lesson in welding from a master welder. There is more to this story, but the part I bring to share today is this: As I learned to hold the tool and create a ‘bead’ of weld along the joint line, this teacher told me that if I got too shaky or the line got too wobbly, I should stop (rather than keep going). In other words, take a moment to pause and refocus my attention to creating a clean line. That lesson has proven so helpful in my non-welding life.

Two weeks ago Rob in maintenance here at MV told me a wonderful story that I want to pass on to you. I wanted to bring it into the first week of Advent as a story about Hope, but I think it fits during this week of Advent just as well, and it resonates with this idea of ‘year of jubilee’. On a walk near his property, Rob heard an interesting sound coming from a pipe near the ground. After further inspection, he found it came from a tiny kitten deep inside the pipe and even after urging the kitten to come out, it resisted and was scared. Rob spent 20 minutes trying to coax it out and made a tiny lasso which he finally managed to hook around the tiny kitten’s arm. Gently he pulled the kitten out. Covered in oily sludge, Rob wrapped it up and brought it home. And found a great home for him, where he lives and plays with a big German Shepherd dog friend. Imagine the joy!

These stories illustrate, at least to me (and I hope to you), that there is restoration in Christ’s birth and life. There is restoration in righting things in the world that have become out of alignment. The world can be restored to its starting position if we follow Jesus and there is JOY in this because people (and kittens) who don’t have what they need will be given enough; people on the fringes or margins will be included into the mainstream or ‘whole cloth’.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you have or haven’t done in your life. It doesn’t matter whether you live in a house/tent/apartment/tiny home/mobile home/or the Mennonite Village. It doesn’t matter whether you experience illness or immobility. It doesn’t matter who you are. ALL ARE WELCOME to be surrounded by the Hope/Peace/Joy of Jesus and welcomed into the house of God.‘The Jesus way is to come together with those who are on the fringes, the marginalized, who are present within and outside of our community.’ As followers of Jesus we can seek out those who are marginalized, or on the fringes of our society. We can light the way for others by sharing joy.

AND, as followers of Jesus, when we are not experiencing this joy, we can join with others who are. We can soak up the joy of others around us, and in this way ‘water the seeds of joy’ in us. Sometimes, if you are like me, you can feel guilty for not resonating with the joy of the season. Remember, ALL ARE WELCOME. Joy is here for all of us whenever we are ready for it.