Gathering Voices: Faithful Conversations from The Thoughtful Christian

Do New Year's resolutions help?

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution that actually helped you change a bad habit or develop a new skill? Or have you found resolutions to be a dispiriting and discouraging waste of time?

 

When I was a teenager and young adult, I enthusiastically made New Year’s resolutions, and I kept a lot of them. I can’t remember the specifics of a single one, but I remember spending a lot of time in December thinking about what small thing I wanted to change. Maybe the key to my enthusiasm about resolutions back then lies in the word “small.” As far as I can remember, I never attempted to change anything major.

Sometime in my late 20s or early 30s I stopped making resolutions. I don’t remember much about why I made that decision. After I stopped making resolutions, I often saw articles in magazines or newspapers that talked about New Year’s resolutions as pointless and an exercise in frustration and futility. In fact, some authors seemed to be saying it would be better not to make resolutions at all, than to make them and not keep them. Making a plan and not fulfilling it does something destructive to the human soul, they seemed to be saying. Better not.

About ten years ago I made a New Year’s resolution for the first time in a couple of decades. I had bought a book of abdominal exercises for women, and I made a resolution to begin to do exercises for my abs. A year went by, and I didn’t start. The next year I made the same resolution. And the next.

It took about five years for me to begin to do abdominal exercises. Now I’m pretty consistent at doing them three times a week, and I can tell a difference in the way my stomach feels. Flatter and more muscular in a small but wonderful way.

So now I find myself wondering: Did the resolutions, repeated year after year, help me start to do the exercises?

I study and write about Christian spiritual practices, those repeated actions that help us keep company with Jesus. I am convinced we are shaped profoundly by what we do.

Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life, noted: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Moments really do matter. Our choices of which actions to repeat – abdominal crunches, prayers at bedtime, Scripture memory, and so on – really do make a difference over the span of months and years.

What helps people get started doing something they have never done before? What helps people begin to do something consistently when they had only done it sporadically before? New Year’s resolutions helped me start new habits when I was a teenager and young adult. Yes, they were small habits, but small habits do make a difference. I wonder part of the benefit of those resolutions had to do with the time I spend in December pondering my life and examining the patterns of my days.

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. As you think about 2013 coming soon, how do you want to shape your days so your actions will impact the pattern of your life?

When I Was Hungry

A Gathering Voices post by Beth Pyles

On Christmas Eve, 2005, in Amman, Jordan, I went to midnight mass with a group of folks, including a Muslim friend. During the Mass, Jameel, my Muslim friend, asked why we didn't all go up as the others were doing and as I was trying to explain, it got less and less sensible to me. 

As we sat, sidelined spectators, Jameel said, “I like this - it is very nice - it reminds me of Jesus loving and feeding the poor.” I turned to see the people (many of whom were Filipino domestic workers) walking forward to receive the host from the priest.  

Through Jameel's eyes, I saw communion in a new light:  Jesus came to feed the hungry, physically as well as spiritually (is there a word to refer to the unity of the two?  I wish I knew it.)  

Is communion an enactment of that reality as well as the reality of atoning sacrifice for salvation?  I want to think so.  The question occurs to me:  who, starving to death, would I not feed?  It is the question I am left with as I marvel that my Muslim friend  wanted to participate and saw no reason why he should not.  

Feeding those who lack:  it really is pretty simple, isn't it? 

This is what I wrote on that December evening in 2005.  During that same time, I was reflecting on the collective fate of four Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) colleagues: Tom Fox, Jim Loney, Harmeet Sooden and Norman Kember, who were then being held captive by kidnapers who had seized them in November of that same year at gunpoint in Baghdad.  Tom Fox would be murdered in March of 2006.  But that is a history that had not yet happened during Midnight Mass in Amman.  

The juxtaposition is almost cruelly ironic: our friends Tom, Jim, Harmeet and Norman were being held against their will while it was only my own bow to social, cultural and religious conventions not my own that kept me nailed to the pew instead of going forward and taking my friend with me to receive communion.

I was thinking on what my friends were eating or not eating while I complained about my boredom with rice.  Knowing that you have friends who might literally be starving to death makes you look at meals, all meals, including the banquet feast of the Lord, in a very different light.

But even that wasn’t enough to open the doors of my own mind in that time and space.  It was only later, much later, looking back on it all, that I began to feel shame . . . shame at having remained seated . . . shame at participating, even passively, in denying my friend, yes, my Muslim friend, access to The Table . . . 

When I was hungry, you fed me, said Jesus.

The only qualification Jesus ever mentions for being fed is being hungry.

My friend Jameel was hungry that night in Amman.  And I told him he couldn’t eat.

Oh, Jameel’s birthday?  December 25.  

Light and Darkness at Christmas

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

This year I’m experiencing Advent and Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere for the first time in five years. For the past four Christmases, I’ve been in New Zealand, where Christmas comes four days after the SUMMER solstice. In New Zealand, Christmas advertisements often feature picnic items and summer clothes. Typical Christmas foods include strawberries and cream. I’d never thought about how many summer foods are green and red, and therefore appropriate for Christmas: strawberries, watermelon, lettuce salads with tomatoes. 

Our first Christmas in New Zealand was totally disorienting. The summer weather felt downright weird at Christmas time. The fact that everyone takes a big vacation at Christmas left our small city virtually deserted for several weeks. The calm and quiet between Christmas and New Years felt spooky. 

The second year we knew a bit more of what to expect, and I found myself appreciating the quiet days around the holidays. By the fourth year, I was enjoying the warm summer weather at Christmas time and reveling in the long days, slower pace and Christmas warmth. I began to relish the Southern Hemisphere Christmas, a joyous season of sunshine, beaches, hiking, biking, picnics, and relaxed time with friends outdoors. 

Now here we are in cold weather with night falling in late afternoon. The Christmas lights are so cheerful and pretty, shining in the dark evenings. Jesus as the Light of the dark world seems more real in the Northern Hemisphere. There’s something appropriate about remembering, when days are so short, that the Light has come into the world. 

But  Southern Hemisphere Christmases offer a different perspective, and I have to confess I’m missing the Christmas warmth and sunshine. Perhaps I can describe it best by reflecting on the study of Ecclesiastes that my husband and I have been doing for the past few months. 

The vivid words of Ecclesiastes have been reminding us of the brevity of life, and how important it is to notice God’s grace moment by moment and to enjoy each day as a gift – a sort of carpe diem in Christ. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10), and remember God – in fact, stand in awe – in the midst of all of it.  Ecclesiastes has impressed on our hearts that we are not in control, but we have a loving Creator God who we can trust and who gives us good gifts to relish and enjoy.

That message fits with a Southern Hemisphere Christmas, where the Holy Season is linked with sunshine, picnics, and vacations that are both energetic and relaxing. Enjoy each day as a gift. Notice God’s grace moment by moment, and stand in awe of God’s goodness. Revel in the warmth, light, relaxation and abundance.

I’m soaking up every moment of this Northern Hemisphere Christmas, where I get to be with family and enjoy candles and bright lights in dark evenings. But I’m grateful I get to return to New Zealand after Christmas and enjoy some summer weather. And I’m grateful that many of my Christmases to come will probably be spent in New Zealand, where I can stretch my understanding of what Christmas means to include two sets of metaphors: light shining in the darkness and warmth and abundance as a sign of God’s goodness in Christ.

With the Shepherds

With the Shepherds

A Gathering Voices Post by Don McKim

Each year we are struck by all the “cultural apparatus” which becomes “Christmas” for so many in our society. We know the components: shopping, parties, decorating…more shopping….These are rituals for us this time of year, familiar dimensions of our Christmas experience, woven together into a tapestry that sustains us with happy memories for the next twelve months.

As we reflect theologically on Christmas, the images are many, a number of which collide with our contemporary cultural practices. Think of the gift of Christ given to a poor couple—Joseph and Mary—when we are people who have so much. There is the stark simplicity of birth of Jesus in contrast to the elaborateness of how we celebrate today. There is the message of the angels who said the Savior, Messiah will bring “peace,” when ours continues to be a world at war on the global, national, and personal scenes. So we live with these dialectics, the tensions between the “first Christmas” and “our Christmas,” between the gospel stories and our own stories—as people, all created by God.

To look at the birth of Jesus through our own cultural lenses, we would hardly expect—make that “never expect,” the savior of the world to enter the world and make his way through it, the way Jesus born in Bethlehem’s “manger,” (Luke 2:12) did. It has always been the case that the ways of God do not match the expectations of the “reasonable,” “wise,” or most “sophisticated” among us. This is what Paul pointed toward when he spoke of the “foolishness” of the cross and the “wisdom of God” found in Christ, in contrast to the “wisdom of the world” (see 1 Corinthians 1:18-31). God constantly confounds human expectations, and certainly so in the event of the coming of God’s Son into the world.

John Calvin notes this in his commentary on Luke 2:8: “In that region there were shepherds living in the fields.” Calvin wrote: “While God had at hand many of rank and high ability as witnesses, He puts them aside and simply chooses shepherds, of little account with men, of no reckoning. Here the reasonableness and thoughtfulness of the flesh must look foolish, and we must allow that what is foolishness from God, is higher than what is, or seems to be, wisdom of the world (1 Cor. 1:25)” (Commentary on Luke 2:8; Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries [CNTC] 1:73-74).

The shepherds in the Christmas story show God’s ways of working, which are ways that surprise and run counter to our “human wisdom” or the expectations of “reasonable” people. The shepherds, as the first witnesses to the new-born savior, show us that God is full of surprises; and that what we in today’s cultures  may value most: status, wealth, privilege—are not the primary things on God’s agenda—especially when it comes to witnessing to history’s astounding event: God becoming a human being!

As Calvin continued: “From the beginning God laid up this incomparable wealth in earthen vessels, the better to test the obedience of our faith. If we desire to come to Christ, we must not be ashamed to follow those whom God chose, from the sheep dung, to bring down the pride of the world” (CNTC 1:74).

God uses “earthen vessels”: poor people, a manger, shepherds “from the sheep dung,” to initiate the salvation of the world. This is “counter-cultural,” this is “counter-wisdom.” Yet this is God’s way to work in the world.

Beneath and behind all our frantic busyness and our cultural enactments, stand the way and work of God, in sending the savior of the world, to bring peace, and eternal life (John 3:16). God used the shepherds “from the sheep dung”—to counter the “pride of the world;” and to provide for us what we could never provide for ourselves.

In the familiar biblical narratives, the church nativity plays, the Christmas carols, and the gratitude to God for blessings of family and all else, let’s stand with the shepherds in worship and praise. And let’s see in the shepherds, God’s incomparable way of working—focused even more clearly in the baby the shepherds came to worship: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

 

 

 

What is hope and where can I find it?

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

I’ve had a private research project going on for the past six months. In the midst of academic research and writing, I’ve also been exploring the role of hope in my life.

In late 2010 and early 2011 I was sick for many months, and no one in the medical community could figure out what was going on. On March 7 of this year, some of the elders of my church prayed for me, and I had a miraculous healing. (That’s another story. Perhaps someday I’ll tell it on this blog.) After I got better, I realized the months of not feeling well had robbed me of hope, and I couldn’t figure out how to get it back. In fact, I couldn’t figure out exactly what it is.

So I began watching for the word “hope” in books, conversations, sermons, prayers and the Bible. I began asking friends where and when they experience hope. As I listened and pondered, I could hear hints of two kinds of hope: hope for life after death and hope for daily life on earth.

I realized I didn’t have any trouble with hope for heaven. We have hope that after we die, we will have new bodies (I Corinthians 15:35-49), our tears will be wiped away (Revelation 21:4), and we will live with Jesus forever (Revelation22:4). For some odd reason, that form of hope was still very alive and real to me.

But surely the “God of hope” (Romans 15:13) also wants to give us hope for the days of our life on earth. The months of not feeling well had pretty much wiped that out for me.

So I kept listening, reading and thinking. I heard people use “hope” to describe a sort of vague wish. That wasn’t the kind of hope I was longing for. I heard people use “hope” in relation to upcoming events and plans they had, sometimes with a strong confidence that I admired and wished for. Increasingly I could see that hope is rooted in confidence. But where does that confidence come from?

At the same time as my informal research into hope, I’ve been doing some academic research involving interviews. Many of those interviews touch on the decline of the church in Western countries. Recently two people said almost identical words in interviews: “I have so much confidence in the power of the Gospel.”

Their words brought many of my thoughts together. Where does confidence about the future come from? From the power of God, which we see revealed in Jesus Christ. Jesus is our only hope for the distant future, for life after death, but Jesus is also our only hope for today and tomorrow. God has blessed me with so many good things all my life, and I can have confidence that God will continue that blessing the rest of today, tomorrow, next week and next year. Sure, that blessing isn’t always an experience of pure joy. Even in the hard times, God is present, giving the comfort of companionship and the redemption of pain (which I wrote about last week).

What more confidence do I need? What more do I need as a foundation for hope?

“In Christ alone my hope is found.” It sounds simple, even simplistic, but that statement (from a praise song by Stuart Townend that I mostly, but not entirely, like) sums up half a year of pondering. Six months ago, when we sang that song in church, that first line made no sense to me. Now it seems like a profound truth. Thank you God, for meeting us in our questions and searching.

I Will Speak Peace to You

 

A Gathering Voices post by Beth Pyles

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The Senate has passed an appropriations bill allowing the military to indefinitely detain US citizens while in the United States for suspected ties to al Qaeda or associated groups.  Given actions by the current administration and a ruling by the Supreme Court last year, the work of groups such as Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), with whom I have served in Iraq, makes me subject to this law.  

 

On June 30, 2010, the Supreme Court decided in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (HLP),  that a citizen of the United States can be deemed a terrorist by providing information and/or training on peaceful, non-violent resolution of conflict.  My thoughts at the time:

The cruel irony in our country today is that Lockheed-Martin, GE, Haliburton, KBR, Blackwater and its successor and others in the arms industry can legally sway elected officials towards violence and war by spending money (in campaign and lobbying efforts) as  constitutionally-protected free speech; yet if I speak to non-government actors committing violence with a view towards peaceful resolution of the conflict, my speech is not free.  Indeed, it comes at great cost, for it dubs me an aider of terrorists.

 
Congress and the President have successfully passed and imposed a law which prohibits aid to foreign terrorist organizations.  That makes sense.  But “aid” is defined to include “expert training”.   By a majority ruling, the Court agreed with the Executive Branch that such things as training folks how to engage in peace and reconciliation with the other side(s) to conflict constitute forbidden expert training.

 
I am heartbroken.

The kinds of things made criminal by the Court’s ruling include teaching human rights law and conflict resolution, as those would be the imparting of a specific skill or specialized knowledge. 

Now we face an ever-expanding incursion into the founding principles of this country, including not only free speech, but also due process of law, the bedrock upon which we rest our sense of collective self as civilized: that rules apply and that they apply equally and fairly, to all; and that no one, regardless of category (and there have been many) may be denied such things.

In this particular challenge to fairness and access, the impetus must be remembered: peace and peacemaking are seen as dangerous, subversive, threatening, while war and violence are viewed as our safe haven.

Apart from the sheer illogic of such thinking, apart from the surrender to moral bankruptcy it represents, stands the person of Jesus the Christ, the very Prince of Peace, the culmination of God's own peacable-kingdom vision.

As the Psalmist proclaims, I will speak peace to you.  (Psalms 85 & 122)

To whom would we not?  How can we not?  For it is a word from our Lord.

_______

Should you want to know more on how these laws are affecting the work of various charities worldwide, check out Charity & Security  

Hugo: An Unlikely Martin Scorsese Film?

A Review by Edward McNulty

 

The Station Inspector has chased Hugo up the stairs and into the clock tower

(c) 2012 Paramount Pictures

I always look forward to December as the month in which Hollywood studios release some of their best films of the year. This is true once again, with new December releases by two directors who have become icons for film lovers, Martin Scorsese and Stephen Spielberg. Each of their films provide movie magic for families.

Hugo came as a real surprise because it is based on Brian Selznick’s novel of the same title, one written for juveniles. What is the auteur of Taxi Driver and Mean Streets doing with a Dickensen story about a 12 year-old orphaned boy living in the dark recesses of the clock tower of a train station in Paris back in 1931? The answer comes only after we have been drawn into the escapades of Hugo who is attempting to survive living on his own while restoring a marvelous automaton his horologist father had been working on just before his death in a fire.

Through a series of events Hugo and Isabella, a girl who becomes his friend and accomplice, learn that George Melies, the depressed owner of the train station’s toy shop and the girl’s guardian, pioneered the film industry. Scorsese, a passionate film preservationist, treats us to a visual history that begins with the  re-enactment of the 1895 public showing in Paris of the very first films by the Lumiere brothers. Among them was Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat,  which created a sensation, the audience leaping to their feet thinking the train was actually rushing toward them from the screen. Present in that small audience (just 33 paying customers) is Georges, a magician who becomes fascinated by the illusion of motion on the screen, something far greater than his magic shows. Securing his own camera, he builds the world’s first movie studio, almost entirely made of glass so as to catch the sunlight. We then see him making his films, including the famous A Trip to the Moon in which the cannon-propelled space ship hits the man in the Moon right in the eye. By trial and error Melies creates special effects, showing that film is a unique art form capable of creating illusions that seem to be magic. All in all, Melies made over 500 films before public taste changed, leaving him bankrupt and depressed by the loss of his studio and career. Thus the film develops the twin themes of the boy trying to fix the automaton and also the life of a broken man.

We are also treated to short clips from other masters of the silent era, including a clip in which Buster Keaton, sitting on the driving rod of a steam engine, is then lifted up when the engine starts up. There is a shot of the famous Babylonia set from D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. The longest excerpt is the famous scene from Safety Last which we see this through the eyes of the children when Hugo sneaks Isabella into a theater after she tells him that she has never been allowed to see a movie. Comedian Harold Lloyd is stuck out on a ledge high above a city street, and then slipping, he dangles from the minute hand of a huge clock. Scorsese pays homage to this classic scene when Hugo, being pursued again by the Station Inspector and his dog, rushes up the stairs of the clock tower, climbs through the face of the giant clock to hide, slips and grabs onto the minute hand of the clock. High above the streets of Paris he hangs on in great peril until the Inspector gives up the search and leaves.

Martin Scorsese’s love of film permeates the whole work. Hugo is the kind of film that makes going to the movies (and writing about them) the magical experience that Georges Melies and talented filmmakers ever since have intended it to be. It is truly a treat for the entire family! As to Steven Spielberg and his marvelous new film War Horse, I will have to wait until next time to describe it—most impressive are its many moments of grace and humaneness in the midst of the turmoil of war. If you  love Black Beauty and The Black Stallion you probably will embrace this film also.

(A longer review is avialable at the wuthor's website www.visualparables.net)

Jesus' presence in pain

A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab

 

Two weeks ago, on a sunny afternoon, I got out my bicycle for a ride. As I pushed off with my left foot, I felt something snap or pop in my left knee. I rode a couple hundred yards slowly, checking to see if I needed to stop riding.

Yes, I definitely needed to stop.

I got home, put ice on my knee and elevated it. I’m not able to take painkillers, so ice has become my friend. At first my whole knee hurt, but as I iced it off and on the rest of the afternoon and evening, the pain became localized in the back, so I focused the ice there.

That night as I tried to sleep, my knee felt like it would explode. It was a pain so absorbing it dominated all my thoughts. I finally slept. The next morning it was clear that the pain was localized in the back of my knee, right where the hamstring muscles attach to the knee. I talked with a doctor friend who said I was doing the right thing by continuing to ice it and waiting to see if I needed further medical attention.

Each day my knee got a little bit better, but I noticed a few days later how tired I was. Some of the fatigue came from not sleeping as well as usual, and some of it came from coping with the pain all day long.

Now, two weeks later, it’s 90% well. I’m not writing about it to ask for sympathy or advice. I’m writing because I have been pondering how little empathy I’ve had for people with chronic pain. Pain is absorbing and exhausting. It limits a person’s view to the immediate, as if life is telescoped and truncated. Pain limits the ability to love others, and the big picture of what God is doing in the world feels far away and clouded. The pain determines so many aspects of daily life. Can I do that action without making the pain worse? What do I need to do to compensate as I make a particular movement?

This present moment of pain is all that matters.

In this Advent season when the whole world appears to be festive and when everyone appears to be focused on parties and shopping and gaiety, I invite you to think about the people you know who experience chronic pain or who are experiencing some specific form of pain right now. I invite you to pray for them, asking that God would meet them in their suffering.

Christmas appears to be a happy holiday, focused on the joyous birth of a baby. However, this baby was born into humble circumstances. As a man, he suffered as he made his journey to a painful death. Because of Jesus, anyone who suffers can have companionship in suffering and redemption of the pain. The companionship and redemption often don’t make the pain go away. But it does make a huge difference to know we are not alone as we suffer, and that something good can come from it.

I know a hurt knee, painful for a couple of weeks, is a ridiculously small form of suffering. But it got me thinking, and I’m now praying for people in pain in a whole new way. And that’s just one form of redemption that I experienced because I hurt my knee.

Advent Beatitude

 

A Gathering Voices Post by Lara Blackwood Pickrel

 

Expectation.

It’s such a heavy word, stretched taut with possibility - especially during this season of the Church’s life that is set aside for watching, waiting, preparing for new life. We celebrate our expectant hope by lighting candles or peering behind little doors towards the bits of chocolate that mark off days. It is a season marked by beauty and joy.

But is expectation always a beautiful thing? Is hope always joyful? Is it fair to expect that everyone see Advent as “the most wonderful time of the year”?

I don’t think so.

This Advent hope of ours is one grounded, rooted in the pain of the world. Mary and her people yearned (and some still yearn) for the birth of a messiah not because it would be a lovely thing to have one around. They yearned for a savior, an advocate, a liberator because injustice and despair were a part of their very real and tangible reality. They cried out for God’s intervention in the world out of their suffering - and their hope was not always joyful. This was a costly hope, an unsettling anticipation - and one that might not come to fruition in their lifetime.

It was the hope of two women who should not be pregnant - one unable to conceive and one unwed. It was the hope of shepherds bound to their flocks, who should not leave their fields and livelihood for any reason lest their families perish. It was the hope of a people whose lives were dictated by the whims of their occupiers, who journeyed far and wide simply to be counted for the sake of the tax pool. It was the yearning of those who could not afford to hope - those for whom joy and celebration come after the good news arrives, not before.

When we strip away the twinkling lights, commercial gloss and catchy songs - when we peel off the layers of spray snow and greeting card gusto, what remains? We are left with a season that belongs to those who can hardly bear to hope.

Are you chronically or terminally ill? - Advent belongs to you.

Are you mourning the death of a loved one or a lost job? - Advent is your season.

Are you struggling with infertility? Grieving a miscarriage? - This is your time.

Have you been pushed aside, held back or stomped down? - There is room for you here.

And what of the rest of us? It’s pretty simple, really: If you are already joyful, keep being joyful. If your life is already filled with hope, trust in that hope. If your soul overflows with praise, raise your hands to the heavens and sing carols to God. But at the same time, make a little room for those who aren’t joyful, hopeful, praiseful. Give them space for their grief without guilt or shame.

This Advent, as we watch and prepare for the arrival of the Christ child, let us consider the addition of a sort of supplemental Beatitude:

Blessed are they who must journey towards hope, for this is their season.

Grace and Gratitude

A Gathering Voices Post by Don McKim

 

The end of November each year brings three events. One is Thanksgiving Day in the United States; the other two are the end and the beginning of the church year.

Thanksgiving Day is a well-established American institution, complete with all the trappings of “grandmother’s house,” the festive meal of turkey and trimmings, along with all other family “traditions.” For some, it is the favorite holiday of the year—no gifts to give—just enjoy!

Thanksgiving is a day whose name means “gratitude,” with roots reaching back in the North American continent to communal celebrations for God’s blessings, given, and the response of those heeded the hymn’s invitation: “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” (The Presbyterian Hymnal, #551).

The conclusion of the church year is designated “Christ the King/Reign of Christ” Sunday, in which we mark the end of the liturgical year with the ringing affirmation that “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:11) and that the end of history will be marked by proclamation of the seventh angel in the book of Revelation:  “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15)! This is an ultimate affirmation of Christian hope, pulling us ahead into God’s future and giving us the comfort and assurance of God’s power and presence with us, eternally.

Our human response to the coming reign of Christ is thankfulness and gratitude. How could it be otherwise? Deep within us is God’s promise that the life of the world and our own lives—with all their “zigs and zags” are given meaning by our participation in Christ’s reign. Christ is reigning now; and definitively in the future, even as we pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

The first Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of the new liturgical year. Advent is the time of expectancy and hope as we anticipate the coming of God’s Messiah in the baby born in Bethlehem, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. The church waits on “tiptoe” for the coming of the Christ child in whom salvation and eternal life is found. Christ’s coming is the sheer gift of God’s grace, given to sinful people; and to the world which needs a savior from all sin. Advent is grace as we await the sure-coming of God’s “indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15).

These three days in the civic and church calendar point us to the great rhythm of the Christian life: Grace and Gratitude. These are the movements which define who we are as Christians: those who receive God’s gifts; and who respond in gratitude.

Those in the Reformed theological tradition know this rhythm within our bones. Noted Reformation scholar, Brian Gerrish shows in Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (rpt. Wipf & Stock, 2002) how Calvin’s theology of the Lord’s Supper embraces these movements. Grace and gratitude bring Calvin’s “teaching on the Lord’s Supper into harmony with other parts of the whole. In itself, the meal is a gift of God, but—like every girt—it is also an invitation to give thanks.” Gerrish quotes Calvin’s earliest edition of the Institutes (1536), where he wrote: “In this sacrament…the Lord recalls the great bounty of his goodness to our memory and stirs us up to acknowledge it; and at the same time he admonishes us not to be ungrateful for such lavish liberality, but rather to proclaim it with fitting praises and to celebrate it by giving thanks” (Gerrish, 19). God feeds us in the Supper, the “spiritual banquet,” and we respond in deepest gratitude, thanks, and praise!

Gerrish goes on to note that the “answering gratitude” of God’s children to God’s liberality is “not only the theme of the Lord’s Supper but a fundamental theme, perhaps the most fundamental theme, of an entire system of theology.” For, “it conveys, as nothing else can, the heart of Calvin’s perception of God, humanity, and the harmony between them that was lost by Adam and restored by Christ. The cardinal role of grace and gratitude is not surprising, since piety or godliness, as Calvin understands it, is grateful acknowledgement of the father’s gifts….The holy banquet is simply the liturgical enactment of the theme of grace and gratitude that lies at the heart of Calvin’s entire theology, whether one chooses to call it a system or not. It is, in short, a ‘eucharistic’ theology” (Gerrish, 20).

When I talk about the Christian life with church folks and discuss this theme, I ask them to experience it this way. Though I am not “big” on physical “expressions,” it is helpful if they envision the Christian life by closing their eyes and “breath in” while thinking: “Grace;” and “breathe out” while thinking “Gratitude.” This is the heartbeat of the Christian faith, expressed in our very act of breathing itself—the life-giving activity!

Grace and gratitude constitutes who we are as children of God!