Dear Friends,
The Boulder poet, Andrea Gibson, of blessed memory, wrote a poem called “Hunger,” and these are its first few lines:
“At five years old I asked my mother if Santa Claus gave the starving children in Africa toys or food for Christmas
She blew off my questions like dust on a diamond
We all grew up mining for answers we wish we’d never found”
Being led by the light invites us to ask questions many don’t want to ask. We do…. During Advent, preparing for Christmas, is a rich time for discovering the questions we really want to ask.
We buy presents and put them in boxes at schools and churches and department stores to be sent out to children we are afraid will not see any gifts for Christmas.
How do we get to know one another across boundaries of rich and poor, etc.…so we aren’t buying presents for “female child age 7” but for Becky or Felicia or Tommy or Shawn?
I thought about the work of crossing those boundaries this past summer when I was talking with someone I had found sleeping in one of the window wells, and he said, “It is the safest place for me to sleep in Boulder.” And I thought the prophet Isaiah might say: “Isn’t the work a church has to make all of Boulder a safe place to sleep?”
How does our Advent strengthen us to meet one another, to get to know one another, across all the boundaries of ethnicity, and class, and all sorts of distinctions we make, keeping us from falling in love with each other?
If we are led by the light (as we are talking about this Advent) – it will lead us to creating the kind of community and world God dreams.
Keep tellin’ the Story,
Mike
I love this rendition of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” by Maverick City Music – I hope you’ll find it moving as well:
This week’s takeaway: We can be led by the light into creating the kind of community and world God dreams, where we fall in love with each other across all boundaries.