Go In Peace

Have you noticed a new addition to our church parking lot? A few weeks ago, signs were quietly installed at the north and the south exits. They don't give the typical kind of instruction you'd expect to find on such a sign - like "slow" or "stop" or "no left turn." Instead, they give a word of encouragement to "Go in Peace."

Go in Peace. Because I pass right by one of those each day as I walk from the parsonage to the church, I've noticed that those words are making a daily "blip" in my awareness. They give me plenty of opportunity to think about the choice I have - to "go in peace" throughout an ordinary day. That choice can change a conversation, put a "to-do" list in a more meaningful perspective, and remind me that I depend on a source of Peace greater than myself.

During Advent, we take time to let four special words make a "blip" in our awareness - Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy. We understand them as gifts from beyond ourselves, gifts of God - gifts that somehow must be longed for, and waited for, before they can truly be received. They are gifts that come to life for us as we think about Jesus, and as we keep learning what it means to worship, serve, and follow him.

This Sunday, we'll light the Advent Candle of Hope, and hear about an older man, Zechariah, in whom Hope was born anew as an unexpected gift from God. His story is woven through the whole first chapter of Luke, and the words he spoke in Luke 1:68-80 still speak to us of the Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy we long to receive.