Receiving

“Receiving God’s Grace to Become God’s Gifts” – that’s our congregation’s theme for the next three months – and that’s a mouthful! Let’s go easy on ourselves, with all the getting-ready-for-Christmas things already in our minds – let’s just focus today on one word -- “receiving.”

During these days of Advent, “receiving” is almost a counter- cultural activity. So much being spoken to us by advertisements and daily conversations is about “getting” – “only 26 more days to get that Christmas shopping done!”; “What are you going to get for him?”; “What do you think we’ll get from them?”; “When am I going to find time to get the Christmas decorations up?”... and the unspoken thought -- “I can’t wait to just get through it all and put my feet up on the 26th!”

But we in the Church are invited into a journey of receiving during the Advent and Christmas Seasons.

Receiving is what we do as we begin to realize that there is something much bigger than just our own plans at work in the experiences of each day. Receiving is something that begins to happen to us when we hear an inner voice of Love speaking to us, right when we thought our minds were too full for one more thing. Receiving may be something that surprises us when we unwrap an old Christmas Winter 2012-2013 ornament, simply trying to get a task done, and find ourselves in grateful tears for a memory it brings of what this story of God becoming human for us really means. And receiving is the full-hearted welcoming of a person whose gift or card or word of greeting has been placed in our hands.

 During Advent, we give names to those moments of “Receiving God’s Grace” that so often take us by surprise. “Hope” we call it, that God-given dream of what shall be. “Love,” a God-given way of life that overcomes emptiness. “Peace,” a God-given power to stand and to care in the face of turmoil. “Joy,” a God-given trust that we are never alone, that transforms everything.

Together we’ll light the Advent candles of Hope, Love, Peace, and Joy at our worship services in December; and together we will open our hearts and hands again to receive the greatest gift of God’s loving, forgiving, ever-present grace – Jesus, “Emmanuel,” God with us.