Adventuring

Adventuring forward is the theme of this season.  Sunday is a time of new beginnings.  It is the first day of advent, the season when we consciously open our hearts to watch and wait for the surprise coming.  Who would ever have thought that God would chose to come as a helpless and dependent baby?  Vulnerable and poor, Jesus came to flesh out the character of God.   This is a time of preparing and keeping our eyes, ears and hearts open for God's loving and surprise touch in our vulnerable and open hearts.  This is the time that angels came to ordinary people in history to reveal to them the new beginnings ahead.  The common theme was, "Do not be afraid!"

Sunday is also a special day of new beginnings for one of our daughters.  She has chosen to be baptized on Sunday.  For many months she has been asking to be baptized, but as we wanted her to feel fully the love of our family and the family of God for her just as she is, we encouraged her to wait.  We wanted her to be full and complete and loved without any action on her part.  At the beginning of this season of waiting for the Son of God to be revealed, the waiting for our daughter is over.  She wants to stand and publicly declare her love for God as she enacts the sacrament of being buried under the water and rising again to new life in Christ.  She is adopted not only into our earthly family, but into the eternal family of God.

In this time of rising anxiety and pressure, consciously let go of the tyranny of perfection and fear which Christ actually came to dispel!   Do not be afraid!  Keep wide open spaces in your heart and life for God and for the empty silence into which He came.  Let us acknowledge our own vulnerability and come to full rest in the loving and accepting embrace of God in the adventuring.  He embraces us fully as we are.