About a year ago, my younger sister Kelsey decided to attend culinary school and pursue a lifelong dream of hers. This fall, as part of the program, she is working as an intern at one of the finest restaurants in New York City, Café Boulud, so I have gotten to visit her quite a few times. Each time I go, I feel like all I do is eat, and only at the classiest of places. Kelsey’s taste has become so refined and sophisticated that she would prefer to not eat than eat something that she considers less than amazing. She balks when any of us suggest pizza or burgers for a meal, and her demanding palette has become a running joke in my family.

Kelsey’s experience in culinary school has changed the way she sees food. It’s really changed the way she sees everything. Her days are focused on what food experience she can discover next. She even has a blog about all of her culinary adventures. She is different because of what she now knows about what she eats.

When I was in Ghana this summer, I had the opportunity to visit a rural village called Andokope. This village had around 800 people (over 200 children), and they had no access to clean water, no school and no health clinic within an hour’s walking distance. When the village elder showed us their homes, their drinking water, and then introduced us to the children, I was shocked. The water was a dark, cloudy green with dirt and grime floating around in it. It was unfathomable.

After my experience in Ghana, I can’t look at things the same way. I order food differently, spend money differently, and look at others differently. I am leaving for Ghana again in a week, and my impending trip is greatly affecting my Christmas. I am changed because of what I know about the people there.

When Jesus was born on that first Christmas day, everything changed. The Savior was here. Jesus would live to show us the kind of love that flips all cultural assumptions on their heads, the kind of love that transcends where you live, what you own, and even what you do. It’s a love that changes lives.  

We talk a lot about God’s love around here, especially around Christmas. But then what? How are our lives different because of it? How has having a relationship with this God of love changed who we are, how we treat others, and how we see everything around us? How has Jesus’ birth revolutionized us, years later?

Knowledge is important. But knowledge is powerless if we don’t allow what we’ve seen and felt to change us for the better.

Blessings,
Hillary

Christmas movies are here! My wife, Elizabeth, and I watched It’s a Wonderful Life on Saturday night. And on Monday night, to celebrate my birthday with family, we watched the musical Scrooge with Albert Finney. Now, many of you may never have seen this movie, but for my family it is a Christmas tradition. When I was a kid, we would go to church on Christmas Eve, come home and get everything ready for Santa Claus, and then pop Scrooge in to finish off the night.

As we got older, things changed: my sister moved away and her family wasn’t always around. She’s added three children to our family. My parents divorced when I was 24, so that doesn’t look the same either.

My brother’s family lives in Atlanta, and they are very rarely here for Christmas. My brother-in-law was killed in Iraq in October 2006; that was our hardest Christmas without a doubt. My brother and his wife added my nephew to the Moseley clan in 2008; they have another son on the way.

Elizabeth and I got married last year; that changed things, especially holidays. And we both work at churches, so we will be working on Christmas Eve. My sister remarried this past summer. Instead of doing so on Christmas Eve, we watched Scrooge on Dec. 13.

Things change, even the things that we hold most dear. And though this time of year always stirs in me a contemplation of all that’s changed, I am struck by the fact that so much has endured. We still celebrate. We still sing songs and light candles. We still give gifts, and we still love each other. We hang the old ornaments and watch old movies and call old friends, but we’ve also added a lot of new.

In Senior High Sunday School this past week, we discussed Emmanuel, Hebrew for “God with us.” We discussed how the Jews believed that Emmanuel meant that God was on their side. We talked about how the disciples believed that Emmanuel meant that God was physically present with them in the person of Jesus. We discussed how the earliest Christians learned that Emmanuel meant that the Holy Spirit worked within them, through them and between them.

And we talked about how hard those changes in understanding, those revelations, must have been. But with all that change and the crises of faith that must have resulted, the enduring truth was and is still Emmanuel—God is with us.

Those revelations were all given long before we were born; but the revelation of God with us: on our side, incarnated in Jesus Christ, and present with us in the Holy Spirit, is made new each and every day in the way that we love and care for our neighbors and glorify God. The ways in which we see and feel and understand God’s love will change, of that we can be certain, but God’s love will always endure.

Blessings,
Neil

I have heard the new Deitrich Bonhoeffer book quoted twice this week in devotionals so I decided to pick up the book myself. As we are in a season of waiting, a condition that Bonhoeffer knew all too well — waiting for the war to end, waiting to be released from prison, waiting for his normal life to resume. (It never did; he was executed by the Nazis in 1945, just weeks before the end of the war.)

One of the themes in Bonhoeffer’s God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas is “mystery.” One of the mysteries he addresses is that of incarnation: why would God, who could have chosen to appear as a powerful king or messiah, choose instead to come to us as a helpless baby? In the manger, Bonhoeffer finds heavenly glory precisely because there is no earthly glory to be had. He looks at the Magnificat of Mary and sees the powerful being brought down from their thrones while the lowly and poor are exalted. “The rich he sends away empty,” declares this section of the Gospel of Luke.

Such passages make us uncomfortable. In 21st-century America, we enjoy peace and untold riches. Our nation is powerful. We have so very much to lose in bowing to the manger. Why would we? Bonhoeffer writes:

“For the great and powerful of this world, there are only two places in which their courage fails them, of which they are afraid deep down in their souls, from which  they shy away. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ. No powerful person dares to approach the manger, and this even includes King Herod. For this is where thrones shake, the mighty fall, the prominent perish, because God is with the lowly. Here the rich come to nothing, because God is with the poor and hungry, but the rich and satisfied he sends away empty. Before Mary, the maid, before the manger of Christ, before God in lowliness, the powerful come to naught; they have no right, no hope; they are judged. . . . “

It’s hard to renounce wealth. It’s nearly impossible to renounce power. Yet Bonhoeffer says this is what the manger requires of us: to become like the God who chose to come in a diaper, weak and dependent. Are we prepared to embrace that bracing mystery?

Blessings,
Rachel

The people of Viganella thought it was a crazy idea. Viganella is a small village in the foothills of the Italian Alps, deep in the Antrona valley, where the surrounding mountains are so high that the villagers receive no direct sunlight for nearly three months each winter.

At least that was the case until a few years ago, when scientists developed a simple but effective plan to illuminate the cold, dark village. A huge mirror – 26 feet by 16 feet -  was installed up on a mountainside, and reflects sunshine onto the village’s main square.

According to London’s Sunday Times, the mirror, weighing more than a ton, is operated by computer-controlled motors which enable it to follow the sun, “reflecting its rays into the village square half a mile away and lighting up an area of 300 square yards for at least six hours a day.”

Now, the people of Viganella believe in the power of crazy ideas as they bask in the mid-winter sunshine.

Here at University Park, we sometimes have big ideas about how we might help shine light into dark places, and how we get to reflect grace and hope in all kinds of large and small ways.

On Sunday morning, our children and youth will brighten Fellowship Hall as we celebrate Christmas in Song and Story. We’ll hear about the Celebrate Jesus event, inviting us to help brighten Christmas Eve for over 500 homeless people right here in Dallas. Our Communion offering will provide hats and scarves to bring warmth to those who are cold. We’ll sing the songs of the season, remembering the star that led to the manger that held the Son of God, and we’ll remember that the Light continues to come into the world, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

One of the ways I’ll be sharing the light of Jesus Christ is through our Share the Light  giving program. I hope you will too. Through Share the Light, we can give gifts of life and hope in honor of our loved ones.

We, in our abundance, have the privilege of loving others with the love of God in ways that touch and change lives. You and I can reflect the Light of Christ, offering real hope and love in very tangible ways:  books for children, meals for seniors, repellent-treated mosquito nets for children in malaria-risk areas… the list is long, and the opportunities are vast.

However you choose to worship, give and serve this season, please know that you make a difference.  Thank you for being the Church, the gathered and scattered Body of Christ, living mirrors reflecting God’s love into the world!

Blessings,
Rebecca

We use the word advent in a number of ways. As a boy growing up in the 1950s I remember when the Russians launched the first satellite – Sputnik it was called.  Historians say that Sputnik marked the advent of the space age.

Talk about a new reality bursting through the seams of what was thought possible – that was the space age! It was not long after the first satellite orbited the earth that humans began rocketing into the heavens. This was big!

Big? Yes, but nothing in comparison to the advent of the Christian age when the very Creator of the cosmos came from Heaven to live on earth among us. Even more than taking up residence on the planet, Jesus, through the power of divine love, offered to take up residence in our hearts.

When we welcome Jesus into our hearts we invite a paradox. Jesus brings both joy and pain. By his unconditional love for us our sins are forgiven. When we awaken from time to time to that amazing gift of grace we are filled with joy. But I know that my own Jesus-filled heart also functions to give me spiritual angina whenever my heart begins to harden and block out the needs of others.

Each season of Advent offers us the chance to experience a renewed in-breaking of Christ in our daily lives. Some people prepare themselves for that renewal by prayer, times of Bible study and meditation, maybe even some fasting in the midst of all the feasts going on around us.

For me I find that some form of concrete action often helps me move to a better place spiritually. If that is true for you, I hope you will consider joining me and some of the others on your church staff in the Share the Light Challenge. (See the Pastor’s Share the Light Challenge, below.)

Blessings,
Leighton

Pastor’s Share the Light Challenge

The concrete action that I’m going to take this year to help open my heart to the needs of others is this. I’m going to calculate what I’m spending on Christmas celebrations with family and friends – the whole shebang; gifts, parties, decorations, etc. — and then contribute a percentage of that amount through the church’s Share the Light  program to meet the needs of others.  The target I’ve set for myself is 10 percent. (By the way, Donna is all onboard with this too.)

It is an inescapable truth that Jesus, whose birth we celebrate, was born in a stable among the poor, and in his ministry Jesus repeatedly proclaimed good news to the poor. To truly celebrate the Christ of Christmas I can’t ignore the opportunity I have to help meet the needs of those who hold a special place in the heart of Jesus.

Here’s my challenge. Will you consider (truly pray about and discuss with family members) giving a percentage gift somewhere between 1 and 10 percent of Christmas expenses to those in need? If after due consideration that’s just not possible, will you consider as a starting point giving at least one Share The Light gift this year?

When we Share the Light of Christ, I believe we also share in the joy of Christ. What an opportunity we have as a church for this Advent to have a greater missional impact than ever before.