Pathways

 

‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
   make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
   and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
   and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
   and all people shall see it together,
  for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’                                                                                Isaiah 40

In the lonely places
The wilderness
Where we stand forlorn
Windswept and alone
Your voice calls out
Prepare a way for the Lord

In the dark places
The shadows
Where we hide our fears
Embrace our tears
Your voice calls out
Prepare a way for the Lord

 

For the desert places in which we walk
The streets we roam
The paths we cross
Guide our feet
Take us to places
Where you would go
Give us words that you would use
That in this Advent season
Of promise and preparation
We might point the way.

O come, Thou Day-spring, from on high,
And cheer us by thy drawing nigh;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come again and with us ever dwell

Vaccine

 

Yesterday in Coventry Margaret Keenan (90) became the first person in the world to receive the first dose of the new vaccine. She said that she felt privileged, and was delighted that she can finally look forward to spending time with her family after being on her own for so long. She was apparently followed by thousands more people, including a gentleman named William Shakespeare (81) who has – like many of us – endured a true winter of discontent. It is wonderful to see the beginning of immunisations, given Measure for Measure no doubt. They were followed by elderly people and care workers at around fifty hospitals across the UK.

This appears to be the beginning of the remedy we have been hoping and praying for. And there are other vaccines being approved. Nevertheless, immunising all who want/need it will take a long time and requires careful organisation. However good the cure, it relies on people’s ongoing commitment and integrity for it to be effective.

Advent is a time when we think of fresh hope, we have that air of expectancy. A reading which we often use says “Comfort, comfort my people” picturing God declaring that his people’s suffering is ending. They had spent years in exile in Babylon, after their nation with its buildings and temple had been destroyed, and their sense of normality had been lost. But now they were to be allowed to return, helped by Cyrus the new King, and the Jewish people saw him as an agent of God. The cry goes up that a straight way will be made in the desert for them to return – and that the glory of God will once again be revealed (Isaiah chapter 40.1-5).

The way was before them and they took it, but there remained a huge task of reconstruction. It took a lot of faith and trust to make the journey from brokenness to newness of life. Our nation is faced with a gargantuan task of continuing to protect others while carefully using vaccines to prevent further suffering and loss of life. It takes courage and resourcefulness to achieve that.

For Christians, this is a spiritual time to recognise our shortcomings and sins, and to return to the Lord our God. Our commitment can waver, our desire to serve God’s loving ways can recede, our sense of his presence can become dim. For looking forward to the coming of the Christ-child means that we can see fresh hope, new life, approaching. And as he joins our human community of mixed actions and attitudes, to save us, and to be the remedy of our sin, so we are invited to be raised up to his level of knowing and proclaiming the presence of God in our world. “Peace to God’s people on earth” is the heavenly message and if we will but turn and believe there is Good News of great Joy. May that Joy be yours.

Waiting

 

We’re not that good at waiting, is it because it just feels like we’re not doing anything?  Living in the 21st-century we seem to have an ever-shrinking attention span; our wealth and technology allow us to access virtually anything we want any time we want. Everything is sooner, faster, now. Impatiently we wait in line on the phone, there’s 20 in the queue in front of us, disaster! Someone did not answer our email by return, how could they do this to us? If anyone needs to learn the Advent virtue of waiting upon the Lord, it’s us.

What is it like to wait for God? Many of us know exactly what that is like. We wait for God to explain why a family member died too young. We wait for God to open a path out of a marriage that has ended, into a new place where healing might begin. We wait for God to reveal an open door back into a faith community when we’ve been hurt by others.

And of course, virtually this entire year has been a time of waiting. We’ve waited during lockdowns and quarantines. We’ve waited on masks and respirators and loo paper. We’ve waited on test results for the coronavirus. We’ve waited endless weeks and months, not able to visit our loved ones in hospitals and care homes, in order to protect them.

Children and parents have waited for schools to reopen and students waited to see if they could return home for Christmas. Would our jobs hold out during the crisis? We’ve waited for a vaccine. And we’ve waited and waited and waited to go back to church in the old ways that were familiar and comfortable to us.

2020 has often felt like a year of waiting. Perhaps we’re better equipped now than we ever have been to understand that phrase ‘wait upon the Lord’. The good news is that God is working for us as we wait for God.

So we’re waiting for the coming of the Christ Child on Christmas Day, that glorious moment of incarnation when God comes to be with us in human form and we’re doing another kind of waiting. We’re waiting for the signs of the Incarnation in our own lives. We’re waiting to see the new way that God will be manifest in our own individual time and place. God is with us, but where and how? We wait and watch, on the lookout for the new signs of his presence waiting to be discovered in the everyday.

Patience is a hard-earned virtue, and many of us are deeply wearied by all the waiting we’ve had to do, all the times we’ve had to say no to ourselves and our children this year in order to stay safe and keep others safe. It might feel like 2020 is a year out of time, a wasted and empty expanse that consisted of nothing but life on hold. But is that true? Was this time of waiting really wasted? What is most important about church? How have you found new strengths by the call to adapt and the sudden multiplication of time and new challenges?

But the good news is that the slow, necessary, at times painful work of being changed, of being made ready for incarnation, is not up to us alone. God is the agent of our transformation as we wait. Knowing this reminds us that we don’t have to do this on our own. There is peace and comfort in the truth that as the endless days of waiting crawl by, God is active within us and our communities.

And so, we pray, and we stick together, and we love one another, and we wait upon the Lord. And Isaiah, the great prophet of the Advent season, announces the good news:

“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

 

Quiet Waters

 

Annmarie writes:

Hertford lies at the confluence of four rivers- the Lee, Rib , Mimram and Beane. The chalk river in the Beane valley is the shortest of the four and like the others provides lovely walks. If you start at Stapleford’s historic church of St Mary’s  in Church Lane  you can go south to Waterford or north through the Woodhall Estate.

My photos were taken going north

 Psalm 23. 1-3

 The Lord is my Shepherd;

I have all that I need

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul

He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake

 Psalm 100. 3

Acknowledge that the Lord is God

He made us and we are his

We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.   

 

Comfort

 

 

 

 

Helen reflects: Comfort my people…prepare the way of the Lord…every mountain and hill shall be made low…then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed…say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” (Isaiah 40.)

 

When I read these words, or hear them being read, in my mind I hear the glorious music of Handel’s Messiah, so powerful and strong.  I usually play Part One of my Messiah CD during Advent; it helps me to concentrate and look forward to the coming of Jesus.  Somehow those Biblical texts penetrate the heart and mind when set to music.

 

This reading from Isaiah 40 for the second week in Advent ends with verse 11, a beautiful picture of how God regards us, his people.  “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”  I can hear the Soprano and Alto duet reminding me of God’s unfailing love and tenderness, and I admit it makes me very emotional.

 

During this Advent time of waiting we can open our minds, even to the unexpected.  I particularly like this poem of Thom M Shuman “Every Evening”.

 

Every evening

it’s the same:

put the key in the deadbolt,

turn the lock;

check the windows

put out the cat;

leave a light on…

 

All those routines

to feel safe

and fall asleep in peace.

 

But some night,

in the midst of my security,

you will tiptoe into my house,

 

rearranging the furniture,

cracking the combination

of my heart,

and ransacking

all my fears;

 

then,

softly whistling

Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus,

you will slip out,

leaving the door

standing

wide open

 

that I might

follow you

into the kingdom.

 

Come, Lord Jesus!

Amen

 

© Thom M Shuman, Journeying through Advent

Taken from Candles & Conifers, Wild Goose Publications

 

 

 

Prayers of Life: Roundabout

 

From the other side of the safety railings here in Hertford you can see the roundabouts on the A414. I don’t look very much, Lord, but even in a short time I can see the remarkable complexity of the system. People are interacting on their varying journeys. Their meeting in this place set out for mingling shows a mixture of cooperation and trust as well as some carelessness and bullying. Just like daily life without vehicles, I suppose.

It is a marvel that there aren’t more crashes, as people speed along, using the wrong lane, ignoring the red light which “only just changed”, maybe distracted by passengers or phones, or – please, no – in a fit of road rage. We can all be afflicted by selfishness, whether or not we are in a vehicle, and who is to say that the long daily queues don’t wear people down. Yet for all that, most drivers come through safely and reach their destination. And when the world’s news is presented in newspapers, or on TV or radio, it is usually the problems that are focused on. Perhaps it helps us to avoid them ourselves…

Viewing a roundabout on a good day I can see many people taking suitable care, avoiding excessive risks, even being courteous to others – maybe even to me if I am on the road. It’s a great picture of how things are in most of life, in which we rejoice, but we must always be alert to things that we may have failed to notice and the signs showing the way ahead. No wonder God gives us time to praise and time to confess.

Lord, help me to follow the way to which your love calls me. It is easy to take a wrong turn if I allow selfish impulses to take over. Open my eyes that I may not miss the signs showing the way. Direct my way day by day away from evil and toward good, and through faith in you grant that my life, over the years, may not be going round in circles, but lived so that I come to that heavenly destination of life with you; through Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Prayers of Life revisited….

Some while ago, Michel Quoist, a Catholic priest, published a book called Prayers of Life. It became extremely popular, as it took situations from everyday life, contemplated them and prayed about them. It encouraged a closeness or familiarity with God -  present in everyday events and observations - which made a profound contrast with the churches’ forms of worship at the time which were almost entirely the Book of Common Prayer and the Latin Mass, neither of which was particularly contemporary.

 

 

Prayers of Life: Breath

 

Breath in the cold air. People walking for exercise or essential tasks have certainly needed extra warm clothing recently. The mist and fog hang heavy some mornings and it creates a special atmosphere of mystery. I can’t help noticing how people’s breath hangs in the air, it looks reminiscent of a steam train chugging down the line. It also reminds me, Lord, of the essential human need for air to keep our bodies alive. It is you who give us the breath of life.

The visibility of our breath also shows how our presence leaves an impression, and the vapours hang in the air for longer than I would usually notice or imagine. If I walk through someone’s breath on the street, whitened by hot air expelled into the cold wintry street, is there a risk? I wonder. But if it wasn’t so cold I wouldn’t notice.

I wonder what else I don’t notice, Lord. Warm breath in cold air suggests I too have this normally invisible “contact” with others. This leads me to think that I probably often have an influence on others, somewhat indirectly by just being in the same area. I know I can look impatient or unconcerned sometimes, but I guess my tone of voice and body language can communicate something at a deeper level than I am truly aware of. I need to remember that wherever I am, wherever I breathe, I can seek to allow your loving Spirit to hold and guide me, so that – imperfect as I am – others may experience something of you, the invisible presence of the One who gives us the breath of Life.

Lord God, when the risen Lord Jesus breathed over his disciples he was spiritually offering them the presence of your Spirit to inspire and strengthen them for Christian sharing and caring. By your Spirit, may I, with my fellow Christians, remain faithful to the gospel call and live to proclaim your love wherever we may be, intentionally or not.

Prayers of Life revisited….

Some while ago, Michel Quoist, a Catholic priest, published a book called Prayers of Life. It became extremely popular, as it took situations from everyday life, contemplated them and prayed about them. It encouraged a closeness or familiarity with God -  present in everyday events and observations - which made a profound contrast with the churches’ forms of worship at the time which were almost entirely the Book of Common Prayer and the Latin Mass, neither of which was particularly contemporary.