Blogging through Advent - reacting to light

The colours in the evenings just before dusk have been amazing recently. I took this from the car tonight driving into Hastings from Rye - awesome over the sea in the distance. 

Sometimes you have to react to colour.  Last night, after I wrote my blog post, the lights on my car dashboard started to flash as I tried to turn the key in the ignition. There was no way the car was going to start. The flashing lights including a large STOP sign meant I had to take notice of them. An hour or so later waiting for the RAC man, I was on my way with a new battery. 

There is a hymn by Michaela Youngson in our hymn book which talks about making the colours sing. Who are the people who give us light today? I take some time tonight to give thanks for them. I give thanks too for times like this orange vista when the colour of life invades the drabness, and I give thanks for the RAC man who got me moving, and the warmth of Sainsbury's where I sat waiting as it was bitter outside. Thank God I broke down in their car park! 

Light of Christ, you come into the world with brightness and colour and we are called to react to you. Shine on us today. Amen. 

Blogging through Advent - reflecting on my Monday

It is amazing how often I am drawn to this place. A day off sorting out my mother and time with Lis at the end of which I found be myself heading for evening prayer in the cathedral at Peterborough in search of quiet and peace and space for prayers of thanksgiving. There is a huge Advent procession later tonight and the cathedral was in darkness when I arrived. A steward very abruptly said "can I help you? as though I wasn't welcome. He was stopped by my friendly security man who told him I was there for evening prayer tonight being held in the apse chapel - pictured.

Owing to a busy evening ahead I was the only one at the prayers. I found it strangely powerful to say the responses on my own in that space looking down the dark nave towards the stained glass lit by the Christmas lights outside the west door. The lovely security man asked me after what it was like to have my own personal service! It was good to find God speaking in my own quiet space: to hear words of personal care for me right now. I offered prayers of exasperation over my mother whose future is uncertain; prayers of joy about my relationship with Lis and our marriage next year in that awesome space and her coming into my life and some prayers for focus and energy as I am swamped by services and stuff these next few weeks. It was lovely to walk down the cathedral afterwards with Canon Tim who thanked me for coming.

I guess I am commending during Advent we all try and find some space. Go off on your own and let God speak. I had a cathedral to myself. But it can be done anywhere.

Blogging through Advent - Advent Sunday - the right time...

I will endeavour through Advent, most days, to write a reflection and a prayer for people to use similar to my sabbatical prayer writing time. 

This morning at church it was a real joy to receive Olivia and Shane by confirmation. In our service we thought about waiting. Here are my thoughts shared with my folk this morning about waiting and God's right time...

I was in Hastings town centre on Friday afternoon, the Friday before Advent. It felt like the Friday before Christmas!  It was of course Black Friday. I only went in Smiths for a ream of paper. Chaos. It is not Christmas Sunday today, it is Advent Sunday!

Lauren, the lovely girl who cuts what little hair I have left off every five weeks said to me she “hates Christmas as she just puts on so much weight as biscuits just appear” and then “I bet you are busy now it is Christmas!” (Implying I do nothing for eleven months of the year…)  It is not Christmas Sunday today, it is Advent Sunday!

I went on the pier after my hair cut – the colours on Friday night of the sky were glorious but my peace was cut short as I walked past one of those little huts which had “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus” followed by “The First Nowell” blasting out. It is not Christmas Sunday today, it is Advent Sunday!

I then went in Morrisons. It was worse in there. Aled Jones’s “Walking in the air” I said to the girl on the till “you got to put with this for over a month?” It is not Christmas Sunday today, it is Advent Sunday!

Two Advent attitudes for us to think about maybe.

The first is to wait. To wait for God to come at God’s right time.

We are not good at waiting. If you ever come with me in my car on a journey, I am dreadful when there is a queue and I am in a hurry. I am a stickler for being early – my father used to make us go home if we were late somewhere and I hate being late. So I shout at the traffic jam “COME ON” – it makes no difference at all, I know. We hate waiting for trains or buses or hospital appointments or parcels.   

Life is a journey, and there is God’s right time. Today is the right time for Cyril and Brenda and Barbara to formally join us. Today is the right time for Shane and Olivia to be confirmed. There are moments in life when everything just falls into place and obstacles are removed and we just have to go for it. I know about that at the moment. I appear to be getting married! That is a huge surprise to me still because I never expected to be where I am today and I thank you for the kind messages since I got back from Holy Island on Monday. Proposing on a beach is bad for your knees, believe me! It feels the right time, previously another relationship would not have been the right time at all. God knows the right time and his purposes for us will be revealed. No one believed he would come as a child. No one knows the day or the hour when he in Jesus will come again, but he will. It is part of our faith. The Advent journey is about listening for God, waiting for him, not expecting the ordinary but discerning what God might be up to next. Isaiah saw something of it in his vision. Matthew saw the world being shaken one day.

We are seeing it in the churches I serve here – our premises are being revolutionised for more effective mission in 2017, St Helens are very happy in their new home and are growing, Pett and Rye are discovering Messy Church is great fun having had a go at it, and Rye are worshipping ecumenically in a morning more and more with other churches and are finding that liberating. All the decisions we are making are being put into practice at the right time.

I commended Shane and Olivia not to be frightened to wait on God and listen for his work in their life at the right time. Preparation time prayer time, discerning time is vital to really get it when it happens.    

          

The great Advent book The Coming of God, by Maria Boulding says it all for us:

“Advent is the consecration of waiting in our lives. Human life is full of waiting; people wait for trains and buses and planes; they stand in queues in shops; they sit nervously in dentists’ waiting rooms; they wait in anguish for news of loved ones. They wait for the slow process of healing to take its time; they wait for the birth of a child. Waiting can be very different in these different situations, according to our attitude. In an age of “instant” products, any delay can be viewed as negative, for “time is money.” Yet some things cannot be skimped or hurried; we have to let them take the time they need. You can’t make the grass grow by pulling it, as the proverb wisely warns… Faith can demand long, patient waiting when nothing seems to be happening, and this is necessary to growth. The waiting changes us, schools us, teaches us to know God.”   

I think the waiting  and the call to be ready reminds us that this is God’s story, his plan, and his promises. He is in control, and he will take this story wherever he pleases. And it reminds us, slaps us in the face at times, that we’re not the centre of the story. It’s not about us, and things don’t always (often!) go the way we’d like. Two confirmations and three transfers of membership remind us that today God still is at work and he is always ahead of us.

Today is not  Christmas Sunday –thank God. I’m not ready!

Let’s have a holy and happy Advent first, shall we?   

God of the right time, thank you for those moments when you just turn up and remind us that the present moment can be transformed. 

Thank you today for Advent and a journey to wonder and to explore your ways.

Help us to wait for you, and to be open enough to be moved beyond words at what you are up to. And may Christmas and its pressure just well... wait.

Amen.