Frankly Devoted

This Sunday begins the Season of Advent. In many Christian traditions, Advent marks the start of the new Christian year - with congregations lighting candles each of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas Day, which celebrates the birth of Jesus. The term comes from the Latin ad venio “to come” – anticipating the coming of the Lord.  It is a time not just for a new year, but a new commitment to Christ as we prepare spiritually for Christmas, remembering Christ being born into the world. It is a season of waiting, of preparation to welcome God’s light into the world. The season comes as the days grow shorter and darkness abounds, and we light the Advent Candles in preparation for the one who brings light to the darkness  The book of Isaiah is full of verses that are used during the Advent season. Christians take these versus to foretell of Jesus as the coming of the Messiah.  Many of these verses from Isaiah will be familiar to some of you:  Isaiah 9:2 The people w...

 My Lenten Devotion for April 1, 2023 for Saint Mark United Methodist Church, Atlanta, GA, 

  I delivered the following message on Christmas Day, 2022 as a guest speaker at Rehoboth United Methodist Church: Merry Christmas! Christ is Born! Let us Rejoice! Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward all humankind. It is an honor to be with you at Rehoboth on this Holy Day, a special honor with Christmas falling on Sunday. Before I begin, let us bow our heads. Father God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable, O Lord. You are our rock, and our redeemer, our light and our inspiration. Amen. Christmas traditions! The magic… the lights! I remember as a kid our family tradition of riding through neighborhoods, seeing the pretty lights on Christmas… the neighborhood streets lined with luminaria. For a number of years, we filled up our own white paper bags with sand, lit, the candles, and lined our driveway. All of Wrenn Road seemed lit up! Mama would say, “It looks like the world is on fire!” A few years ago, I st...

 

 

 

God’s Economy As I’m writing this, I was reminded that today was Amazon Prime Day, “a holiday you can’t attack for being co-opted by consumerism because that is precisely the point.” As “consumers” we are taught to “consume” – to keep buying stuff, because we “need” more stuff. Stock prices rise when companies project growth, and they can’t project growth if they don’t show consumer demand, so they have to get us to want what they are selling, whether we need it or not. Our entire economy is based on this. We are trained to accumulate stuff, and to accumulate and love money, with which we buy more and more stuff. Yet even as we restaurants serve gigantic portions and throw out food daily, people around us are starving. One in ten of households in the U.S. experience food insecurity. While I was studying at Yale, I was a teaching fellow in Economics. But today I know that the Economics of God is different than that of this world. Jesus warns us, “ Watch out! Be on your guard a...