Faith in Progress

Christmas Eve December 24, 2015 All month in Sunday School the Godly Play kids have been talking about how Advent is the time to get ready to enter the mystery of Christmas.  During this season people can be so incredibly busy.  Shopping  and wrapping and cooking and going to parties.  We get so busy that sometimes we miss the mystery of Christmas that is all around us, everywhere we go.  For most of us, kids and adults alike, the last month of December is less an Advent preparation to enter the mystery and more a Countdown to Christmas.  For me it went something like this: * Advent Week 1, or 24 Days Until Christmas.   It was the first Day School Chapel after Thanksgiving break.  I was out in the entryway greeting the kids as they came in like I always do.  That particular morning, the kids were a little more rambunctious than usual.  Maybe they’d eaten too much pumpkin pie, maybe it was the weather, maybe they were just happy to be back with their friends.  There was skipp

December 20, 2015 Luke 1:39-55 Over the years stopping by the magnificently lit house on Collingwood Road has become a staple of the season for my family.  We join the line of cars in front of Manor Care and turn our radio to 88.1 as we edge slowly forward to watch the colored lights burst and grow to the beat of the music.  We, and all the others sitting in their cars, are just casual surveyors, not particularly invested.  And then a few minutes later we each drive away and don’t think much more about it.   We don’t consider what goes into the creation of the majestic show - the cost, the effort, the intentions of the owner.  And it doesn’t affect us much once the lights are gone from our rearview mirrors.   Until this week, that is, when I saw on my Facebook feed that something had gone wrong with the owner’s electrical system requiring some expensive part.  The local community was encouraged to step in, to help with small donations that might get the lights going again, to