Christmas Eve, 2009
December 24, 2009
With-ness
Perhaps the most profound word in human language is the word “with” because it describes the purpose for all of Creation and the goal to which God is in the process of guiding the world, and also describes the final outcome: that God will be with his people, and his people will be together, with him.
It starts in the Garden
The Service of Lessons and Carols begins with creation: the perfect world. A fruitful garden, a pair of people, and regular rhythm of daily communion with God, at the time of the evening breeze. This is what we were made for. If anything ever goes wrong, this is what we will try to return to. This is the goal: a world at peace, a world with plenty, human beings in unobstructed communion with God, their Maker; people dwelling with God, God dwelling with people.
I watched a Nature program about our pre-human cousins, chimps. When one has some food, like a banana, another may come up, sit beside him, and hold out her hand, palm upwards, hoping to be given a bit. The upturned palm is, as far as I can tell, a nearly universal posture of supplication, request. It is also a nearly universal religious posture. We are all waiting, empty handed, yearning. Not being with God has left a hole in our hearts. We feel it as a vacancy; we long for something we were made for, but lost; the with-ness of God.
I have read other stories from other religions of a god coming to earth in a human form. In the Odyssey, Athena comes to help Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, by disguising herself in in the form of various friends; she plays her part and vanishes.
The miracle of Christmas that, for me, seems even larger than that God would become human is that he would want to. After all we have done – all our wars, all our violence, all our selfishness and evil, all our neglectfulness and arrogance, all of our exclusion and pretensions – that he would care about usanymore. That he would deign to live among us, as one of us!
His goal, is our redemption. His goal is restoration of what was lost. His goal is to get us to see each other, and all humans, as he does – as valuable to God – even still, in spite of everything. His goal is that we will take his light and become bearers of that light in the world, dark though it may be. The message first came as an overwhelmingly bright light to poor shepherds on a dark night. The message itself was simple: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth.
We will bear that light out into a world that neither glorifies God in the Highest, nor knows peace on earth. We will bear that light in places where real human babies are born into families that cannot hope to feed them properly. We will bear the light into places where real humans are unable to get to a doctor or to medicine. We will bear the light to places where humans are unemployed, homeless, depressed, addicted, lonely, grieving, longing with palms upturned for the with-ness that they were created for.
Back to the Garden
And he will one day restore all that was lost in the Garden. The goal of creation will be one day achieved. People will come from North and South and East and West and sit together at table in the Kingdom of Heaven, dwelling in peace and in plenty, with each other, and with God. Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth.
Essential Vocabulary of Faith
December 24, 2009
With-ness: 
That perhaps the most profound word in human language is the word “with” because it describes the purpose for all of Creation and the goal to which God is in the process of guiding the world, and also describes the final outcome: that God will be with his people, and his people will be together, with him.
Sermon for Dec. 20, 2009, 4th Advent C, Luke 1:39-56
December 19, 2009
The Past Tense of Hope
I hate to admit it, but I almost never enjoy new Christmas albums. I don’t want to hear my favorite old Christmas carols jazzed up, or rocked up, or countrified, or (especially) schmaltzified. So, when I heard on the radio that jazz musician, Carla Bley has come out with a new Christmas album, I was prepared to dislike it. I didn’t.
The reporter called her treatment of the songs, starting with “O Holy Night” “almost reverential.” (NPR, ATC, Dec. 17, 2009) The amazing thing is that Ms. Bley is not a Christian and does not celebrate Christmas. Nevertheless Christmas music speaks to her. She grew up in a Christian home; the music connects with her in a deep way, so she plays them without schmaltz.
Christmas = Music
Christmas cannot help but be filled with music (can you imagine a Christmas without music?). Didn’t the Christmas concert here last week put you in the proper frame of mind for Christmas? It started with music: the angel choirs sang their famous “gloria in excelsis deo” to the shepherds on the night Jesus was born. That is the song most of us think of as the biblical Christmas song, it was not the first one. Rather Mary’s song starts off the music of Christmas.
I love this scene we read from Luke. Here are these two, unlikely, pregnant women together: one, Elizabeth should have been too old to have a child; she had been barren all her life. The other, Mary, was not yet married, and in fact, still a virgin; and yet here they are, relatives, belonging to two different generations, soon to give birth to boys who will begin a new generation together.
This is a scene of great joy. Elizabeth, in her sixth month of pregnancy, welcomes her young relative Mary, and as she does, her unborn baby leaps for joy in her womb. She blurts out a three-fold blessing:
42“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb… 45And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
Mary Sings (like Hannah)
Immediately, Mary bursts forth into her Christmas song,
46“My soul magnifies the Lord, 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
As her song continues, it takes an unexpected path. This song is supposed to be a “rejoice in the future” song. It’s supposed to be about things that are about to happen but that have not yet happened – like the birth of Jesus. But instead, Mary’s song lives in the past. It’s a song of praise to God for what he has already done.
51He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
About the past?
Why is the song of the future all about the past? Mary understood well what theologian Fred Craddock says, about this text: “to speak of what God has done is to announce what God will do.” (Craddock, Luke, 30)
What does Mary know that God has done? Mary knows that God has given barren Sarah and her elderly husband Abraham a son; and with him, hope that His promise had not failed. “To speak of what God has done is to announce what God will do.”
What has God done? God, Mary knows, has brought down the mighty Pharaoh from his throne and lifted up the lowly Hebrew slaves, liberating them, and leading them into the land of Promise. “To speak of what God has done is to announce what God will do.”
What has God done? God has given barren Hannah a child, Samuel. Hannah praised God in song for his amazing ability to reverse the fortunes of the rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless. Hannah’s song became the melody that Mary then made into her song. “To speak of what God has done is to announce what God will do.”
What has God done lately Mary? Given a soon-to-be-born son to the barren Elizabeth and her elderly husband Zechariah, a son named John, whose birth will mark the beginning of a new work of God in the world.
The future: Jesus
And now, God has given Mary a soon-to-be-born son who will be named Jesus, for he will save, liberate, rescue his people. God does again what God has done before: bring the promise that seemed dead and hopeless back to life.
And so with past tense verbs Mary forecasts the future. God will bring a new set of reversals of fortune into being, just as Hannah’s song announced so long ago. Mary sings:
51…he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
If King Herod had heard Mary singing about the proud-rich on their thrones he would have recognized that his own image was in that bull’s eye; he would not have been amused. Mary could have gotten killed for singing that reversal-of-fortunes song. Throughout the history of the world, and also today, the lowly and hungry are able to stay alive, so long as they are content to stay lowly and hungry.
Unless… unless God is going to do again what he has done before. Unless God is going to bring about the Mother of all reversals of fortunes. And that is exactly what Mary sings about.
This song is not just verse-two about Moses, besting Pharaoh, as if now, king Herod gets what Pharaoh got. Mary sings a song that modulates into an entirely different key. Her song has a massive crescendo, a triple-forte at the finale. Her song is not about another course-correction; rather, her song sings of a conclusion.
54He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
Mary’s song is about the fulfillment of the promise that God made to Abraham and to his descendants, and the new thing God is doing which lasts forever. This is what it has all been building up to for so long. This is the show stopper!
Really? You don’t say.
But it all sounds too good to be true, right? Look around: the proud don’t seem to be very scattered in their thoughts, the rich seem to still be on their thrones (opening their massive Christmas bonuses), the lowly still have not been lifted up; the hungry are still searching for their next meal.
This is where the past, present and future meet. We know what God has done in the past – we have all heard the story of lowly, hungry Hebrew slaves, set free, and of mighty, proud Pharaoh, brought low. And, we can all imagine a future in which all the injustices we see around us are reversed, when finally the hungry are filled with good things, and the lowly lifted up. But where does that leave us today?
The Advent Question
It leaves us here in Advent with one simple question: will we sing the songs of Christmas as they are meant to be sung? Will we join Mary and sing her song? Will we sing her song without rockifying, countryfyieng, schmaltzing or trivializing it?
To sing Mary’s song is to cast our lot in with those who believe that through Jesus, God is doing again, in a final conclusive way, what he has done before. To sing Mary’s song is to identify with the lowly and the hungry, the despised, the outcast, the neglected and the shunned. To sing Mary’s song is to believe that the Mother of all reversals of fortune is in process right now.
To sing Mary’s song is to “magnify the Lord” by celebrating his defining characteristic: mercy
54He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
To sing Mary’s Christmas song is to become, like her, instruments of God’s mercy. It means mercifully bearing the cup of cold water in his name; mercifully calling people whom we do not know “neighbor.” To sing Mary’s song means to rejoice with those who rejoice, and also to weep with mercy for those who weep – because they cannot afford a doctor, or a prescription, or an operation; because their home owner’s insurance policy’s price quadrupled and they are on a fixed income, because they do not know that the song of Christmas, the mercy of God is for them.
We know! We believe that what God has done in the past he is now doing again – only in an even greater way. We believe in his mercy. With Mary, we will sing!
Sermon for Dec. 13, 2009, 3rd Advent C, Luke 3:7-18
December 12, 2009
What Should we Do?
The other day my son was watching old Monty Python sketches on Youtube from his computer. Those old routines still make us laugh. The Monty Python guys love making fun of the kind of authority figures who get all red-faced, barking commands, ordering people around.
Unfortunately today, it’s easy to see John the Baptist as John Cleese, all red-faced, barking to people who came out innocently to hear a sermon from a person they take to be a prophet saying, in a British accent, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”
Disliking John, and Luke
That almost comic image of John the baptist is the easiest thing to dislike about this text, but there are more. John’s recommendations to people – to share one cloak if they own two, to do the same kind of sharing with food and all – sound like a page right out of Karl Marx. It sounds like (can I say this word in church?) socialism, right? “”From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (the Marxist maxim).
So, our tendency this morning is to turn off this text because it sounds almost comically angry, or to turn it off because it sounds Communist, or both. But I believe this text is in our Bibles, in the Gospel of Luke because we need its message today more than ever, especially now, in this season of Advent.
So I am going to ask us all to do some work in the next few minutes; maybe hard work: to think – really think as we look at this text together, and to keep asking ourselves, “what does God want me to hear from this text today? What am I supposed to do?
What was the Greatest Gift?
Let us start our thinking with this question: what was the greatest gift God gave to the Jews? The land? The temple? The glory of King Solomon’s reign? Many people of John’s day would have answered: “the promise to Abraham.” To be born in to the family of Abraham was to automatically inherit the blessing. God promised to bless Abraham, to make him great, to make a great nation come from him, and to bless them (Gen 12). Being of the family of Abraham, they would have said, is God’s greatest gift!
John was out to name that opinion as a mistake: as crucially, fundamentally wrong. “You say you are children of Abraham – and you think that answers all the questions? – Not so fast! God, if he wanted to, could make children of Abraham from thes stones.”
I’ve been to Palestine – down to the Jordan where John was – there are lots of stones. In fact almost nothing else but stones; it’s a grassless, stony wasteland. No, being children of Abraham is not the greatest gift or final answer.
The Gift of Torah: a new vision
What then was God’s greatest gift to the Jews? It was Torah; the scriptures. Why? Because in Torah, in the scriptures, God explains who he is and what he expects from his people – he “reveals” himself and his will. Without Torah, without the scriptures, the Israelites are just like the pagan, idol-worshipping nations all around them in the Ancient Near East – Egyptian, Canaanite, Philistine – whatever.
But Israel was not like them at all, because she possessed God’s greatest gift: Torah, God’s instruction. Moses who led them out of slavery in Egypt came down from Mt. Sinai with Torah in his hands, which gave them a concept that the world to that point had only glimpsed: they were to be the first nation on earth who worshipped and served a God who was Singular, and Moral. Moral monotheism was the revolutionary new idea that Torah taught.
Think of this! All the other nations around worshipped gods – gods of nature – the sun, the moon, the ocean, storm gods, fertility gods, the Olympic gods.
These gods did not care who you lied to, stole from, cheated or slept with, as long as you kept them happy with sacrifices and proper ritual veneration.
Moses’ Torah was a massive sea change: an utterly radical departure; a whole new way of thinking about God and what God wanted from humans. Torah teaches that God is not many, like the pagans thought; rather God is one; the Sovereign of universe. He is the Source of all life, all being; everything comes from him including all of us. We are here because he made us. We are not accidents nor just a mound of worker ants or a hive of worker bees. We were created in God’s image to live in his good physical world, to be blessed, to be fruitful, to wake up everyday marveling at life and at beauty and at God’s greatness.
One more massively different and extremely important new idea that Torah teaches us is that God is not morally neutral like pagan gods and idols are: he is moral. His essence is goodness – and there is a difference between goodness and badness. Just like a wheat plant: some of it is good for grinding into flour and making bread, but the rest of it is worthless; only useful for fueling a cook-fire. Good is different from bad, and the difference matters to God. He has a winnowing fork and uses it.
Crucial Implications
Now here is the important implication of these truths that we learn from the gift of Torah: this One single God who is good has a moral will for us, his creatures. He cares what we do: who we you lie to, steal from, cheat or sleep with.
Have you ever been lied to? God cares about that. Have you ever been deceived? cheated? Cheated on? God is not OK with any of that. He cares, it matters to him precisely because he made us. He hates it when one of his children is damaged, disadvantaged, or suffers.
He cares when his children are hungry and don’t have enough food, when they have no clean drinking water, when they have inadequate housing, when they get pushed around and abused by faceless systems – whether they be greedy corporations or abusive governments, or simply officials with titles and power who use them for their own advantage. He hates it when they get blown up in the Baghdad market place and when their homeowners insurance gets cancelled even though they have paid for years without making any claims.
And he also hates it when some of his people who are doing OK observe the suffering of their sisters and brothers and turn away from helping them. He hates it when the two-coat people ignore the no-coat people on cold nights. He hates it when the plenty-of-food-on-the-plate people turn away from the no-food-on-the-plate people as if they were not children of the same Parent.
What does God do?
So what does this morally good God do when he looks and sees all this stuff going on that he hates? If he saw it all and did nothing about it that would be as bad as the parent who watches the child lighting matches on the sofa and does nothing to stop her. He must act. Does he have options? Is it going to be another world-wide flood or another round of “fire and brimstone”? Well, he has tried that response, and it didn’t help much.
God invokes a plan – maybe in Advent we should call it the “Advent Conspiracy” (unless that name is already taken). The plan starts with a messenger to “prepare the way,” followed by a direct intervention. John comes as the messanger to prepare the way for God’s direct intervention: God comes down to this planet of his making and makes himself one of the humans he has made; God’s direct intervention is Christmas!
God himself comes down to be one of these people to save them from the mess we have been making. He comes to be with to be with us, to know first hand what life is like down here where some of us have two coats and supper waiting, while others have none, and to teach us, once again, about his Father – Our Father in Heaven; about God. That is exactly why Christmas is so crucially important for us. It is God’s direct intervention into a world that maybe deserves another round of fire and brimstone.
God has no interest in more fire and brimstone; he has the plan to redeem these pathetic, small-minded, selfish little creatures, like me, and transform me in to a person who “gets it”. I’m supposed to “get it” that God, my Creator, my Father is morally good and wants me to be good; to worship him as he truly is, and to take my place on this planet for the span of years that I will occupy understanding that all the people around me are relatives for whom I am morally responsible.
What should we do?
So what should we do? What we should do is to do exactly the same thing that every group of people who came out to the Jordan River to be baptized by John did. The crowds, the tax collectors and the soldiers all did the exact same thing: they all asked the question “what should we do?”
This is the question that shows that we “get it”. “You mean God is watching? You mean that he cares? You mean that all of our actions towards each other, all our relationships, all our interactions with each other matter to him? Well then, what should we do?”
A person who is asking “what should we do” is only working out the details. The details always differ. What should we do? It depends on who you are and what you have been doing. If you are a tax collector and you have been extorting, you need to stop it! God cares.
If you are a two-coat person then look around – you know what you need to do. If you have been a food-on-the-plate person, look around; you know what to do. The main thing is to keep looking around and to keep asking the question: “today, what am I to do?” It’s not rocket-science; it’s not even algebra II; what should we do? We should be good! Not trivially good, but globally good, humanely good, ethically good because we know and worship God who is good! Let this be our Advent conspiracy!
Word Cloud (Wordle) for Sermon on Luke 3:1-6, 2nd Advent, Year C
December 5, 2009
Sermon for Advent 2 C, Dec. 6, 2009, Luke 3:1–6
December 5, 2009
Prepare the Way of the Lord
Listen to how Luke tells the story that changed the world. He begins his gospel by setting it in time. How do you know where you are on the great time-line of history? You know, of course, by noticing who is in power. Luke begins the gospel story:
In the days of King Herod of Judea, (Luke 1:5)
What happened in the days of King Herod? What significant event begins the story? A battle that ends in a glorious victory? A temple is finished and dedicated to God? No; rather, “In the days of King Herod of Judea” an elderly priest and his aged wife, Zechariah and Elizabeth have a baby; a son, and name him John.
Biblical stories
The bible seems to delight in telling stories this way; they start off on one path, with a reference to somethings big and powerful or significant, and just when you think you are grasping the significance of the setting, suddenly something unexpected happens. And, often as not, the unexpected thing that happens starts out looking like a very small thing compared to what is happening all around it.
Do you remember the vision of the Lord that the prophet Isaiah had in the temple? The story begins, “In the year that King Uzziah died,” – which sounds like a politically significant event – like “in the year that Kennedy was assassinated” – you expect something of great political significance to follow. What great change happened to the nation in the year that her king died? Isaiah tells us, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.”
Luke does the same thing again in our text today, piling on the political references, one on top of the other, starting with the Emperor in Rome, the capital of the whole civilized world, continuing with regional governors, local rulers, and including religious authorities:
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee… 2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,”
What great event of power and significance happened in this time? A guy is speaking, out in the desert. Again, it’s John.
Maybe that is what it looked like to Emperor Tiberius and Pontius Pilate – if they had even noticed John out there in the desert – which I’m sure they did not – just a guy out there in no-man’s land speaking to the wind.
How do you live?
That’s not the story Luke tells; on that day, in “the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea” etc., what happened was that the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”
Now, this is something new. The word of God came – out in the middle of nowhere, to a man who had no power at all. This is how the story starts.
What do you do if you are alive and living “the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea”? You go to work, you eat supper, you try to keep your head down and stay out of trouble with the powers-that-be; you live an ordinary life in difficult times.
But what do you do if you are alive and living at the moment when all of the sudden, “the word of God” comes? And what if the word of God comes to someone who bears striking resemblance to a prophet, like Isaiah of old? Maybe you sit up and take note. And what if the word of God comes to him out in the wilderness, by the Jordan, the very spot where long ago your people stopped wandering around for 40 years and crossed over into the promised land for the first time, and your life as a nation finally began? You listen intently!
What happens when the “word of God” comes? It stops mattering who is emperor, who is governor and what year it is. Suddenly the only thing that matters is what that “word of God” says.
The Main Thing
Someone once said, “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” I guess that means that there is only one question: what is “ the main thing”? This is the season of Advent, and we are people of faith; we are Christians. For us there really is one “main thing” in comparison with which everything else is secondary. The main thing for us is that the word of God has indeed come.
In this season we build towards the celebration of Christmas, the birth of our Savior, when “the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.” We prepare our homes, we prepare our church, we have concerts and candles and special readings to prepare our hearts too, because for us, this is “the main thing.”
Preparation
Preparation is what the “word of God” that came to John was all about. Preparation is going to have to include making changes to the way things are. In other words, all is not as it should be “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea”. There are some things that are out of place and need to be rearranged. The way needs to be prepared.
There are valleys that need to be filled in – perhaps they were formed by erosion; something has been worn down and eaten away over time. Well, now is the time to stop the erosion and start doing some back-filling.
There are some mountains that need to be leveled; there are some mole-hills that have gotten all out of proportion and need to be taken back down. There are things that have gotten all out of perspective; some things have been lifted up and held up and made to look supremely important which deserve no such valuing.
And there are some things that, frankly, have gotten twisted, corrupted, and crooked that need to be realigned; straightened. There are places that need to be sanded down smooth again because they have become rough and unbearable.
This is exactly what Isaiah the prophet said, and how John understood preparation when the “word of God came.”
5Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;
Examination
Now is the time to look at our lives, in these days of preparation, and to listen in a new way to the “word of God” which has come to us. Preparation, for John, meant a time of reflecting on the things that were out of place, and making a change – or in biblical terms, “repentance”.
Where are the valleys in your life? Where are there things missing that should have been there – that perhaps have been worn away by neglect, or by distraction? Consider the classical spiritual disciplines and ask yourself: where has erosion occurred in my life in the area of prayer, worship, study, service, giving? What valleys is God calling you to fill in during this time of preparation? What changes, or “repentance” may be necessary to make the “main thing” the main thing?
What are the mountain tops in your life: the things that are most important, most highly valued? For some of us, the fact that we consider “ the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius” more important than that “ the word of God came” is a problem; that we value our political or ideological commitments higher than the call of the word of God to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8). Sometimes when I listen to the debates over who deserves to have health care and who does not I wonder whose voice it is that we hear coming from the mountains. Perhaps in this time of preparation we need to take down some of those mountains and regain our perspective.
What are the crooked places that need to be straightened? What are the areas of your life that have become skewed, off track, and need realignment according to “the word of God?” There are always two finger prints left at the scene of the crime when things have become crooked: where we spend our time, and where we spend our money. Is the main thing the main thing, when measured by the hours of our days and by the Visa bill? Are there things that you have taken time for and spent money on that have become distorted? This is the time of preparation; the time of repentance, the time for change.
Who we are now, and the difference it makes
We, people of faith, we Christians are different, and it shows. We are not like those who think that these days are merely the days of this or that emperor, or governor, or administration, or calendar year. We are people who live in a time in which the word of God has come. We are people of high expectations that God began to do something new out in that desert where the word of God came, that is unstoppable, and is huge.
All flesh
This is not just about us and our own spiritual lives; rather it is about how we find our place in the world-wide purposes of God which are at work, right now. This message that the word of God has come and demands changes does start with all of us as individuals, but it will not stop with us, or with our own church, or even our nation. What God began doing out there in the desert when the word of God came to John has global implications. It is part of God’s goal of redeeming Creation.
Who does it say will be a witnesses to these things? Will it be the people of Judea? Will the witnesses include Pontius Pilate and Emperor Tiberius? Still that would be far to small a witness stand. Luke tells us that this new work of God is something that:
6…all flesh shall see …’”
All flesh – every person who ever drew a breath will finally bear witness to the salvation that John was out there in the desert preparing the way for. This is huge; and powerfully important.
This means that every action we take to be a part of this has enormous significance. When we adjust our value systems, taking down mountains and back-filling eroded valleys, straightening out what has become crooked, we are participating in God’s world-wide mission to redeem his creation. “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
We expect that God will work in us as we repent, change our hearts and minds, and respond to the “word of God” in a new way. We expect that we will not be the same next year at this time, but that we will know God’s love, God’s power, and God’s presence in our lives in a new way, transforming us as we prepare the way of the Lord.
Original Blessing
December 1, 2009
Original Blessing:
That God, the Creator of everything, the Source of all of life, made a real, physical world, and from the beginning, blessed the world – and us in it, so that we could flourish: live life in its richest and fullest sense in our relationships with others and with God.
