e-Soundings

Getting your "rush" on....

It is now the time of Christmas “rush…”

All the details and obligations of the Christmas season take on a new
urgency and rush to fill every available moment.

Can we find a quiet moment, and let Christ “rush” into our hearts?

Can we allow the miracle of Child birth to overwhelm us once again?

Or will the seductive world, every active and always persistent, destroy
our chance to be with God once again?

Have you stopped and listened for God this day?  …this week?  …this
month?
 
How goes it with your soul?
 
Grace and Peace,
 
          Pastor Terry
 

The Joy and Pain of the "Holy Days"

I trust you all have a joyful Thanksgiving this last week.

Perhaps there were tears, perhaps there was difficulty, perhaps a great family get together…  but through it all did you find any joy?

I know the deep pain that many of us face when the holidays are without a loved one.  My parents were both killed in an auto accident days before Thanksgiving many years ago.  Each Thanksgiving since then brings a reminder of that time and their loss.

Yet each Thanksgiving also brings joy.  And the season of Christmas right after that brings an amplification of that joy.  Christmas teaches us that as Christians, we are called to find joy in all things.

At the end of the Beatitudes and in the midst of struggles, Jesus tells us: “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven;”  (Luke 6:23)

Paul speaks of that unique joy in the midst of great turmoil when he describes  “the churches of Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.”  2 Cor. 8
And again in Romans 14.17: “For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

Joy is associated with the Holy Spirit in Acts 13:52, and so becomes something that transcends our normal, day by day activities and feelings.