The fullness of time has come. The long-awaited King of heaven is coming to earth. All of creation has been aching for this moment. The promised Messiah Israel has been waiting for is coming as a tiny babe named “Jehovah is salvation.” Gabriel arrives to announce this great mystery.
            The infinite will grow in a finite space.
            Power will be wrapped up in weakness.
            The eternal will step into time.
            The invisible will become visible.
            Heaven will collide with earth in Mary’s womb.
            There are lots of ways God could have chosen to come and dwell among us. But we learn a lot about who he is and what he is like by how he comes into the world. The Lord of heaven and earth doesn’t appear in fire and earthquakes and a booming voice that echoes throughout the world saying, “Here I am! Worship me!’ The King of kings doesn’t arrive with fanfare, trumpets, and a rolled-out red carpet. He is so set on drawing near to us that he constrains himself within the most vulnerable dwelling we have ever called home— the womb…
 
            God is so bent on loving us that he became helpless. He so desires to empathize with us that he refuses the comforts and expanse of heaven to experience the pain and limits of our humanity. He leans in. He bends low. He gets close…
            (But) when we follow Jesus, we forsake the upward ascent because love calls us downward. Love bends low. It leans in. It gets close. Love calls us to descend into our own vulnerability to love the most vulnerable.
            And when we descend into human weakness, suffering, and powerlessness to love others, we will be awed by the glory of God that is revealed there. We will be filled with wonder at the paradox of how humans so limited and vulnerable can be so filled with the divine. 

 Bette Dickinson, Making Room in Advent

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

There’s something appealing about the idea of losing ourselves in the cozy joy and tinsel that this season offers instead of dwelling on the death, injustice, and division that has pervaded our nation and world.

But I’m also poignantly aware that being on a steady drip of holiday cheer will only temporarily mute the pain and fear that has built up over the past months. So, while we can still plan to embrace the lights and the cookies and the gatherings and the presents, I want to encourage us to lean into the tension that is so beautifully laid out in the Christmas carol “O Holy Night”:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
 
Twenty twenty-three has felt like a vortex of sin and errors. But God promises the dawn of a world made new by His coming. During Advent, we get to remember that He did it once when Jesus was born and we are reminded that He will do it again. We may be wary, but we can still rejoice in the waiting.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Brother David Steindl-Rast — 97 year-old author, scholar, and Benedictine monk from Austria — is beloved the world over for his enduring message about gratefulness as the true source of lasting happiness. Known to many as the “grandfather of gratitude,” Br. David has been a source of inspiration and spiritual friendship to countless leaders and luminaries around the world including Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, and more. 
 
If you are familiar with this video, enjoy it again as you cultivate thanksgiving all weekend long. If he is new to you, be blessed by his gentle voice and eyes to see…
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSt7k_q_qRU&t=85s
 
Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

"The church is not the building, it's the people."

 
Those words are a truth which, if pushed too far, lose their grip on the truth they affirm. A church is a people being formed in community, gathered and scattered and gathered again for worship.
 
A church building is a place where prayer and praise, baptism and communion, year after year, are offered. 
 
The building is not sacred; yet what is done there, like slow falling rain, soaks the nutrients of holiness into the soul. 
 
In this building, over a century, souls have prayed, and holiness has taken root in their lives. Thanks be to God for this church!
 
Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Do you know some lovely human beings? I hope you do, because I just spent a few days with a handful of them, and they are restorative and inspiring.

I go back a few years with this group, and the thing about staying with folks for a decade or more is that you begin to see the facets of their loveliness, and how it deepens over time.

I have a friend who is a lovely human being whose thin layer of snark has melted over the years and now all you see is holy contentment and gratitude. Another friend, also a lovely human being, has persisted over the years despite some wrenching slings and arrows and has emerged not victorious, but even more kind and gracious. One such lovely is going through an unasked-for and undeserved hard time and it flattened me to see the care that surrounded her in the midst of all of it.

“Loveliness” is akin to “loveable” but they are not synonymous. It’s a noun of the adjective lovely, which might mean pleasing to the senses in some way; lovely human beings are pleasing to the senses. We like to see the way their eyes crinkle when you know they’re thinking of something hilarious but don’t want to say what it is. We like to hear the sound of their laugh; to feel their embrace. But their loveliness goes beyond the senses and into the heart and maybe even the gut. When you are with lovely people, you feel safe. You know they will respect your pain, and make light of your failures, and rejoice with you as the situation calls for.

So, I hope you have at least a few but better, many lovely human beings in your life, and more than that, I hope you get to be with them occasionally.

And if so, remember that one of the things that makes them lovely is your love.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Jesus said 2.0

Jesus said: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

Mercy. That mixture of compassion, generosity, welcome and inconvenience that makes one human being help another. For Christians, to love others as God loves us, for Jesus’ sake. Jesus told a story about that. It involved a Samaritan, “the one who showed mercy”—same word in both texts. So, go and do likewise!

Jesus said: “Not just seven times, but as many as seventy times seven.”

Yes, he’s talking about forgiveness, answering Peter’s question about how many times a person should be forgiven by us. If you’re still counting, then you’re not forgiving. The benchmark for comparisons isn’t a number, but the vast incalculable debt God has forgiven us. There’s no comparison between what any of us have to forgive, and what we have been forgiven. Just remember the Cross which makes forgiveness possible as gift and grace. Lord give us a forgiving disposition.

Jesus said: “Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.  But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” (John 3.20-21)

What we do when no one sees us is a good clue to who we really are. When someone is caught out doing something shameful or hurtful or dishonest these days, the ready-made excuse is an apology and statement, “That’s not who I am.” Well, unfortunately, yes it is. Truth is fundamental to good character. Transparency is like a window; light shines through it, and we can see through it. Everything we do is in the sight of God; live, said Jesus, in such a way that people can see through you, and see a life of love for God and neighbor!
 
Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

For Christians, perhaps two of the most pay attention words we can hear are, "Jesus said..." And the distilled essence of Jesus' teaching begins with, "And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying..."

Jesus said:  “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25.31-46)

To see the presence of Jesus in the face of those who are vulnerable, powerless and in need of support, is a fundamental principle in following and serving Jesus. Full stop.

Jesus said: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22.37-38)

We don’t need detailed rules. Just two barcodes of discipleship – Love God with everything we are and have and love our neighbor no less than we love ourselves. Simple. But not cheap. Costly love never is. “Love so amazing, so divine, demands…”

Jesus said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Luke 9.23-24)

Daily. Luke is the Evangelist who remembers that word. Discipleship is an everyday commitment. That’s good news for when we fail, make mistakes or want to start again. Life isn’t something we cling to, but something we give ourselves to—the best deal in town is to give ourselves in service to God and neighbor.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

The holding cross in the photo is made of olive wood and was given to me as a gift at a time when peace was hard to come by. 

 Holding it this morning and praying for the peace of Jerusalem and Gaza, I'm aware of the contested soil on which this wood was grown, and long ago, the soil on which stood that one cross amongst the countless thousands Rome manufactured and utilized as instruments of terror, oppression and control.

Over the years the cross has shaped itself to my hand, or perhaps my hand has simply become familiar with its shape, weight and texture. Either way the cruciform shape, gripped in praying hands, is an acknowledgement of the world's anguish and the pain of God in Christ. 

 "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1.19-20)

 May it be so!

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

            The reason I speak to them in parables is that
            ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen,
             nor do they understand.’
                      —Matthew 13.13


I rest the Bible in my lap.
Pick it up again, read again,
set the Bible down.
A moment. Then
I stumble through the parable
one more time.
Nothing comes.
This is not bad,
maybe even as it should be.

I go out into the woods.
I sit on an old stump and say,
“But what does this mean?”
and laugh at myself.
I sit longer, listening,
and then listening,
till at least I hear the air,
and something inside something
speaks silently to something
inside me.

Is it any different when I listen
to a neighbor?

I am learning to repent of my certainty,
to simply be mindful
that I don’t know,
to keep listening for what I haven’t heard.
To receive what is offered
without compulsion to master it,
to grasp, to understand.
Just listen and wonder.
Let the silences speak to each other.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. (Isaiah 43) 

n recent months I have been very aware that many in our church family have been suffering in various ways, it seems to be a particularly heavy time with much illness and other difficulties. I have the privilege of serving you and therefore of knowing many of the things you are going through. I also see the ways you care for one another and uphold each other in times of need. A church family is just that, a group of people intimately connected to one another in Christ, who journey together through the joys and the sorrows of life.

Times of hardship and ill health force us to rely on each other more. That’s not a bad thing! We are not made to live in isolation from each other – we are made to be part of a family. That’s why we pray for each other, encourage each other and serve each other when we are in need. 

That’s why it’s so important to be connected with a small group or social group within the church. Our Sunday morning gatherings are great but can’t provide for all our spiritual needs. We need places where we feel carried and can help to carry others to the God who will always be with us.  

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation