O Antiphon: December 23

O Emmanuel, God-with-us, our king and lawgiver, the one whom the nations await and their savior: come to save us, O Lord our God.

This is the final antiphonal prayer. We wait just a little longer, in the quiet of our hearts through Christmas Eve, to the great joy that is ours when Christ comes. May Christ be born anew in your hearts this Christmas Day (and every day!).

O Antiphon: December 22

O King of the Nations and their desire, the cornerstone that makes both one: come, and save the human race, which you fashioned from clay.

O Antiphon: December 21

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of light eternal and sun of justice: come, and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Antiphon: December 20

O Key of David and scepter of the house of Israel, you open so that no one else can close again, you close so that no person can open: come, and lead the captive from prison, free those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Antiphon: December 19

O Root of Jesse, you stand as a signal for the people; before you kings shall fall silent and to you the nations shall make their prayer: come to deliver us, and do not delay.

O Antiphon: December 18

O Lord and leader of the house of Israel, you appeared to Moses in the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai: come, and redeem us with outstretched arm.

O Anithphons: December 17

Last year I discovered the “O Antiphons” for the first time. They kind of turn up the heat on Advent and I enjoyed praying with them and thought this year I would post them for those of you who might also enjoy a very short daily prayer. Beginning on December 17th and continuing until the 23rd, the ancient church has sung (and continues to sing in liturgical churches) the “O Antiphons”. Dating to at least the 9th century, and probably even before that, these seven messianic titles of Christ have been used to remind us of what we wait for and to increase our anticipation that Christmas is coming. For those of you who are following this blog, may they give voice to the longing of your soul and the joy that we await.

O Wisdom, you came from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly: come, and teach us the way of prudence.

Waiting

I had an interesting trip to the grocery store this week. I do not enjoy grocery shopping, so I’m pretty brisk about it. “Get in and get out!” is my motto. But I happened to arrive on a day or at a time when everyone else in the store seemed to be driving those little motorized carts. There was a blockage on the canned fruit aisle, caused by a head-on of two of these little carts. So I dodged up the pasta row, when another one came zipping straight at me and a woman exclaimed “Finally! A tall person!” She explained that she had made three loops already, hoping for someone who could hand her down the pasta she wanted, shelved high above where she could reach from her seat. I thought about what that would be like for me, who wants to get out of there as quickly as possible, to have to loop around for every item while I waited in hope that someone would be coming to help me out. Not a happy thought.

I cruised on, feeling pretty good about my ability to reach angel hair pasta at will, when I got into a log-jam on the spice aisle. I just wanted to grab the curry powder and go, but there was a gentleman there who needed help finding salt. I showed him where it was and he engaged me in a conversation about whether it was okay to eat something without an expiration date, something his mother had told him never to do. As I tried to reassure him that salt would be an exception to that rule, another cart came down and stopped right in front of us, trapping us there in the spices. And then, I kid you not, this man said “Since we’re all stuck here together for a moment, let me tell you a joke…” and he did. The woman cruised on, determined to find her particular spice at a cheaper price (which as an aside, I find really impressive, because it means two trips to the grocery store to save a buck, by a person who is not ambulatory, which would be one of Dante’s lower circles to me). This joking, salt-buying man then proceeded to tell me of the death of his wife in the last year, the loneliness he feels, the difficulties he’s had in his family and ended it all by telling me, “I just want to find a woman”. Wait! Was I being picked up in the spice aisle? I don’t really know why he said that to me, I think it was just the pain of facing Christmas alone. Finding the yard covered in snow for the first time in 20 years and having a joke to tell, and no one to share them with. I can really understand that. I stood there sharing his pain for a moment and feeling very inadequate.

As my groceries were tallied up, the checker complained about how everybody is always in a hurry. She was catching her husband’s cold and she just wanted to slow everything down. In fact she wanted to take a nap. And then she told me all about her husband’s poor health and the weariness she felt from taking care of him and working and trying to keep everything together. I went home in a reflective mood. This is the season of Advent, when we wait in expectancy for the coming of Christ. This coming is past, present and future and as I thought about the forty-five minutes or so I had spent at the local market, encountering the faces of helplessness, loneliness and fear, I felt so strongly that these people needed the “now” part of Christmas. The belief that Christ’s coming can also be celebrated as the very real presence of the Son of God in our very ordinary lives. Whatever we face during this season, Christ is right beside us in it, working for our good even when we can’t see it. That is a precious gift to hang on to as we wait.

Here is a poem I ran across recently by George Herbert (1593-1633), an English rector, which beautifully combines our present need with the waiting of the Advent season:

The Call

Come my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in love.

Giving Thanks

I think it’s wonderful to live in a country that has a national day of Thanksgiving. Wherever Americans are gathered next Thursday they will most likely commemorate the day with friends or family and feasting. Whether staying home or going to Grandma’s, soldiers in war zones, or people traveling, studying or living abroad, there will be an attempt at a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner and some moment to give thanks and remember our blessings. Giving thanks seems like a very appropriate way to end Ordinary time and begin the holy season of Advent and Christmas.

I read in a news article this week that English speakers say “thanks” and “thank you” up to 100 times a day. That seems amazing to me! The author said that our use of it could be quite confusing to people who come here from other countries. We apparently use it several times at the end of a telephone call, as a way to signal we are winding up the conversation. I paid some attention to my use of “thanks” right after reading this and noticed that just going into the post office caused a heavy exchange of “thanks” to and from people holding the doors open and between the clerk at the counter and I. Then I went to the grocery store where the checker and the bag girl and I thanked each other rather profusely for me buying groceries, they handing me a receipt and helping me out with my bags. Interesting. But I don’t think that this gracious use of “thank you” really makes us grateful people. I suspect we have instead a culture of saying thanks without paying much attention to whether we really mean it or not. Because when I’m at the post office, I’m not really thinking about how glad I am that we have an organized postal system that will deliver my package to the right person – I’m just acknowledging that the clerk handed me my receipt.

But developing a spirit of gratitude is really an important part of our spiritual formation. Because the difference between people who find ways to “always give thanks” and those who become bitter and hopeless people isn’t really in the circumstances of life, but in the way we view God and his action in our unique situations. Life is not always a bed of roses, as we all know. Those people who can find something to be thankful for in the midst of this broken world have a peace and a joy that is the best testimony I know. They have discovered that giving thanks changes things. As the writer Wendy M. Wright says,

“The act of thanksgiving presses the sweet nectar of joy from the husks and hulls of everyday life. We harvest the fruits that wait, heavy and ripe, to fall: the thousand small gestures of caring, the struggles with our shortcomings, the legacy of our faithfulness, the lessons learned from disappointments and failure. All of it, gathered up in gratitude.”

No matter what concerns press on you today, may you find that giving thanks is formative and produces a cornucopia of fruitfulness in your life. Please consider joining with us for our Thanksgiving Eve service on Wednesday night at 7. It will be a wonderful opportunity to give thanks and receive the Eucharist (which is the Greek word for “thanksgiving”) together.

Celebrating the Church!

Next week we celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Oak Hills Church. In thinking back to all that this local church has meant to me and my family, one of the things I most appreciate about Oak Hills is the opportunity that I’ve been given to use my gifts and talents here. I was in my twenties, with a toddler in tow, when I first got involved at Oak Hills. In the way of many women who choose to stay home and raise a family, sometimes I felt a little isolated and that the life I was living was too small. But the ability to be involved in the life of the church expanded, for me, the meaningfulness and purpose of my life beyond my own family and neighborhood. It gave me a place to lead, think and dream. I have made life long friends and watched the playmates of my own children grow up and begin families of their own. It is an amazing gift to find this rootedness in today’s society; to find a sense of place and belonging.

I appreciate, also, the ministry of the church in my own spiritual formation. Through the years the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of the teaching has had an indelible impact on my life. Sermons, small groups, recommended readings and most especially those spiritual friendships that I treasure, have advanced my relationship with God in both an inward personal way and an outward world-view way. There is a consistency to the services and ministries that all point in the same direction: the reality of the presence of the Kingdom of God right here, right now, for everyone.

One of the spiritual companions that I have “met” here is Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century Spanish nun. She wrote, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on the world, yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, and yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.” Almost five centuries later, that is still the case. The body of Christ can only operate through the participation of those who gather together to do his will in the world. Thanks to all of you who have been the body of Christ with me (and to me) in the past and to those who will join in being the body in the next twenty-five years. I’m very hopeful that the ways that God will find to use us to bless his world is on the increase and I can’t wait to see it all unfold!

Experiencing the Extra-Ordinary

My days are mostly ordinary. They’re filled with work, meetings, errands, friends and family. I tend to pray that I will meet God in the mundane-ness of the everyday, but honestly my expectation of what that means is pretty low. But I was reading again the story of Jesus’ encounter with the deaf man in the region of Tyre and Sidon (Mark 7:31-37). Surely, this man woke up with no thought that anything different was about to occur in his life. He began the day in his usual way, until his friends arrived and hurried him off to meet Jesus. I wonder if he even knew what was going on. Were his friends able to convey to him that there was a healer in the area, or did they just convince him to go along with them? I imagine that he didn’t fully comprehend what was happening, because of the way that Mark tells us that Jesus “took him aside, away from the crowd” and because of the way that Jesus healed him. We know that the power to heal emanated from Jesus to such as extent that he could speak healing (the Roman centurion’s paralyzed servant) or bring a cure with the merest touch (as in the case of the hemorrhaging woman), but for this man, who couldn’t hear, Jesus sticks his fingers in his ears, spits and touches his tongue. Why the rigmarole, I’ve often wondered? But now it seems a gentle and gracious way to give this man some idea of what is about to happen – namely that the Kingdom of God has broken out and swept around this man and his life will be changed forever. Mark tells us that the “people were overwhelmed with amazement” that this deaf-mute man could suddenly hear and speak plainly. I wish Mark had told us what he said! But the reminder to me is that if we are alive to the Kingdom of God, no day is truly ordinary. Extraordinary things are possible. Swirling all around us, ready to break out, is the power of God to change lives, heal the wounded, and overwhelm us with amazement.

Attending to the Ordinary

Here is a beautiful poem that captures the ability to see the miraculous in the everyday, ordinariness of our lives, by the poet (and my dear friend) Jenny Jiang. She will be one of the presenters at our upcoming mini-conference on August 22nd called Intersections: A dialogue on art and faith. To find out more about the conference, visit the church website (link on the right).

Psalm 66:16

How will I tell of all your works? This afternoon
I walked on a path. First I heard the snap of green
walnuts raining around me and then I looked
for the squirrel scrambling across the long arms of a tree.
My telling is the shreds of white nutmeat
on the dark bone of shell.
The littered mess I leave beneath me.
What can I say but I’ve eaten again.
The sun has held the earth, the earth the tree,
the tree again this fruit and I have ripped it
and eaten and sent pieces to ping
the littered music of almost
the only hallelujah I know
ringing on the path beneath me.

(Previously published in Poetry Now, January, 2009. Used by permission of the author)

Ordinary Thoughts

According to the church calendar, we are in the midst of Ordinary Time. You can see the swath of green fabric on the communion table, which is a subtle reminder to us of this. Stretching from Pentecost Sunday to the first week of Advent, this is the longest time slot on the religious calendar. I think of Ordinary Time as, well, ordinary. Technically, Ordinary Time gets its name from the word “ordinal”, meaning numbered or counted time. But, still, I think that it does have a kind of everydayness about it.

In Ordinary Time, we look for God in the regular cycle of our lives. The daily rituals of washing the dishes, going to the park, commuting to work, pulling weeds, writing reports, all of these are activities that can be holy when we look for God’s presence with us. I went on a Silence & Solitude retreat last weekend and was given a cup full of things to meditate on: a delicate Japanese maple leaf, a spicily fragrant gardenia, a sliver of bell pepper, a frond segment from a fern. These were among the thirty or so items in my cup. For over an hour, I looked at the details of every item, tasting, feeling, examining and marveling at God’s good and varied creation. The time spent just looking at the miraculous in things that I see every day was wonderful and I highly recommend that you go right outside and pick a leaf off of every bush and flower and tree that you see and then compare them in all their variety and uniqueness. It will be ordinary time well spent!

I’m currently reading a book by Wendy Wright called The Time Between: Cycles and Rhythms in Ordinary Time, and I came across this paragraph that seems to fit so nicely with both my retreat experience and our emphasis on the arts this month:

What Monet saw he gave to the world. He saw the infinite beauty of the most ordinary of things – a water-lily pond. He saw the dynamism and variability in objects that many of us would regard as generic: lilies and water. But Monet saw that each lily in each season at each time of day was an irrepeatable astonishment. In the particular, in the concrete, in the finite, infinite wonder is beheld.

I will claim this, knowing it is merely an analogy: what Monet saw when he gazed on his water lilies, God must see when beholding creation. Irrepeatable astonishment. Infinity coded in a single leaf. Eternity uttered in the late hour of a summer’s afternoon. Beloved.

Wishing you the joy of ordinary, everyday miracles.

Sursum Corda

Walking across the Crest Theatre lobby last week, I was suddenly aware of feeling light-hearted. The hour and a half of poetry and talk about music, writing, and the historical roots of former Poet Laureate Rita Dove’s newest book had caused something to shift in me. The tensions and cares of the day had eased in the presence of something beautiful, and the words that sprang into my mind as I headed for the door were Sursum Corda.

The Sursum Corda is that very beginning part of our celebration of Communion. It is where the pastor and the congregation say and respond:

The Lord is with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give him thanks and praise.

Somehow, just saying these words together really does the work of lifting my heart. I love that the ancient church started their celebration of the Eucharist in this way, and I’m glad we’ve adopted it. It reminds us immediately that what we are about to celebrate is the very real presence and work of God in our lives. And we give thanks and our hearts are lifted, because in spite of anything else going on, this is a beautiful and good truth.

Growing up in the church, I somehow got the wrong impression about the Lord’s Supper. I thought it was a time for sober reflection, repentance, and generally feeling bad about the big gap between Christ’s example and my pitiful attempts to follow him. I was down-hearted usually. I wish I had been reminded then, right at the start, that while those things are not wrong, the first impulse has to be a lifting of the heart, a giving of thanks and praise for what Christ has done and continues to do.

Jesus was a genius at the use of symbols. He used simple everyday things to convey deep mysteries to his listeners (and to us): sheep and shepherds, coins, lamps, and seeds. But the most basic of all things, bread and wine, he turned into this marvelous symbol of his presence and his action in our lives. As we meet Him in this celebration, it is right that the pastor tells us to “lift up your hearts” (the English translation of “sursum corda”).

Many things can lift our hearts: beauty, an act of kindness, a word aptly spoken, a good friend, and all of these earthly things are just glimmers of the Love that we celebrate when we take Communion. I hope the next time we say these words together something shifts within you as well and you receive the bread and cup in joy and thanksgiving.

What Wondrous Love

I have been thinking this week how helpful the church has been at walking me into the story of Holy Week and Easter. From Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday and today’s Good Friday service, I have been able to engage with this amazing and great action of God on our behalf. It would be easy to miss Easter without this help. Unlike Advent and Christmas which have been so embraced by the secular world, at least in its symbols and music, Easter still remains somewhat hidden. Sure, there is a display in many retail stores of lime green plastic grass and milk chocolate bunnies, but we are not inundated with the sights and sounds of this holy time. I am actually glad for this. The Hosannas, the songs about the cross and Christ’s passion and the joyous music of the resurrection spring on us at just the right moment and lead us into sacred space. We do not become weary of these songs, unlike the Christmas carols that start up long before Advent has actually begun. By Christmas Eve, I am usually heartily sick of hearing them, to tell you the truth. I would love, just once, to hear “Silent Night” for the first time on Christmas Eve. But this is probably not to be unless I move somewhere far, far away from our consumer-based society. So I will just give thanks that the meaning of Easter has remained intact and requires some effort on our part. We have to attend the services, or at least make space in our lives to attend to the events as they unfolded so long ago. We have to make an effort to join together with other believers to say “Hallelujah!” once again and to be reminded that God has indeed begun the process of redeeming all things to himself. What a mystery! What a wondrous thing!

As I drove around town, stopping at the post office, the grocery store, the local chocolate place (okay, see the blog below), I had the old American Folk Song “What Wondrous Love Is This” running through my mind. How good and peaceful and thankful that made me feel. The words are simple, but they say what is in my heart today:

What Wondrous Love Is This
By: American Folk Hymn

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this
That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down
Beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb,
Who is the great I AM,
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing,
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free I’ll sing His love for me,
And through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
And through eternity I’ll sing on.

The Lighter Side of Lent

The forty days of Lent can sometimes feel a bit heavy and dark. With its focus on prayer, reflection, and sacrifice it is not traditionally a time of joy and laughter – that comes at Easter. But this year, for the first time, I decided to give up a food item and my eyes have been opened to what I call “Lenten Loopholes”. Over the last five or six years I have given up a variety of things and attitudes that I felt were keeping me from enjoying God and becoming who I want and need to be. But somehow I just never got on the food fast bandwagon. But now I know how cunning and inventive food fasters are!

On the way home from the Ash Wednesday service, Ben said “Let’s give up chocolate for Lent.” Now the main reason I have never really embraced this voluntary giving up of a food that I love is that Valentine’s Day and my birthday, as well as the lesser-holidays of my Dad’s birthday and my daughter-in-law’s birthday, all fall within this timeframe. I mentioned this to Ben. He quickly pointed out that my birthday fell on a Sunday this year, and so I would be exempt from the fast on that day (this is a loophole to some Lent observers and a lifeline for others – traditionally Sunday is not a day to mourn and fast because it is the day of Christ’s resurrection and so is always a mini-Easter). I agreed, with pretty much no enthusiasm, to stand in solidarity with him on the chocolate-free Lent.

Thursday afternoon (yes! the very next day) Ben called to ask if “cocoa powder counted as chocolate.” Well, of course! I said. He had ordered a tiramisu with his lunch and it came dusted with cocoa powder. I then listened to a lengthy explanation of how chocolate is made with cocoa butter as well as the cocoa powder and that it “didn’t count” as chocolate if it didn’t have cocoa butter in it. I was skeptical until Friday (yes! the very next day) when I ordered a peanut butter crème brulee and there was cocoa powder (not much!) on the top. I was converted to Ben’s way of thinking. It certainly didn’t seem like chocolate to me, either.


After that I have heard from all sorts of people who have a similar “out”, and I have to say that many of them center around dessert. One friend’s dad doesn’t count it as dessert if it is served WITH the meal. If you don’t leave the table or get a new fork it is not a separate thing called “dessert”. Another friend solemnly told me that she had given up dessert for Lent, but “I eat a pop-tart every night and that helps me not regret it so much”. Now to me, anything you eat that’s sweet counts as a dessert. But not my crafty friends. My daughter’s best friend gave up peanut butter this year, but ordered the peanut butter cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory. Her thinking was that “wasn’t what I meant when I gave up peanut butter.”

Some people have much broader categories. In addition to the Sunday out, they don’t count birthdays, holidays, days that start with “T” because Lent ends with a “t”, and times when their craving is just so distracting that they would be sad without giving in – and really, why would God want them to be miserable? I pretty much used this myself while on vacation. My cappuccino cheesecake came with a dollop of whipped cream and some chocolate sprinkles on the top. I took a “might as well join ‘em” attitude and said, “Well it’s Thursday” and dug in (thanks, Pastor Kent).

Thanks to all of you who have helped me see this lighter side of Lent. Now I am intrigued and collecting these “outs”, so please post your own exceptions and help me to laugh out the days until I can eat some “real” chocolate on Easter Sunday!

The Journey of Lent

Today marks the beginning of Lent, which is the 40 days (excluding Sundays) before Easter. Lent has been a part of the church calendar since about the 4th century. In the ancient church, new believers were baptized and welcomed into the church on Easter Eve and those who had wandered away from God were brought back into the community at that time as well. The forty days represented a time of preparation for those entering the church and for those receiving them. This season remembers the time that Jesus spent in the desert, fasting and praying and gaining spiritual strength before the start of his life of ministry. So too, for us it is a symbolic journey into the desert to prepare to receive once again the glory of the resurrection and all that God has done for us. It is common during Lent to focus on prayer, reflection, fasting and charity. As someone who did not grow up observing Lent, it has taken me some time to come to realize that it is not a time of guilt or heaviness. Instead the reality is that we have an opportunity to see our over-filled hands and to lay something down that may keep us from fully grasping the life God has for us. So if you desire to fast in some way during this season, look at the things (or attitudes) that keep you from loving God fully and being formed in his likeness. Perhaps it is busyness, noise, technology, entertainment, food, or money. Maybe it is something not at all bad, but giving it up will remind you to draw close to God. The journey into the desert is to let go of that thing for an hour or a day or even the full forty days and spend the time with God. Again, we don’t only lay something down as a sacrifice, but we pick something up that will draw us into the heart of God: prayer, giving our time or money to benefit the poor, meditating on the will of God for our lives. If this is all new to you, start simply. Maybe give up that daily Starbucks and donate the money you save to a charity or ministry that serves the marginalized in our society. Each morning you can reflect on God’s heart for these people and pray for the ability to see and love them as God does. Maybe it will involve turning off the radio on the way to work to make space to pray about your day and the people you pass. There are as many ways to participate in Lent as there are people. Experiment. Look for the joy that is hidden in the sacrifice. Open your hands to God.

The Year Ahead

Since this is the Elder Board blog, I’d like to mention a few key things we’ll be doing in the year ahead and ask you to pray with us for our church.

Prayer

We will continue to pray with people desiring healing at our regularly scheduled Elder Board meetings at 6pm in the Prayer Room. Contact Sharon to schedule a date, or watch the bulletin for an announcement. We usually meet on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month, but this is subject to change.

Starting on Palm Sunday, we plan to be available for prayer and anointing during our Communion services (1st Sunday of the month).

Look for an invitation to join with us in prayer for our church (especially our finances) in the months ahead. We did this last year and feel that God answered our prayers in amazing and unlooked for ways. We continue to pray regularly together for our church at all of our meetings, but it was wonderful to open this up to the church and we hope to do it again.

Strategic Plan

At our member dessert at the end of last year, Kent and Mike mentioned that we would be developing a strategic plan this year. We are looking forward to this process with expectation for two reasons. Firstly, there are many great things our church could get involved in, but with reduced finances and staff support we want to carefully get behind those things that will be the most meaningful for our church and will best support our vision and goals. Secondly, we look forward to seeing the church from a wide variety of viewpoints. Many of you have helped in one of the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of our church. In addition to people from the congregation, the staff, Elder Board, and Administrative Council have met to do this exercise. We expect to have the results from the various meetings presented to the Elder Board by the end of the month. From just the one meeting I attended, I’m sure we will fill our agenda with interesting conversations for a long time to come! However, we will not only be talking about perceptions, opportunities, and things to tweak, but we will be coming up with some action plans. Stay tuned for more information. Many, many thanks to Rick Carr and Keith Aldrich for their hours of help in making this a reality.

Worship

Last spring a sort of worship “think tank” was formed to meet weekly over the course of a couple months to discuss the theological aspects of worship. This group read books and articles on the subject and engaged in the work of thinking rigorously on this topic. Out of those discussions and readings a working paper has been written and the Elder Board (as well as the Worship Planning Team) will be wrestling with this document to further refine it to express what we at Oak Hills believe about worship. You may have already noticed some of the results of this in the bulletin Order of Worship. I encourage you to read Pastor Kent’s blog http://kentycarlson.blogspot.com/ on emotions in worship and help us to continue to develop our thinking. When we have a final document, you will be able to find it posted on the church website if you’re interested.

Twenty-fifth Anniversary

This year marks the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Oak Hills Church! Look for details of our celebration in early fall.


Other business

Naturally, we will continue to have on our agenda the ongoing needs of our church as they arise. With the economies of our nation and state in disarray, the pressures on our church and our church families are immense and will naturally be something we look at each time we meet.

How to live for God

One of the most meaningful gifts I received last month was an accidental one. Sometime last year a person who has been an important spiritual mentor for me had recommended I read a story by Leo Tolstoy called, “Where Love is, God is”. I went to the library and looked through the anthologies of short stories but could not find it anywhere. I finally just looked the story up on-line and got the gist of it, which is nothing like actually reading a story by Tolstoy! But then this Advent, as I was looking through a collection of Christmas Stories, there it was! I read it with delight and joy; both for the beauty of the story and that I should find what I had been looking for, months after I had stopped looking for it.

This weekend we begin a new series called, “I Want to Grow”. I anticipate that it will be informative, challenging and practical. Some of the suggestions that are sure to be a part of this series are likely to seem obvious and “too easy”. I pass a part of the story “Where Love is, God is” on to you as a little gift. What seems so obvious may in fact be exactly what we need:

“Martin was silent awhile, and then asked: ‘But how is one to live for God?’
The old man answered: ‘How one may live for God has been shown us by Christ. Can you read? Then buy the Gospels, and read them: there you will see how God would have you live. You have it all there.’
These words sank deep into Martin’s heart, and that same day he went and bought himself a Testament in large print, and began to read.
At first he meant only to read on holidays, but having once begun he found it made his heart so light that he read every day. Sometimes he was so absorbed in his reading that the oil in his lamp burnt out before he could tear himself away from the book. He continued to read every night, and the more he read the more clearly he understood what God required of him, and how he might live for God. And his heart grew lighter and lighter. Before, when he went to bed he used to lie with a heavy heart, moaning as he thought of his little Kapiton; but now he only repeated again and again: ‘Glory to Thee, glory to Thee, O Lord! Thy will be done!’
From that time Martin’s whole life changed.”

Wishing you a New Year filled with good spiritual advice, sacred reading, and growth in your relationship with Christ! (If you want to find this beautiful story, which is about seeing Christ in the people around you, it is included in “Christmas Stories”, Everyman’s Pocket Classics edition).