Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Selected readings from the daily lectionary: Is 40:1-11; Ps 96; Th 5:12-28; Mt 18:12-14 

Northern lights - November 10, 2024

 

I have fond childhood memories of my parents waking my siblings and I up, wrapping us in blankets and carrying us outside to watch the northern lights dancing in the air. Maybe that is why I couldn’t help but wake up my own sleeping toddler to see the most recent northern lights dance across our night sky. You will never get a more awestruck audience than a child, still half-asleep, seeing northern lights for the first time. 

                  

Do you think God feels the same way watching us as Christmas approaches? Do we stand in awe at the coming of Christmas and the love that Jesus’ birth embodies? Do we rejoice with the heavens and sing for joy with the trees of the forest? Or does God see us frustrated in the checkout line, snapping at our loved-ones and complaining (once again) about the weather? 

 

In all four readings we are reminded in various ways of the importance of praise, joy and admiration, so this advent, or even just today, commit to rejoicing. If God looks at us and sees beauty, how much more should we look around at what God has created and also see that beauty? If, as the readings remind us, the heavens, earth, sea, fields and trees of the forest all “sing for joy” “day after day,” maybe we can do the same this Advent season. 

 

I am not saying we need to be positive in all moments, or that life does not throw difficult things in our path that are much more significant than a long checkout line. Life is hard and life can be painful. But maybe we can challenge ourselves, just for today, to see past our pain and frustrations to the ever-present beauty. Let us see the beauty in that new layer of snow or the wild winds of the most recent Chinook. See God’s likeness in that person pushing past you in the line at Costco. Stop and admire the sunset as you bring a kid to soccer practice, or praise God for the healthy feet that make a dirty floor.  

 

I know of no natural phenomenon that declares God’s glory more than the northern lights. Standing beneath them, you can almost hear them lifting their voices, saying, “Glory to God, glory to God in the highest.” So today, let’s try to be like the northern lights, let’s give all the glory to God.

 

by Shelby Martens

 

 
"Ere zij God" by Sela  

 

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