“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob," sings Isaiah this week.
At the beginning of this Advent season, I wonder what it would be like to get ourselves ready for that trip--to God's house, where the world is transformed. People learn to live in beautiful ways, together, old disputes get settled, and weapons become farming tools.
This week, I've been asking people: what makes a place feel like "home" to you?
What do you think God's home would look like?
If Isaiah's image is true, I notice a couple of strange things: this home isn't a refuge for me, but a place for "all nations" to be together, and to build peace together. Also, God's home isn't a place where I stop working. I just trade in whatever self-interested tools I was using for garden tools--presumably, to grow the food that will set the feast on the big table we'll share.
As we're drawn closer to Christmas, I feel the pull of expectations and busy-ness in our world--so many things we ought to do and buy. I want to resist making my celebration of Christ's birth into something that commodified. My current obsession is figuring out how to make things for people, instead of buy them--something about putting my labor into creating things feels really good. Also, I can recycle materials in my creating. (I also have this hopeful idea that it may also prepare me for the creative work I'm called to in God's house--perhaps Isaiah might have continued, after "swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks" by saying "knives into knitting needles and chains into sewing thread" or "firearms into stoves.")
What I mean to say is that I suggest we take up a new set of spiritual and physical practices this Christmas season. Instead of letting ourselves get caught up in our culture's "usual" ways of celebrating Christmas, let's use these weeks as a time to do things that will help make this place look a little more like God's home.
I'd be thrilled if you'd share your ideas!
3 comments:
Along the same lines Rev. This morning I set out to buy some wood to make small, small bowls for my family this Christmas. Before I could get to the street my mind was racing of how to out do myself. And sure enough I eyed some scrap wood someone was throwing out. FREE, Woo Hoo!!! Over breaks in my day I cut and chipped myself the beginnings of seven bowls. But much more, the beginnings of seven seeds of love coming from the heart, rather than from China.
Beckett
hey, i read a great little article about students at Doane College this week saying they have a ROOTS and SHOOTS group that has come up with a way to make GREAT totes from crappy plastic bags.. i will try to find the article online as you might like it and to try it as plastic bags abound everywhere! They are even creating a u tube from it. How do you google a u tube? it will show how to make them.... you can carry FOUR heavy biology books in one if you can lift it!! or great for YULE LOGS!love, mom
Post a Comment