Tagged: Expectation

Luke 3:1-6

This text is used for the Lectionary Year C on December 6, 2015.

a2Each year after Thanksgiving, my family and I start our preparations for the season of Christmas. We have our “traditions” if you will. Naturally we start with the tree, which is decorated with a menagerie of ornaments collected over the last 30 years: the felt Snoopy I made in kindergarten, the ornament we bought at Disney World in 2002, paper chains made by our kids several years ago, and ornaments with baby photos of each child from their most cherub-like years.

We play Christmas music, drink our only cup of eggnog for the entire season, and as a family we hang our memories on the tree. This is how we begin the preparations for Christmas.

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2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

This text is used for the Lectionary Year B on December 21, 2014.

Have you ever tried to do the wrong thing for the right reasons? In the 7th Chapter of 2 Samuel, David says to Nathan the prophet “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent” (2 Samuel 7:2). David, now comfortably settled in a palace in his newly conquered capitol of Jerusalem, realizes that he is living in a place far grander than the God whom he worships. So, setting out to address the imbalance, he has in mind to build a temple for the Ark of the Covenant, so that God too may have a permanent home in Jerusalem. Continue reading →

Isaiah 64:1-9

This text is used for the Lectionary Year B on November 30, 2014.

Silence can be hard to take.  That’s especially true when it is God’s silence we’re talking about.  In what many contemporary commentators refer to as “Third Isaiah,” a lament is voiced to God:  “you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins” (Isaiah 64:7).  Continue reading →