A MESSAGE FROM REV. KAREN KINNEY: HOPEFUL EXPECTATION
Grace and peace to you,
This Sunday, we enter the season of Advent, a four-week period of watching and waiting and hopeful expectation of the birth of Jesus. For many of us it’s a familiar story, and I wonder sometimes if it’s too familiar. Can we embrace the story this year as though it’s new to us?
Our theme for this year comes from A Sanctified 
Art and focuses on hope and fear. Jesus was born into a world full of fear with the cruelty of Roman oppression and Herod’s rule. Yet repeatedly the angels will tell Zechariah and Mary and Joseph and the shepherds to not fear. ‘Do not be afraid’ is a phrase we hear repeatedly throughout scripture. How were they able to move through their fear – perhaps by acknowledging it and moving through it? Where did their courage come from to say yes to the invitation to participate in God’s redemptive story?
The creators of this year’s theme write this: “Fear can divide and paralyze us, and even be used as a tool for oppression. But what if we formed a different relationship with fear? Can we acknowledge fear without letting it rule us? Might we catalyze our fears into love and action? What if naming our fears helps us see more clearly how God is breaking in and where God is at work?”
Over these next four weeks, we will be invited to identify where fear is present – both in the Advent story and in our lives—while also finding our way toward hope, with the angels’ voices in our ears. Let us embrace the story of Christ’s birth as a promise that is fulfilled every moment of every day of every month of every year. Let us embrace it as an ongoing story, not a static one.
And, in that vein, I will encourage you to follow the daily devotional that accompanies our worship series. If you are on Facebook we will be posting a daily breath prayer. There are also opportunities to reflect on weekly poems and artist renderings. Come and see, come and explore this Advent journey together.
Blessings,
Pastor Karen