From the Pastor
Let’s be honest. Nazareth really wasn’t much a place to go back to. It was a poor, dusty, out-of-the-way sort of place. Says one pastor, “The heavenly hosts are gone. Their songs filling the air are heard no more. You can’t get an angel when you really need one. Now, Mary and Joseph have a son to raise, religious obligations to keep and a long, dusty trip back to Nazareth. What could be less inspiring than that? The starlit December skies of Bethlehem are a long way from Nazareth in January.”
And I suspect that we know how they were feeling. The holidays are over and it’s back to work, back to the routine. The celebration is over, the lights are gone, and all that’s left of the tree is about a million needles in the carpet. Joseph is back to the carpenter shop; Mary is standing over the sink washing baby bottles. We are back to work, back to school, back to “normal” life. Life has resumed, there’s work to be done and an uncertain future to be prepared for. Nothing, it seems, has changed. Or, has everything changed?
We at The Community Church are going to be talking about building a new building. What? In times like these? In fact, with Kristen’s ordination, we at The Community Church are going to be talking about having a second minister on staff for the first time in a long time? How can we even consider such a move…in times like these? Maybe it has something to do with that birth in Bethlehem. Maybe it has something to do with a God who seems to have more hope for us that we have for ourselves. Maybe it is that lingering angels’ song proclaiming that our best days are ahead of us, that God has not even begun to reveal the great possibilities for God’s people.
The world tells us that the future lies in the White House, or Wall Street, or in the volatile world of the Middle East and South Asia. We say the future lies in a manger in Bethlehem. Yes, dare to believe…everything has changed.
Gene
