Monday Music - Christmas Playlist

Here's a great old gospel Christmas song the Cactus Blossoms are performing on their current tour with Nick Lowe. When was Jesus Born? Last month of the year. Enjoy!

Sunday Supplication - Everlasting Life

O Lord, move in our hearts with your great might. Work in our lives with your power. Through your boundless grace and mercy, deliver us from the sins that entangle and destroy us.

Thank you for the forgiveness and renewal you have given to us through Christ Jesus.  Help us as we extend that same forgiveness to others who have sinned against us. Help us to be a community of grace. Make us a church that has a redemptive and healing impact on the world around us.

Thank you, O God, for the forgiveness and life we have through Jesus. You have promised that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

May all who seek you find you, O God. Help us to recognize Christ as King. Help us to make room for his saving and shaping work in our lives.

It is in his Name that we pray all these things. Amen.

Saturday Smile - Christmas Innovation

Friday Favorites - Valley Kids Musical

Tonight and tomorrow. Friday, December 11, 5:30pm, and Saturday, December 12, 12:30pm. Enjoy great performances and good food as we celebrate the coming of Christ! 
Cost is $7 per adult and $4 per kid.

Click here to reserve your tickets and for more information.

Thursday Thinking - Character Benefits of Reading

Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer
"Deep reading" is vigorous exercise from the brain and increases our real-life capacity for empathy
by Annie Murphy Paul, Time Magazine 2013

Recent research in cognitive science, psychology and neuroscience has demonstrated that deep reading — slow, immersive, rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral complexity — is a distinctive experience, different in kind from the mere decoding of words. Although deep reading does not, strictly speaking, require a conventional book, the built-in limits of the printed page are uniquely conducive to the deep reading experience. A book’s lack of hyperlinks, for example, frees the reader from making decisions — Should I click on this link or not? — allowing her to remain fully immersed in the narrative.

That immersion is supported by the way the brain handles language rich in detail, allusion and metaphor: by creating a mental representation that draws on the same brain regions that would be active if the scene were unfolding in real life. The emotional situations and moral dilemmas that are the stuff of literature are also vigorous exercise for the brain, propelling us inside the heads of fictional characters and even, studies suggest, increasing our real-life capacity for empathy.

READ MORE

Wednesday Words - Made Flesh

After the bright beam of hot annunciation
Fused heaven with dark earth
His searing sharply-focused light
Went out for a while
Eclipsed in amniotic gloom:
His cool immensity of splendor
His universal grace
Small-folded in a warm dim
Female space—
The Word stern-sentenced to be nine months dumb—
Infinity walled in a womb
Until the next enormity—the Mighty,
After submission to a woman’s pains
Helpless on a barn-bare floor
First-tasting bitter earth.

Now, I in him surrender
To the crush and cry of birth.
Because eternity
Was closeted in time
He is my open door
To forever.
From his imprisonment my freedoms grow,
Find wings.
Part of his body, I transcend this flesh.
From his sweet silence my mouth sings.
Out of his dark I glow.
My life, as his,
Slips through death’s mesh,
Time’s bars,
Joins hands with heaven,
Speaks with stars.

“Made Flesh” by Luci Shaw, from A Widening Light: Poems of Incarnation, Regent College Publishing, © 1984.

Tuesday Tome - A Widening Light

A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation
Edited by Luci Shaw

"I can think of no other anthology which celebrates with such intensity the entire drama of the Christian faith. Here we have a host of poets praising God, and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest.' A Widening Light moves the reader through recognitions and meditations toward prayer."
—Harold Fickett

"Luci Shaw has compiled perceptions both delicate and powerful of Jesus the baby prince, the Man, the golden Lion, Jesus Christ the Lord. For those who love poetry and those who think they don't, I recommend a slow and thoughtful reading of this lovely book. Each page reflects from a different angle the Light of the World.”
—Elisabeth Eliot

"A Widening Light ranks as one of the very best anthologies of Christian poetry."
—John H. Timmerman

Monday Music - Christmas Playlist

Bruce Cockburn performing "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen" is one of the classic recording in the Burkum family Christmas playlist. Hope you enjoy it.

Sunday Supplication - Walk in the Light

Merciful God, we thank you every voice you’ve sent into our world to preach repentance and proclaim the way of salvation. Give us contrite hearts and help us to turn away from sin. And give us open and receptive hearts that joyfully welcome the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.

Help us in this Christmas season to honor Jesus in thought, word, and deed.  Help us to follow him and to walk in the light as he is in the light.  We confess our sins, trusting that you are faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Thank you for the forgiveness and renewal you have given to us through Christ Jesus.  Make us able and ready to graciously forgive those who have sinned against us.

Restore and renew us today, O God. And make our lives a testimony of your power to restore and renew us. Help us to live by faith. And make our lives shining demonstrations of your promise to save and restore.

Through Christ, we pray. Amen.

Saturday Smile - Happy Birthday, Cheri!

Friday Favorites - Just Two Weeks Away

Handel’s Messiah
Celebrate the holidays with one of classical music’s most beloved traditions as the SPCO performs Handel’s Messiah with British conductor Matthew Halls. A cherished holiday custom since its premiere in 1742, this masterpiece of the Baroque repertoire features some of the most popular refrains in Western music—from “Comfort ye, my people” to the iconic “Hallelujah Chorus.” This is sure to be a wonderful musical experience for the whole family and a highlight of the Twin Cities holiday season.

Co-presented by The Basilica of Saint Mary and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Thursday | Dec 17 | 7:30pm

Friday | Dec 18 | 8:00pm
Basilica of Saint Mary, Minneapolis

Saturday | Dec 19 | 8:00pm
Ordway Concert Hall, Saint Paul

You can also purchase tickets to these events by calling the SPCO Ticket Office at 651.291.1144 Monday-Friday from 12:00pm-5:00pm.

Thursday Thinking - After Paris: A Christian Response

Philip Yancey has posted a thoughtful article on Christian responses to recent events in a world filled with tensions fueled by religious, ethnic, political, and cultural differences – Paris and Beyond: How Should Christians Respond. I'll give you Yancey's closing statements in the hope that it will spur you into reading his entire piece.

Can we respect and dignify the majority of Muslims while simultaneously striving to root out the extremist minority? Can we resist the temptation toward vigilantism and prejudice against all Muslims? Can we not only accept them as neighbors but love them, as Jesus commanded? Can we live in a way that demonstrates to the Muslim world that "the Christian West" does not equal decadence, just as "the Muslim world" does not equal extremism? Can we maintain our cherished values of freedom and justice while under assault from forces that undermine them?

ISIS has proved how a dedicated minority of zealots can disrupt the world. What can Christians do to show the troubled world another, better way?

CLICK HERE TO READ "PARIS & BEYOND: HOW SHOULD CHRISTIANS RESPOND"

Wednesday Words - How Is It that the Snow

How is it that the snow  
amplifies the silence,  
slathers the black bark on limbs,  
heaps along the brush rows?  

Some deer have stood on their hind legs  
to pull the berries down.  
Now they are ghosts along the path,  
snow flecked with red wine stains.  

This silence in the timbers.  
A woodpecker on one of the trees  
taps out its story,  
stopping now and then in the lapse  
of one white moment into another.

“How Is It That the Snow” by Robert Haight
from Emergences and Spinner Falls, © Copyright © 2002.

Tuesday Tome - Watch for the Light

Are you someone who enjoys daily Advent readings? Watch for the Light is a book I learned about a few years ago with Advent meditations from a wide variety of thinkers, theologians, and writers – some historical, and others current day, some expected and some very unexpected.

Publisher's description...
Though Christians the world over make yearly preparations for Lent, there’s a conspicuous lack of good books for that other great spiritual season: Advent. All the same, this four-week period leading up to Christmas is making a comeback as growing numbers reject shopping-mall frenzy and examine the deeper meaning of the season.

Ecumenical in scope, these fifty devotions invite the reader to contemplate the great themes of Christmas and the significance that the coming of Jesus has for each of us – not only during Advent, but every day. Whether dipped into at leisure or used on a daily basis, Watch for the Light gives the phrase “holiday preparations” new depth and meaning.

Includes writings by Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, Sylvia Plath, J. B. Phillips, Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, Henri Nouwen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Kathleen Norris, Meister Eckhart, St. Thomas Aquinas, Karl Rahner, Isaac Penington, Madeleine L’Engle, Alfred Delp, Loretta Ross-Gotta, William Stringfellow, J. Heinrich Arnold, Edith Stein, Philip Britts, Jane Kenyon, John Howard Yoder, Emmy Arnold, Karl Barth, Oscar Romero, William Willimon, Johann Christoph Arnold, Gail Godwin, Leonardo Boff, G. M. Hopkins, Evelyn Underhill, Dorothy Day, Brennan Manning, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Romano Guardini, Annie Dillard, Martin Luther, St. John Chrysostom, Giovanni Papini, Dorothee Soelle, C. S. Lewis, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Philip Yancey, J. T. Clement, Thomas Merton, Eberhard Arnold, Ernesto Cardenal, T. S. Eliot, John Donne, Gian Carlo Menotti and Jürgen Moltmann.