from Pastor Sarah Moat
Our theme for advent is “I Wonder as I Wander.” Obviously, we borrowed the title from the old Christmas hymn. The person who is most often credited for writing this hymn, John Jacob Niles, borrowed the song as well. As the story goes Niles first heard this hymn sung by a young Appalachian girl.
The girl and her family were homeless and being forced to leave town because they had hung their laundry out to dry on the confederate monument in the town square. Niles heard the girl singing the first three lines of the song:
“I wonder as I wander out under the sky, How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die, For poor orn'ry people like you and like I...”
He was amazed by the poignant words of her song and paid her a quarter to sing them again and again so that he could record them. The girl told Niles that she learned the song from her mother but no one could find an original source of the Appalachian Spiritual. Most people could not read or write and so folk songs, like this one, were passed on through oral tradition. Niles created the rest of the Christmas song from those first three lines and the melody that he heard from the young girl.
In these borrowed words the message of advent is conveyed beautifully. Imagine the wonder Mary experienced when she was visited by an angel explaining her upcoming pregnancy and birth. And certainly Joseph wondered at this unusual news! Our scripture passages throughout the season reveal stories of wondering (and wandering) shepherds, angels, and kings.
In each of these stories we are invited into the wonderment and joy. As we wander through this season of expectancy and hope we are filled with our own wonderings as well. We wonder about the likelihood of an infant king and we wonder how God could continuously love His people so much, in spite of our brokenness and human limitations. We also wonder about the health of the people we love, if our jobs are secure, our debt manageable and about the well-being of our neighbors and friends. Throughout advent we wait for the Christ Child and all the while we wonder. We wonder about big things of life and faith and about the very ordinary things of daily life and through it all we know that we are waiting alongside the angels and shepherds, alongside the kings from the east and alongside the homeless girl from Appalachia. We are waiting for the wondrous love that always breaks into our world even though it doesn’t make sense.
May the lights and wrap of this festive season bring wonder to your heart, may the special foods and celebrations remind you of the gifts of abundance that we receive in the Christ child and may you find overwhelming joy in the truth that God came into the world for people like you and like I. God Bless your wondering.
from Pastor John Nelson
I don’t know anyone who likes their life ruled by the commitments they make or that are made for them. Quotas for sales projections at work, promises to the PTA for the school carnival, an ideal weight set by a personal trainer or program. Commitments can cause stress, anxiety, worry, and low self-esteem if these goals are not met.
So why set them; why even talk about them? Wouldn’t we be better off if we all just went at our own pace, worked until we felt tired or disinterested and just forgot about the rest? I wonder, would that be more enjoyable? Would that bring us a greater sense of happiness?
The first problem I see is that I know myself. I know that if I don’t have a goal, if I don’t identify a target of what I am shooting for, then it is all too easy to put things off until I have time to get to it later. Of course you and I know there is no “later” but it is what I tell myself. Perhaps that is what “we” tell “ourselves.” To live a true “laissez-faire ” life would be to not really care what happens.
Sounds easy enough, but without commitment how would we know when to celebrate? Without goals, how would we know we got somewhere or achieved something? Commitment can be a good thing; just ask someone who has been married for more than 25 years. Commitment can even be empowering; just ask someone who regained control of their health by changing their diet.
Commitment is a sign of spiritual maturity.
One reality is that we often become what we are committed to. To some that is their work, to others it is their leisure activities, to many their families. What are you committed to? In the waters of our baptism God made a promise to be committed to each of us and continues to be faithful to that promise. In response, when we make commitments to grow in our faith, to be engaged in a living faith, it is a sign of thanks to God. Is it easy to do? No. Are there costs to discipleship? Yes. But like any commitment, the reward of a life of faith is so much greater than any cost, it becomes a no brainer. When we commit our lives, our time, and our resources to the goal of following Christ, we can discover a life worth living.
I have heard that commitment is a dying value amongst many in our society today. I would venture to say that that loss would be a loss of the essence of what it means to really live. The good news is that Christ’s commitment to us is unchanging and eternal. I guess that is why they call it “Good News.”
from Pastor Sarah Moat
A few weeks ago my oldest daughter started her senior year of high school. As I watched her drive off I vividly remembered the day I sent her on the school bus for her very first First Day. On that day 13 years ago I stood at the bus stop with the other parents and shed a tear or two as I sent my little girl off into the world to learn and grow beyond our home. I was confident that she was well equipped for the opportunities before her – after all, she had a new backpack, a new set of Crayolas and a pair of brown leather mary-janes. She was good to go.
I shed another tear when she left for her senior year but I am confident that since she made the most of those early opportunities she entered this year equipped to succeed. The backpack and mary-janes have been replaced with a sense of confidence about her future, a commitment to her friends and teammates and an unquenchable curiosity about the world around her. Once again, our little girl is good to go. It has been our job all the way along to equip her for what is next even though it is not always easy to watch her engage new opportunities.
God consistently places new opportunities before us. As a church staff we believe it is our role to help equip you to live out your faith at home, at church, and in the world. We are prayerful as we continuously evaluate our programs, our preaching and teaching and our leadership so that you feel equipped to respond to new opportunities faithfully.
On Sunday, October 17 there will be an Opportunity Fair where you can see and experience all of the different ministries that happen through Gethsemane. I suspect that you will be surprised at the many and diverse ways that our members live out their faith – I sure have been! Join us on this special Sunday for fellowship and a chance to learn about and be engaged by the many opportunities at Gethsemane.
Each one of us is good to go because of what God has done for us. We are equipped with an unconditional love, a variety of gifts (skills, time, and resources) and the freedom to serve one another. As we go into the world and engage all of the opportunities that God places before us let us remember that God is truly the source of all that we have. The Windows of Opportunity Capital Campaign is an opportunity that is before us now to respond with confidence to God’s abundant gifts to us.
from Pastor John D. F. Nelson
We have more opportunities in our lives today than people have had at any time in history. Opportunities for education, careers, leisure activities, ways to communicate, even travel. We can make possible things our great-grandparents would not have dreamed of. However, I feel our number of options have blinded us to the value each carries. The few choices our ancestors made were directly tied to their focused hope for the future. Their actions planted faith and built churches to nurture that faith for each of us.
God continually blesses us with love and grace and has provided opportunities for us to respond in faith as well. This fall we each will have new opportunities to be engaged by God in worship, to grow in our faith though educational offerings, to serve others through outreach events, and so much more. As you look at how you will live out your faith this year, what is the desired future you are working toward? What do you hope for your family and for the church? How will you let the light of Christ shine through you?
As a church we recognize that our actions not only affect our current needs, they also affect the hopes and dreams of the generations to come. In our lives we have specific windows of opportunity to respond in faith; like when a child asks how the world was made, when a teen is seeking to find out their purpose in life, when a friend loses a loved one, or when people need a place to belong and be told that they are not alone. Each are opportunities for us to respond in faith. This is why our church council and staff have titled this year’s congregational focus and the next three-year phase of our capital campaign, "Windows of Opportunity."
In our annual ministry budget we will have the opportunity to support ministry efforts and reinstate the salary cuts that our outstanding staff has endured over the past year. We will also have the groundbreaking opportunity to create a new mission and outreach line item in the budget to share more of our resources with global and local missions.
In our capital building appeal we have the opportunity to pay our monthly mortgage payments outside of our operating budget, freeing up ministry dollars. We have the opportunity to eliminate all of our debt from the building renovation that has reinvigorated Gethsemane’s heart for hospitality and enabled us to gather together in fellowship in ways we never expected. We also have the opportunity to replace the old leaking windows in our educational wing with much higher efficiency windows, saving on future building costs.
You have lots of options before you, but only a few of them will make a lasting difference in the lives of others and in your own. God is calling you, inviting you, to once again engage your faith, and live it out in every choice you make. We are opening a window of opportunity here at Gethsemane and invite you to let your light shine through it.
from Bob Windels, Youth Director
By the time you read this, I hope to have finished building a replacement deck on our house in Eden Prairie. After searching for ways to Do Something for Nancy, I settled on giving her a more comfortable place to sit out in the sunshine she loves, with more room for her plants and for hosting company. So I budgeted for the materials and relished the chance to use my tools and construction skills, and my best window for completing this project fell in August, with my summer youth trips accomplished and with a little quiet time left before fall programming starts up. However, you may remember much of August featured torrential rains and an impressive 100-degree heat index! Right project, right time— but less-than-ideal conditions that are giving new meaning to “sweat equity.” I’ve been making progress in spite of the weather, though, chugging lots of water and working until dark, fueled by the belief that when the new deck is done it will seem well worth the investment, the sore muscles and the sunburn, in order to have a better, more useful space to live in— some quality-of-life infrastructure.
Gethsemane made a similar decision when we opened the doors in 2006 on our remodeled building, investing in our quality-of-ministry infrastructure. These attractive new spaces get well-used all the time, and I believe the congregation continues to feel like that was money and energy well-spent, that the timing was right, that it needed to be done in order for us to adequately serve our membership and community— even though we’ve still got a significant chunk of that mortgage yet to pay off, and many of our original windows are needing urgent replacements, and a new roof is not far off… all while many of our member households continue to struggle financially in this recession. Right project, right time—less-than-ideal economy.
Auto dealerships are trying hard to convince us that “Opportunity is Knocking” and “Now’s the Right Time” to buy that new car, while hoping that we’re not reading the new unemployment forecasts before committing to a major purchase. Hopefully good financial news really is right around the corner, but good stewardship of money and time continue to be essential skills in a world where almost everybody’s selling something—and the latest gadget is usually a way more fun and attractive way to spend a dollar than, say, paying taxes to replace a bridge before it falls down. And a week spent re-painting your house is less attractive than—well, anything, probably. (I kind of hate painting.)
But things of value are worth paying for to build and sustain them, worth sacrificing for, and worth spending the time to do the necessary groundwork: in other words, infrastructure. (For every hour I get to spend with teenagers, I’m spending 8 hours prepping at my desk or doing errands or recruiting/training volunteers or managing fundraisers—but all of that time spent allows the one eventual hour with the youth to be more fruitful.)
As you get your stewardship campaign materials this fall, I hope you will be able to feel good about investing in Gethsemane with your time, talents and finances, in balance with all of the other things you truly value. May God bless the timing of your decisions! Now I’m getting back out there to sweat off a few more pounds on my construction zone stay-cation… Carpe diem!
