by Lisa Allgood, Executive Presbyter
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” – Isaiah 43:18-19
Socrates once said, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
There’s a piece of me that thinks this blog might be better suited to the first blog of 2025, but it works for the first week of Advent as well. Goodness knows – the birth of Christ was a new thing, wasn’t it?
Besides, who knew that Isaiah and Socrates agreed on how to manage change?
Change and Christmas don’t go well together for many people – in some ways, me included. I love my Christmas traditions – the old familiar carols, my ornaments from my travels around the world, the hand-made nativity scene I bought years ago from an artisan who owned a store called “The Crèche Shoppe”, the reclining Mary and Child I bought in Jerusalem. They make me smile, bring me comfort, help me relive Christmases-gone-by.
As many of the blogs this year address, tradition often holds us back. We move “forward in time” (oh, don’t get me started on the actual quantum physics of time dimensions – you already know I’m a nerd) but we don’t always look around us to see how we need to literally change to move with the changes around us over time. So our worship gets stale, our traditions irrelevant to a changing demography and changing social pressures, our congregation gets smaller, we struggle to figure out why the old familiar comforting ways (for us) no longer resonate with a different generation… you know where I’m going with this. You’re living it.
But they – those who are not in our congregations – are not living that dynamic. Yet they are more likely to come to your church at this time of year than almost any other. And they likely come seeking their own versions of a “traditional” Christmas, as well. The question is – how can we make sure we’re not just giving them a Hallmark Christmas card, but add in a non-traditional something that leaves them hungering for more of Immanuel – God With Us, Love Come Down? A driving need to be a part of the Jesus Way year-round?
I do believe that our neighbors can be brought, awestruck, full of wonder, reverently – brought into the timeless, seasonless grace and love and mercy of our Triune God. There is so much joy in the awe and wonder of the season – how can we, within our traditions yet acknowledging where they are in their journey, bring that invitation into the celebration of Christmas?
It is so worth our changing our own “comfort” to bring others there – into that joy – into something new that invites them into both the joy of the Christmas season, but more importantly – the joy that lasts longer than a week or two in Decenber, the eternal joy that comes in knowing we are adopted into the family of the Eternal God.t perceive it?” – Isaiah 43:18-19
