Join us for worship at 10 am Sunday

Who here enjoys waiting? Whether it’s a line of cars at a traffic signal or a row of people in the grocery store check-out line, we have little patience for waiting. While frustrating, the kind of waiting I just mentioned is a minor annoyance compared to the important things in our lives that we’re waiting on God to make right. Long-term relationship heartaches, chronic pain or illness, financial pressures and job stresses that never seem to go away, unfulfilled hopes and dreams and longings. Waiting takes up a significant portion of our lives, so it’s not surprising that from cover to cover, the Bible unfolds the story of God’s people waiting.

In Genesis we’re introduced to 75-year-old Abraham and his 65-year-old wife, Sarah, who waited 25 years for God to fulfill his promise that He would give them a son. Later due to a famine in the land where Abraham and his descendants settled, God’s people migrated south to Egypt, where God supplied them with grain and land to farm and sheep to herd. For a time, God’s people thrived, but their sojourn in Egypt resulted in slavery to Pharoah.

For 400 years, the Israelites cried out to God in their misery, and they waited and waited for God to act until finally God heard their cry and sent Moses to deliver them. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt from Pharaoh’s iron grip to God’s Promised Land in Canaan, but due to their questioning of God, God’s people walked and walked and walked, and a journey that should have taken 11 days took 40 years.

There are many more Biblical examples and still our wait continues. The word “advent” means coming. First, we remember and celebrate Jesus’ coming as a baby. Emmanuel, God with us, came to earth so that our relationship with God might be restored. Next, we await Jesus’ second coming when the Bible promises that God will make all things new. The words of the popular Christmas hymn poignantly capture our waiting: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and rescue captive Israel.”

During this season of Advent, our Clergy and Staff’s hope is that we can create windows of time each Sunday morning for us to wait and to embrace silence, and that those small moments of waiting silence we create here will permeate the busyness of our lives during the week between Sundays. In honor of Advent and Christmas, we invite you to participate in our annual Christmas appeal. Please turn in your annual pledge and if possible, donate to the Church Christmas Fund. Please be sure to mark the memo line of your check or Zelle so we know which is for your annual pledge and which is for our Christmas Fund. Give to the offering as you are able so that we are able to give back to others out of the abundance that God has given us.

 Wishing you Hope, Joy, Peace and Love at Christmas,

Rev. Dr. Kelly Hough Rogers