Skip to main content

Where is the Love--Guest Blogger Rev. Caroline Dennis

(Spiritual Practices for Families: Giving Thanks)


Where is the Love?


In December, amidst the wrappings and the shouts of glee, we found a quiet time to come to the manger and contemplate the great Love that God sent, wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Here, as sparkling Christmas lights give way to snow and rain and ice, as gathered family gives way to bill paying and schedule keeping, how might we hold on those manger moments when we embraced the Love that embraces us?
In these more ordinary days, can we still see the light that leads us to Bethlehem, to the ordinary extraordinary places where Love shows up?

Here is my invitation to you, and to your children:
 Pause... in the middle of your "what's next" life... to see, hear, touch, smell, taste... all the amazing that is right here and now.  Point it out to one another like we might point out the twinkling lights on a Christmas tree.  Give thanks... for the warmth of the sweater, the wag of the dog tail, the strawberry jam smile, the scent of  left-overs, the call of a child who knows you can help.
Pause... to see the Love that comes to us, every day... if we are wise enough to look.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
    and do not forget all his benefits—
              Psalm 103:2


Rev. Caroline Dennis is the Associate Pastor for Children and Families at Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, IN. 
Labels:
Location: Indianapolis, IN, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And on the seventh day...

Figure 1 http://www.montreat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Mountains-2-400x250-300x187.jpg We think of “Sabbath” as a time to NOT DO something.  We stop.  We wait.  We rest.  We sit.  However, that is a lot of work!  I think of Sabbath as “making a space.”  It is an active choosing, remembering, and prioritizing a holy space for God.  It is less about “letting go” and more about “leaning in” to the Breath of the Holy Spirit.  In this context Sabbath is a return to our making.  You see, in the beginning “the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). It is the breath of the Lord God that stirs dust into human.  It is the breath of the Lord God that makes us living and gives us a life.  Therefore, “Sabbath” – a time for rest and renewal, is an opportunity to reach for that breath of God which gives u...
Post a Comment
Read more

O Come Let Us Adore Him

Ask a small child to arrange a nativity scene and you might get something like this… My daughter did something similar to this during her first “active” Christmas Holiday season.  That's the 1.5 year old Christmas where she was making meaning and learning faith stories as fast as her church family and I could tell them to her. She helped me set up our family nativity set minus Jesus; we did this  because we wait until Dec. 24 th after church to find Jesus in the manger.  She looked at each piece and named them.  Explaining the story as she went through the box of precious figures, she placed each one with care.  When she finished all I could see were the backs of the shepherds, sheep and camels.  I couldn’t see Mary AT ALL!  It was all wrong.  As a young mother is want to do, I explained gently that the set should be set up in a “V” so we could see each individual piece. As an almost two year old/who thinks she is an adult will invari...
Post a Comment
Read more