The Bungee Cord 11-23-20

Hi,

 

It is Advent, the four weeks before Christmas when our lives are progressively filled with the hope of Christ’s advent in our lives…in a manger, in our daily lives, and at the end of time.  It is a tradition in many Christian homes and churches to light a candle each week to mark our way to Christmas, a visible remembrance of the brightening light that comes into the world. (John 1).

 

So, I thought I would bring you along with me on this journey in two ways.  First, each week I am going to include the litany that we will be doing in our church.  Let me invite you to get four candles and put them someplace where you will see them. In our home we put them on the table that we usually eat on.  Then in each week of Advent as you read the Bungee Cord, you can light a candle until all four are lit.

 

The second thing that I am going to do is to write an Advent story.  Although the story may not have the usual Advent/Christmas characters, I hope that it will deepen and broaden your experience of these four weeks of hope during these days of Covid’s shroud.

 

ADVENT 1

 

Advent 1

 

Psalm 139

⁷ Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence? 
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 
⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 
¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast. 
¹¹ If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’, 
¹² even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you. 

 

We give you thanks, Almighty God, that you fill the darkness with the light of your promise of salvation.  As we await the day when sin will scale our eyes no more, when chains of oppression will all be broken, when the prison of guilt and shame will be torn down, and when the darkness of death will be shattered…enlighten us with a glimpse of your power and love for us so that the light of your promise might bring us hope.  Amen.

 

Light One Candle

 

 

And the story…..

 

“Cubic Zirconia”

 

With all of the weird stuff going on this year, one of the weirdest things was how 5 high school students living in the deep south found each other.  They were the first five people in line to get tickets to the Neil Diamond show that was coming to town. It was weird because everyone else in the line was at least 60, and even though they all went to the same high school they had never met each other.

 

Though teenagers in 2020, they were devout Neil Diamond fans, and how could they not be.  They had grown up with parents who were Diamond groupies in their youth and Neil Diamond music saturated the houses that they raised their children in.  “Sweet Caroline”, “Song Sung Blue”, “Forever in Blue Jeans”, “Cracklin’ Rosie”, “Brother Love’s Travlin’ Salvation Show”……  Those songs were played so often that not only were they etched in the kids’ brains, but they were etched in the walls of those homes.

 

As the five of them sat in line to get their tickets, they started singing those classics.  They knew every song, every verse, every word by heart. All the old people who stood in line with them smiled.  Some sang along.  The kids, though, who walked by and heard them singing Neil Diamond songs laughed with arrogant scorn, “Wierdo’s!”, they smirked in unison pointing their fingers at the weird non-country, non-rock and roll, non-hip hop quintet.  

 

The singers didn’t notice, they were lost in their songs.  When they finished the last words of “Forever in Blue Jeans”, one of them said to the others, “We should form a Neil Diamond cover band…you know a boy band with a whole different twist.  And that is how “Cubic Zironia” got its start.

 

(Continued next week….)

 

Have a great week!

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger