From the Pastor's Desk
Pastor's Message January 2021
Dear People of God at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church,
Hope you are safe and well as we begin the year 2021. We call it a “new year” but not sure it really is, at least not yet.
We have a ton of Christmas decorations that we have accumulated over the years. We have a window seat across our bay window that has a storage area where most of them go. Jody does a great job of fitting all the pieces in, I know she has a pattern. We have 8 stuffed animals on our landing, including a bear that plays Christmas songs when you squeeze its paw. Those go in the closet downstairs along with the other things that don’t fit in the window seat storage area.
We have the Advent log on our table in the kitchen along with a bunch of cookie plates. We have Christmas towels on the counter along with a big ceramic snow man shaped cookie jar. We have decorations on our coffee table in the living room, on the hearth, mantle and the floor.
I can say I like the decorations and how the house looks with them all out, because I don’t have to figure out how to make them all fit back in the window seat and I would not even entertain the idea of not putting them out, again, not my activity, but it hit me when we are in the kitchen, we don’t have a bunch of counter space left. The decorations take up a lot of room. Same with finding room on the coffee table, not much. I could go on but you get the picture.
I wonder if that is why folks are so anxious to put their Christmas things away, they get in the way and take up space that would normally be used for other things. They get in the way. I wonder if we can draw an analogy here.
Does the coming of God, does Emmanuel “God with us,” does the celebration of God’s appearing in our world, get in the way and potentially take up space that would have been used by us for something else? Might we look to put God away so that we can go back to our “normal” lives? I wonder.
I wonder if God’s coming continues to be a take up space sort of feeling. I wonder if God’s coming continues to get in our way of more room on our coffee tables and landings? I wonder if the realization that God is among us and is not going anywhere any time soon, is a wakeup call that God is here to stay and we just won’t be able to put God back where God belongs, in heaven or a storage space. I wonder if we had better realize that God is here, not just in general way but in a very specific way, meaning in your life and in the life of all creation and we had better figure out a way to make space on our landings and floors and coffee tables, because God will not and cannot be put away. God will continue to be in our houses, life will not and cannot be normal anymore.
God’s peace on your days.
Pastor Tom
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church at Swan's Trail 2020 Newsletters