From the UCC Network: Devotional for 11/29 "Learning to Listen and to Ignore"

Learning to Listen and to Ignore 

Excerpt from Matthew 24: 15-31

“Then if anyone says to you, “Look! Here is the Messiah!” or “There he is!” – do not believe it.”

Reflection by Maren Tirabassi

Last week was Thanksgiving, followed by that morning when some of us awakened early and stood in line for holiday gift sales. Yesterday, Advent began, and many of us sang, “O Come O Come, Emmanuel.” Today is the first weekday of Advent, a moment to choose how we will spend the next four weeks and what kind of a Messiah we will be awaiting.

The warning in Matthew 24 is addressed to people in a desperate and dangerous situation. We experience some desperate situations ourselves. Friends and relatives in war zones, crashing destruction of personal security, health crises, family disasters, layoffs and unemployment – even the cultural stresses and expectations of Christmas – feel like chaos. During chaos times, it is so easy to grasp for what Jesus calls false messiahs and false prophets.  Some of them have names -- “perfect gift” or “vodka bottle,” “too-busy-to-think,” “credit card,” “depression,” “do-it-all,” “photo-card family.”

There may be no month more populated by look-at-this false messiahs, but all the jarring, jangling, jostling, frenzy-crying of a crazy world hungry for love and lonely for peace cannot noise away, cannot, haste away, cannot ache away the real One.

Prayer

Emmanuel, God coming and God with us, help us to be discriminating Advent people and lead us to care for the desperate we find all around us. Amen.

About the Author Maren C. Tirabassi is the Pastor of Union Congregational Church of Madbury, UCC, in Madbury, New Hampshire. Her most recent book is All Whom God Has Joined: Resources for Clergy and Same-Gender Loving Couples, co authored with Leanne McCall Tigert.

Daily Prayer

With my rapidly beating heart, like that of scared bird fleeing from the snares that have been laid out for it in the world, I too come home today to rest in the protectiveness of you, my God. For when I can no longer endure the hardships which I bear; when the challenges of life are too much for my spirit to shoulder, you are always there to ease the strain of my troubles, and to wipe the sweat of burden from my brow. In the silent moments of long dark winter nights, you draw me close unto yourself and whisper the words of hope which I long so much to hear, and bring calmness to my soul. 


And so let me now, in the light of another day, lift my voice, like that of my ancestors before me, in praising your goodness your love, your faithfulness: Blessed be the Lord, who has not given me as prey, to a world that would devour me.

Rev. Michael Kirchhoff

Psalm 124