It is very remarkable that we face the thought that God is coming so calmly, whereas previously peoples trembled at the day of God, whereas the world fell into trembling when Jesus Christ walked over … — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
by Ken Sehested
Joy to the world! Salvation comes. Let earth rise up in praise
Let every heart prepare Christ’s Way
And heaven and nature sing, and heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven and nature sing.
Joy to the earth! The Savior reigns. Let every voice report
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.
by Ken Sehested
In the company of these witnesses, round this table of remembrance of baptismal vows, within hearing of the One who delights in our company and in whose Promise we trust, let us make our professions.
What do we believe?
Read more ›26 November 2015 • No. 47
¶ Processional. “Break the Bread of Belonging (welcome the stranger in the land),” by Gary Rand.
¶ Invocation. “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come,” by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
by Ken Sehested
I have given birth countless
Times, too many stillborn
And breathless, despite
Conception in the
Throes of passion and
Patient preparation. Restless
Nights and nauseous days
And stretch marks
Amniotic fluid securing watery
Life, waiting, kicking
Kicking and waiting
Anxious about that
Birth canal’s tumultuous ride
And leaky breasts
Until then, waiting, kicking
Kicking and waiting
Waddling stride
Provoking curious stares
Down Broadway in
Manhattan and
Comments from strangers
On the bus, a complete stranger
Saying, I bet it’s a girl
No, says another across
The aisle, she’s carrying
High, it’s a boy, with unseen
Choired angels arrayed
testing their pitch:
Venite adoremus!
Come and adore!
Who are these people? Why
Didn’t I ask for phone numbers
And maybe recipes? But they
Barrel on past my stop to
Where I wish I knew. Who is
Waiting for them, I wonder, like
Those truckers I notice rumbling
On up the interstate when I exit
For gas and a pee, no need for
My company, four-wheelers
Just get in the way
by Ken Sehested
The Manger’s trailhead opens at
the portal of praise and genuflecting
thanks. Not because heaven arises to
piety’s incense. But because Advent’s
brush with mortal flesh is a perilous journey,
fraught with insurrection’s threat,
pregnancy’s scandal, birthed from
stabled bed, and Herod’s foam and fury.
The innocents take it in the chops every
time. Yet Advent threatens treason to
every Herod-hearted arrangement.
19 November 2015 • No. 46
¶ Invocation. "Malka moma” (“Little Girl”), Bulgarian folk song performed by Neli Andreeva and the Filip Kutev Ensemble.
¶ Call to worship. “Come ye fearful people come / Cast your sighs to highest heav’n / Yet—though terror’s harvest spread, / Casting sorrow in its stead— / Still the Promise doth endure / Life abounding to secure / Come, ye thankful hearts, confess / Mercy’s lien o’er earth’s distress.” —Ken Sehested, new verse to “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come”
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
1. Often, just because we’re not paying attention.
2. The barrage of demands on our time and energy creates “tunnel vision,” making it difficult to see anything that’s not directly in front of our noses.
Read more ›by Abigail Hastings
Come ye thankful people, come
go ahead and raise
that song of harvest home
Come ye cranky people, come
raise your dirge
of gloom and glum
With a blood moon steep arising, and the sun beyond its set; stars, wobbling in their course, submit to gravity’s fated threat.
The Apocalypse’s disclosure of the Promised One’s descent into creaturely exposure ’mid cruel suffering and lament.
Speak, O Ancient of Days, from moon’s eclipse, sun’s sunken shroud, from blackened hills and choking streams,
Read more ›Selected by Ken Sehested
§ If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
§ The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. . . . Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. —Martin Luther King Jr.
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