One Christmas Eve

Hey, ya'll. This is my first ever blog post. Wrote it the other day. We're going to use this blog to allow out pastors to think out loud and share those thoughts with our Unity family, as it is and as it grows. So, here's the first effort. I had an amazing Christmas Eve.


26 december 2011
It’s two days after and I still can’t get past it. I had promised myself a week to leave everything alone and focus on rest and getting back in touch with the Lord and my family on a personal level (just like Jesus did all the time, but that’s another story). But, it’s just still here. If you are part of our Unity facebook group, then you’re still talking about it. If you missed it, I feel badly for you. I think it was a pivotal moment for us; God’s presence in our gathering in a new way. We started with a piece of scripture and talk of opportunity.
Revelation 7:9a, 10
9 After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb… 10 And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God,  who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
                And so, for a treasured hour and a half, there we were, as my Tonni called us, “a mini United Nations”, just like the picture of the worship we will experience when God pulls everything together for eternity. It was Christmas Eve and all of the Unity community was called together. We came in large number and celebrated as one the human arrival of our Savior and His ultimate coming as King of Heaven. I will forever count it among one of my most memorable encounters with God. It was, (as a poet once said) a time when we, “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God”.  It was also what should serve to us as a taste what is to come and what should come. Unity is uniquely placed in our community and in this time to break down the boundaries of language, culture, preference and traditionalism that have fractured his Church. This Christmas Eve we were blessed by God to share, if for only a little while, in a preview of His eternity and catch a glimpse of what He has fashioned us, uniquely to be. Gracias a Dios.
                Today then, I am enjoying my family and taking in everything God has so graciously given us and praying that we will be willing, as the scripture says to, “throw off everything that hinders us and the sin that so easily entangles and run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:1), so that we might become, for our neighbors near and far, a glimpse of God’s Kingdom.

YBIC,
Kevin

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Chose And My World Was Shaken. So What?

Image
February 12, 2012                 Start here.                                Read the post while it plays. OK- Here’s the thing. This idea of choice and consequence is chasing me this weekend.  Some of the reasons: Tonni and I have been teaching a class @ The Gathering on Sunday mornings, Walking The Bible. The last few weeks have focused on the soap opera of Genesis 12-50 where we find the story of Abraham and Sarah and Ishmael and Issac and Jacob with his two wives and Joseph’s bad boy brothers and even Lot and his daughters (yuck). At every turn, people make bad choices with consequences haunt us to this day. One of my favorite bad choices is in chapter 25. Goes like this: 29  Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country famished . 30  He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that...
Read more

A Stake In Our Division

A Stake In Our Division As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.   There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called;   one Lord, one faith, one baptism;   one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. - Ephesians 4:1-6 Here's the music. Start or end here. Up to you. Right click. Open in New Tab.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM17qeIIIE4   It was a generation ago, January 1998, when my class returned from a particularly awful assembly. It was my 3 rd year as a teacher in a school district that saw itself as “diverse” (big keyword then), being in reality largely two ethnicities: black (64%) and white (34%) with a few S...
Read more

By The Grace of God...

Image
Wednesday Morning June 6, 2012  ... in all your ways acknowledge Him and he will guide your paths.          I can still smell the rain from last night's storms as I sit on the porch of this log cabin in Lakeland, FL on a beautiful horse farm. The modest structure, with a single living/dining room, tiny kitchenette, and a couple of bedrooms isn't a place I had ever pictured myself. Yet, here I sit, taking in the warm and moist air of a summer morning. I marvel at the journey God traced out that led me to this place.            (After writing these words, which I have to admit I wrote and emailed to myself from the plane on the way back to Ohio the following day, I decided that the song in this clip best sets a musical mood. The video is good, too. Bonus, I suppose. Read on. )        One of my favorite musical scores, tracing a man's mid-life despair, continually asks the questions, "How did you get...
Read more