The Congregational Church of Weston, UCC, 130 Newton Street, Weston, MA 02493
www.congwestonucc.net 781-899-5417 781-647-1165-fax
Spirit & Sparks
Advent: the season of waiting, watching.
Often we say it is a season of preparing, and that’s
okay by me, as long as we don’t sacrifice Jesus on
the cross of requisite preparations for “culture
Christmas,” not Christian Christmas. Advent rightly
struck is all about inner preparation, about spiritual
expectancy, about quietude. And outreaching to the
needs of others. What a challenge as we rush
maniacally toward the holiday, not so much
forgetting it’s a holy day as succumbing to other
expectations.
There is thus a great tension to the season
now upon us, and a spiritual Advent is often itself
sacrificed. Is it too much to ask of ourselves to
cease and desist from some of the outer busyness to
go inward? Aren’t we called as Christian folk to hit
the pause button on all that “Holly Jolly” blare so
we can listen for the “still small voice?” Maybe this
little poem by Gerhard Frost, called a bit
outrageously “What I Don’t Like About Jesus,” can
arrest our thoughts at least for a moment’s pause,
that we might choose to go inward against the flow
of all that is so demanding, sometimes even
demeaning, about this most paradoxical of all
Christian calendar commemorations:
Let me tell you
What I don’t like
About Jesus.
He calls me to follow;
I like to run around.
He lets me see a single step,
And sometimes even less that that;
I like to know the end.
PASTOR & TEACHER EDITORIAL
I choose to travel
By sunlight or headlight;
He gives me only starlight.
I like to set the pace;
He asks me to hurry, or worse-
Sometimes to wait.
He embarrasses me and gets me
Into trouble; he sometimes
Makes a scene.
And just when I feel strong
He calls me to a cross-
I want a crown.
Christmas has always been something of a
cross to me, I confess before you, stemming from my