On Advent's Third Sunday

Bah....the weather is frightful and Lessons and Carols is a casualty! We are rescheduling...Thanks be....I'm afraid it just would not be Christmas quite as much for me without L and C, to say nothing of all the work we have put in preparing. So it will be Thursday, and we are hoping for a better day weatherwise. As for today, it's blowing and drifting and cold cold cold! We were a whopping five for church this morning including me. No organist so we didn't even try to sing the hymns. It all felt a little out of sync somehow as we also didn't sing the other parts of the liturgy we usually sing. It all threw me off a tad...I kept thinking I forgot to do things. And I missed singing. I had picked out Comfort Ye My People because I like it so much, and it's not one we get to do often. Oh, well. Snow happens.

M and I will head out to the nursing home later this afternoon for the service. It's in town so we can traverse the weather to get there....and our congregation is there already! We will sing for sure, as she is my piano player. We are doing some good Advent hymns and I will do a slightly revised version of the Isaiah/Mary/John sermon I preached to the multitudes at St. J's this morning. And then, instead of running to get ready for the excitement of Lessons and Carols, I will be done for the day....home to a warm but quiet house. My decorating is done, preparations are pretty much finished except for some of my mom's old candy recipes I want to try. Perhaps this is a little gift of time in the too short Advent season. I did complain in my sermon of Advent moving too fast, of not having time to savor the mystery, to think about all that it means that this Incarnational event involves and calls to each of us to define ourselves around and against it.

Quiet. Time. Solitude.All unexpected gifts of the season on this blustery Sunday of Joy.