advent09 | but wait, there's more!

I got all my peace lernin' done early in the week because we had an adventure scheduled for the later part: our present for peace week was a family trip to Portland! Brian had a CPA class to go to, so we figured we'd make a family mini-vacation out of it.

But, funnily enough, Peace followed me to Portland! Hooray! It's transportable!

For one, I was very happy with how all the weekend's plans came together. Came together in spite of the repeated threats of freezing rain and winter storms...in spite of my miscommunication skillz, which gave some unexpected change of weekend plans to two of my friends...in spite of my lack of an inclination to make any definite plans until shortly before doing anything. So perhaps the rest of the world (and my friends w/ it) are still reeling from the implosion that was our visit, but we? We had the most splendid weekend imaginable.

And then! We ended up at a church service on Saturday night. I just really had not wanted to miss church that weekend -- Advent somehow heightens the sense that God has something for me there -- and we had to leave early Sunday morning to be back home in time. But one of my friend's church had that evening service, so there we were.

The opening sermon slide was a disappointment. Maybe God didn't have anything anyhow. It said "Doxa." Who even knows what that means, anyhow. But then the pastor told us: it means "glory." Which is one of my secret Advent words this year.

(I have to confess, I have my official words: hope, peace, love, joy...and then my secret words, my "this year words", which are: generous, grace, and glory -- which I was hoping would magically appear in Advent, even though I'm not officially acknowledging them.)

So God was like, "Surprise!" and I had this gift of sermon about glory! The first part of the sermon was a challenge: We are made to glorify God. The rocks and stones and stars cry out the glory of God...and we, our lives, are to cry out the glory of God even more so. Our desire for happiness collides with the glory of God. God wants holy people, not happy people; holy people reflect God and His glory.

But then, the pastor shifted to Isaiah 40, which speaks of the glory of God. And he said, are you burdened with something? Go look at the stars. Not one is missing, ie, He is aware and present to the cataclysmic events in space. And none of us are missing, ie, God is aware and present to the "cataclysmic" events in our life. Looking at God's glory -- his hugeness and perfection and magnificence -- brings us peace.

Still chewing on some of those things, but it was fun to have a one last peace lesson during peace week that incorporated the idea of glory...especially since we'd already made the grace tie-in earlier this week...