Amherst Community Church

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Click here to download the November 2008 Good News FOCUS

    “The amount of money spent on candy alone during the holiday season is greater than the annual budgets of the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and Habitat for Humanity combined.”

     That’s from a Web site called Redefine-Christmas.org, which aims to leverage some of the money that people put into gift-giving and redirect it toward worthy charitable organizations. There’s even a way to send an e-mail Christmas card asking the people on your giving list to consider this option.

     Another worthy endeavor floating around on the Internet is a suggestion that when you’re writing out your Christmas cards, sign an extra one and address it to:

A Recovering American Soldier

c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center

6900 Georgia Ave. NW

Washington, D.C. 20307-5001

Back when I was working in the features department of The Buffalo News, I wrote a teaser headline once that said: “Concerts that changed your life.” It was for a story about people’s most memorable concerts.

I’ll never forget the next day, when a wise older woman, one of the features reporters, walked over to my desk with the morning edition in her hand. “A concert doesn’t change your life,” she said. “A child changes your life.”

Right she was. (Though in the media business, hyperbole will get you far.) A child does change your life. And as we enter the season of Advent, a time of waiting and expectation and preparation for something amazing, the Incarnation of God in the form of a wrinkled little baby, it’s good to reflect on the ways a child – and especially the Holy Child – can change our life.

1. A child forces us to admit that we’re no longer the most important thing in the world. From the moment of that birth, there’s a new priority in our lives. Not that the child becomes the center of the family – that’s a recipe for disaster – but for parents, most everything is subsumed to the responsibility of protecting and nurturing that little life.

2. A child disrupts our settled life in extraordinary ways. New parents don’t sleep all that much; they find themselves at Target late at night buying a replacement binkie; there are unfamiliar noises and smells and feelings about the house. It’s dislocating, having a new baby.

3. A child forces us to come to terms with the circle of life – the truth that our lives are finite but the life of the human family goes on. Poet Donald Hall wrote that when he held his new son, his first thought was, “My replacement has arrived.” There’s something about caring for a new life that spurs us to think generationally, to recognize that a long line of ancestors has preceded us and, with luck, a long line of descendants will toast our memory. Our lives will end; life will go on.

4. A child makes us realize that our influence in the world is limited. We can’t solve the world’s every problem, can’t feed all the hungry, can’t clothe all the shivering refugees, can’t beat every sword into a plowshare. But we do have influence over this child, and it’s not too much of a stretch then to see that we can make a difference for others – God’s beloved children, as cherished as is each new life.

We’ve had the blessing of several new babies in our congregation recently, and I know of at least two more that are in the manufacturing process. These new parents know all too well some of the lessons that a child brings with him or her from the womb.

But for all of us, Advent is a time when the infant Jesus teaches again those same lessons. Lessons about the priority of Christ in our lives, and the disruption that might cause when we think we’ve got it all figured out. Lessons about the continuity of life and God’s long timeline for humankind; lessons about our call to serve our fellow children of God.

My prayer, as we travel together through the worship and work of the Advent season, is that the miracle of the holy birth – as miraculous as every new life that God brings into the world – will teach us and inspire us and unsettle us and overwhelm us, so that together we can sing in the words of my favorite Christmas song, “Child, for us sinners poor and in the manger, we would embrace thee with love and awe; who would not love thee, loving us so dearly? O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord!”

Grace and peace, 

……When a church member or a member of the family is admitted to the hospital.

……When your committee or group plans to have a meeting.

……When either your home or business phone number changes.

……When you are planning to move.

……When a new baby arrives in your family.

……When a member of your family leaves home for college or establishes a new residence.

……When a loved one has passed away.

……When you feel the church can assist you in any way.