Hillside Happenings
a blog from our pastors and staff
Welcome to my Advent Blog! This is the 3rd of 13 blogs, and I encourage you to read them in order. We are exploring ways to rediscover the child-like faith we once had. The baby Jesus was given gifts at his birth. Jesus was himself the great gift from God to his prized creation, us. Children love getting gifts. While adults like getting them too, it gets more complicated to receive as adults. We have a hard time receiving if we are not also giving something in return, kids don’t have that problem. Adults have a hard time not earning our gifts, kids don’t have that problem. The gospel is about getting something we don’t have to earn. And while God hopes that we will give back after receiving, it is not the reason He gives the gift. God gives because that is who He is.
Children will take any gift you have from them, at any moment, for any reason. Jesus came to give the gift of peace, love and hope that is only found through Him. Isn’t it time to take the gift and enjoy it? To enjoy something, you have to use it and to use it, we must spend time with it. Too many people don’t enjoy the biggest Christmas given to them. In fact, Christmas is about the gift of Christ that we don’t earn or deserve. The great thing about getting Jesus for Christmas is that it never stops or fails to teach us something new about peace, love and hope. There are always new ways to explore and learn about the gift. We need to stop seeing God as a tyrant making us feel guilty about our lack of faith. We need to start seeing God as one who gives the ultimate gift and can’t wait to see us unwrap and enjoy the gift of Jesus. Be looing for the next blog post Friday, Dec 6. Please feel free to comment below. Pastor Dan
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Welcome to my Advent Blog! This is the 2nd of 13 blog posts, and I encourage you to read them in order. Christmas vector created by macrovector - www.freepik.comAt that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.
-- Matthew 11:25 Yesterday, I asked why God sent Jesus in the form of a child if his ministry came thirty years later. Clearly, Jesus came as example and even in his young life he showed us the importance of being a child of God. This blog is primarily about how we need to find the child-like faith that we once had. Jesus was able to retain his inner child, but as most of us got older we have lost the child in us. One thing many adults lose as they get older is the ability to play. I am not talking about playing computer games or even playing tag (although that could be good for us). I am talking more about having a playful spirit. When people play there is a trust element happening, everything is under control. God has got you and you have time to have fun. As Christians, we have a serious mission given to us but that does not mean there isn’t a time to play. A playful attitude in life often shows an absence of worry and despair. There can even be a peace that comes from a good day of play. If we are God’s children, we come to Him as children and we can even come to Him to play. This might seem contrary to what many of us think the Church and our faith is about. Do our services, classes, and programs allow for an element of holy play? I am not talking about replacing Sunday worship with a good game of hide-n-seek, even if for a Sunday or two it might be just the thing to help us find our inner child. We need to trust God enough to relax and see God in the fun of life. Christmas season is not a time to play for most of adults, even though most kids still think it is. We are too busy prepping for a moment that lasts a day or so. There is season for everything under heaven. Do you prioritize play? Is it in the rotation of activities? Again, it isn’t so much about what you do, it is about the spirit in which you do it. God is in control. Look up to heaven and ask God if He knows a good joke. Lots of us will be hustling and bustling over the next couple weeks, but if you are not careful you might fail to see God’s answer to that joke. The next blog will be posted Thursday, Dec 5th. Please feel free to comment below. Pastor Dan
Jesus’ birth is more than getting people excited about Easter, as great as that is. If we go back to verse one of Isaiah 9, it states, “Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress.” I do understand that these verses have a context in which they were said but it’s also clear that Isaiah was foretelling of Christ’s birth. Christ would come but 2000 years later and we still see plenty of gloom and distress around us. Why is that so? One major reason is that Christ coming to earth is a two-fold prophecy; the birth of Jesus that happened over 2000 years ago and the return of Christ in the clouds that has yet to happen. We are in the time in history called the “already and not yet.”
While our world still has plenty of gloom and distress, Jesus offers a way to overcome the world. Not that we can avoid trouble or hardship but that there is now a path and person to help us find peace even in our worst pain. One way Jesus tells us to find that peace is to be like a child. “He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18:2-4). While these verses help us to understand something of what a child-like faith is. There is still lots of room for discussion. After all, every quality of a child is not something to be sought after. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (I Cor. 13:11). I find it interesting that as Jesus grew and matured, he was able to retain his child- like faith while putting away childish qualities. Jesus came to be our example as well as our Savior. But while Jesus retained his child-like faith, most of us are hoping to rekindle something we lost a long time ago. This almost-daily Christmas blog is about possible ways to find the inner child in us. I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below. The next blog will be posted Wednesday, Dec 4th. Pastor Dan |
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