Give Thanks...

I hope you all had a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving filled with plenty of food and family. I hope too that you were able to take some time to be enlightened to all the good things in your life. Cliche, perhaps. But never the less, it is often this time of year that we ARE especially in touch with the blessings God has lavished upon us. Now that we've gotten our fill of turkey and green bean casserole I pray that we would begin to move deliberately into this most Holy of seasons.

As we begin the celebration of Advent, I encourage you to reread the Christmas story. For it is, afterall, because of the miracle of Christ's birth, the wonder of His life, and the graciousness of His death that we are each making this journey in the coming month. During this time of year I pray that we be reminded of not only Christ's redemptive sacrifice through death, but His miraculous yet quiet entry into our world. When we read Luke 2:1-7 we find that Jesus reset the standards even in birth. His presence in our world, as foretold years before, was radical even from infancy. The King of Kings did not come in a flashy display of glittering robes and crowns. He came humbly that we may be open to the presence of God in everyday places. So many years later, I pray that we are still conscious of His gentle and often silent presence in our lives.


What is God doing in your everyday places during this Advent Season? Today seek the ways that God is using the everyday familiar places to work out His divine plan for your life and for the world. How can you be preparing your spirit to receive Him during your time in Africa? Let us ask for softened hearts and child-like wonder so that Jesus may enter in and steal our certainties and self-dependencies. May you be open to the moving and molding of the Holy Spirit today and always.


Prayer: God of Prophecy and Perfect Plan
We travel the journeys of paths that our known to us each day. Yet, we long for your will to break through our every day familiar places. We sing the familiar hymn “O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel,” and we long to make that prayer our own. Take our history, our everyday, and enliven us to see the ways you are at work and present within and through it all. Open our hearts to receive your coming this Advent Season. Use our everyday places to bring about your unexpected plan for our lives and for the world. Our hearts yearn for you, O God, and our lives seek to rejoice in your grace. Bring forth your power and will in our everyday, and shine your light upon us all the days of our lives. In the Shepherd’s name we pray. Amen. *


In praying today, I encourage each of you to begin praying especially for the Ugandan leaders we will be serving. Give thanks for their willingness to live and move with the Spirit's guidance; to step faithfully along the path that God is calling them to. Pray that their spirits may be strengthened and empassioned with the grace and love our Jesus has for each of them. Pray that these saints know and trust that His goodness will follow them everywhere they share God's love. Give thanks that they have the hearts to love on kids and to bring the light Jesus into the midst of a very dark continent. Humble us away from thinking that we could possibly have anything to offer them on our own. Ask for compassion, for broken hearts in meeting with them on common ground; in realizing that we are all children of a great and loving God.


"Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too" ~ Frederick Buechner

*as taken from First Cup Advent Devotion- Westminster Presbyterian Church and Rev. K Threadgill