MBCC Blog

Elf visits MBCC

Today I used some clips from Elf as we explored the Advent theme of Joy.  Too funny.  Elf, that is.

EXPECTING JOY

FALSE JOY

EXPRESSING JOY

Advent Meditation - Day Twenty-One - Love

Love: that's a difficult topic for me on a number of levels. Maybe this is an opportunity to unpack a little baggage? Let's see how far I get.

Romantic love: now there's a conundrum; I no sooner think I am experiencing it than it fails, or dies, or falls apart, or fades away, or is taken back. Relationships are so hard these days and sometimes it seems as if either all the good folk are taken or there is something seriously wrong with me (let's stick with the former for now, as the latter is too sad to bear, though it pops up whenever I am feeling low). The funny thing is, when I am most lamenting my single state, when I find myself envying my friends' long relationships and marriages, is inevitably when I hear from someone I love that their marriage is failing, their relationship is constricting them, or it's all just plain going wrong, that their love has also died. And then I feel as if I dodged the bullet - at least I don't have that heartache to deal with, I think. Maybe it's just complicated all around, whether you're in or out of love, in or out of a relationship.

Love of/for a child: That always seems so easy to me. Children are the blessing, the source and target of a love that flows effortlessly. When I think of how barren my life would be now without my love for my son, his love for me, the love I have for and from my godchildren and the other children of my heart, the casually given caress or hug from the children of my friends, I can't believe my good fortune; I revel in that child-love. But at other times, it seems too easy, too pallid and simple and of course, ultimately fleeting. Children grow and become complicated, our relations with them less that of the powerful parent/adult and powerless child and more equal, and the uncondtionality fades as our feelings grow and change, as the resentments of childhood begin to solidify in their growing minds, and as their dependency and some of the glamour of them wanes for us. So, perhaps that child love is not the be-all, end-all either.

God's love: Perhaps the most complicated of all. I read all the time in the Bible its exhortation that I should love God. I read that I should feel the Creator's love for me and receive it as a blessing. Too often, the idea of God seems so nebulous to me and the idea of God's love so much an idea and so little of a felt emotion that I become (or maybe remain) the skeptic. Not the rushing flow of romantic love or the purity of child love, for me love of God has too much of an intellectual thoughtfulness to it to satisfy. And yet... and yet... I find myself hungering for a different kind of love, for the true unconditionality that the Bible promises and that I seem to see is felt by the Christ-believers around me. I find myself wishing to feel God's love as a felt emotion and not merely an idea - to feel love for God as a reality and not merely a desire.

Perhaps that's part of what this Advent season, this time of waiting in hopefulness, is all about: letting myself want to feel God's love, letting myself acknowledge that God's love is something to be desired and looked for, and anticipating with joy its coming into my most secret heart.

May the peace, and love, of God and his Son find each of us this Advent season wherever we are on the journey, and may that love fill and sustain us all.

today's meditation was written by Michele Beasley.

Advent Meditation - Day Twenty - Love

Love is something considered fleeting by many.

Love is something we may or may never find.

Love is defined as a feeling - something that may make us warm from our head to our toes.

Love may manifest itself in many ways and forms.

The ultimate manifestation comes to us this advent in the form a child whose life and acts would transform the world.

This gift comes from a Father who loves us.

Merry Christmas All.

today's meditation was written by Arnold Lee.

Advent Meditation - Day Nineteen - Love

My husband, Brad, and I have been ships passing in the night a lot this semester. Our schedules are opposite. He basically works 9 to 5 and I work a lot of evenings. Last week I came home from a particularly long day, bouncing from one place to another. My head could hardly keep up. I didn't get home until after nine and was, of course, kinda ready for bed. In my way, I picked up my laptop, sat next to Brad on the couch and checked my email. It is a habit. It took me a few minutes to realize maybe it was a bad habit. By logging onto gmail, I found myself quickly engaged in three different chats. Brad was trying to talk to me, catch up on our days, the usual. And of course, he was in the room with me. But, I was so busy chatting with other people, I forgot to pay attention to him.

I caught myself in the middle of the habit and realized that sometimes, love is simply paying attention. It is easy to feel insignificant, but in a loving relationship, you feel significant. Someone else sees you, hears you, and recognizes you as a person full of worth and dignity. When we are "in" love, we pay attention to another person deeply. And when we cultivate love, we pay attention to a person intentionally.

I think this applies both to relationships with all kinds of people - friends, family, spouses, partners, and even strangers - but also to our relationship to God. Do we pay enough attention to God? Do we give God enough of our time? Do we recognize when God is paying attention to us?

today's meditation was written by Abigail King Kaiser.

Advent Meditation - Day Eighteen - Love

I am done.

Today I had the pleasure of crossing off the last item on my Christmas shopping list. Looking over this year's list, I imagine I have the same thing down near the bottom as most of you: "Nothing". A whole lot of Nothing, actually. No, not for my friends or family - I managed to find something for most of them. The Nothing is for my enemies, people outside my circle, acquaintances, people who annoy me, distant family members, and I am sure, a whole host of others. For the whistling co-worker on the other side of the office, I picked out a venti, no-whip, no-foam, non-fat, zero-pump, milkless, coffee-free latte, hold the cup.

Now, I realize it is absurd to think that one can get everyone some kind of Christmas gift, and I will be the first to agree that materialistic gift exchange rituals are an imperfect medium to express God's miraculous gift of Christ, but I find it no coincidence that we tend to give gifts more to the people we like, and less to those we don't - that our love flows most freely and abundantly to those we already love, and usually not at all to those we find unlovable.

I entered the seventh grade with hair cut short on the left and grown long on the right. It wrapped around my over sized, smudgy plastic frames - "you'll grow into them" - slid down my face, and stuck somewhere below my chin. The asymmetric 'do, my crippling shyness, and my Sally-sold-sea-shells lisp still leaves me questioning my guidance counselor's selection of Improv Drama as my elective course. Needless to say, the first weeks did not go well. After a little while, one of the cool boys felt sorry for the awkward new kid and decided to switch groups to act in a scene with an unlovable dweeb (me). Tim and I have been friends ever since.

You and I are the unlovable. We have done so much to distance ourselves from God, yet in spite of this, He loved us enough to send us his Son. Love that reaches beyond itself is powerful and life-changing. I hope we can find a way this season to love the unlovable people in our lives.

today's meditation was written by Ryan Roser.

Advent Meditation - Day Seventeen - Love

The other night, I was on a MUNI bus with a bunch of other people and one angry, drunk homeless man. He smelled. He was visibly drinking a lot. He was insulting other passengers and yelling racial slurs of all kinds. No one knew how to react to him.

Some passengers walked to the other side of the bus. Some chose to ignore him. Some yelled back at him before exiting the bus. I ignored him as best I could.

Instead of being annoyed by him, though, and walking to the other side of the bus, I just started thinking about what love is. Is it possible to love this man? How would I do it? In theoretical discussions, it always seems easy to love people. Be nice to them. Talk to them. Let them know they exist. Let them know they're cared about.

In real life, though, did I care for this man? If I talked to him, would he just continue yelling at me? If I told him Jesus loves him, would I come off as condescending? What does it mean to love him? To take him out to dinner? Try to hold a meaningful and deep conversation with him in the ten minutes before I get off the bus?

It's hard to love people sometimes, and it's not always a matter of willpower. Sometimes we just don't know how to love. There were plenty of times Jesus extended a hand to the widows, the lepers, and the poor, but none of the stories recorded in the Bible have those people yelling ethnic slurs at Jesus. When people finally spit on him and beat him, he said nothing. When pressed, he said: "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin." Later, he asked God to forgive them, for they knew not what they did. He said he was thirsty. And he said it is finished. Somehow those phrases wouldn't have seemed appropriate in my bus situation.

Did Jesus love the Pharisees he so often lambasted? He probably did. How did he show it? I don't know. I'm not calling this drunk, homeless man a Pharisee. If anything, Jesus probably would have called this man "one of the least of these."

I guess the issue for me isn't a matter of whom we love. In theory, I can love anyone. I don't bear too many people ill will, even those with whom I don't get along. But how do we love? What are acts of love?

It's entirely possible that God intended for me to befriend this angry man and treat him to a warm meal. It's entirely possible it was a missed opportunity. In my human weakness, though, I just thought, "This is a scary man." I prayed for him, and I didn't know what to pray for him except that God would be with him, whatever that means.

There are many great challenges when it comes to love. We are challenged in whom we love. We are challenged in how to love. We are challenged in how we receive love. We are challenged in how we acknowledge love. We are challenged in how we sustain love.

I guess the best we can do is to pray to God to teach us how to love. We are only human, after all.

today's meditation was written by Alan Siu.

Advent Meditation - Day Sixteen - Love

I like to read books that offer insight into human behavior. I recently read a book by relationship author John Gray. While I took most of it with a grain of salt, I found one bit of advice very helpful. Gray mentioned that as human beings, we often project our emotions and behaviors onto others. I’d always associated projection as a way for us to transfer our fears and insecurities. I never saw it as a positive thing. Gray’s advice, however was to project love onto others because in doing so, we’d probably see that love returned.

I decided to confidently and consciously project my love - a sort of social experiment. Within a month, I had three different people from three different areas of my life tell me that I had a “positive energy” about me. One of these people is a health care provider I have known for years. Another is a co-worker with whom I have a professional relationship. The third is a person I had known for only a few weeks. I have also become more aware of the way people treat me. I have been having a difficult time at work because my classes are too big, so I spend more time baby-sitting than I do teaching. Several of my co-workers, including my boss, have empathized with my situation by giving me kind words and support. I feel cared about, and so I am inspired to support others.

Although Gray writes for a secular audience, I think his words can be applied to our most loving relationship - the one we have with God. I see God as projecting his or her love onto us. Because I feel loved by God, I want those around me to feel loved, too. I love others because when I feel loved back, I know that love truly comes from God.

today's meditation was written by Hilary White.

Advent Meditation - Day Fourteen - Hope

Consider it a sheer gift (emphasis mine) friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

James 1:2-4

I read this passage in March of this year while on a trip to Tahoe with our family. I felt like God was speaking to me through it, but I didn’t understand as everything seemed to be going pretty well at the time. Three days later Bob and I were served with papers of the first-ever lawsuit against our architectural firm.

It was a project we had worked on 10 years ago, and on which we only had a minor role. We knew the clients had a lot of trouble with the contractor and that a suit had been going on for four years, but we had so far been in the clear. The owners had settled with the contractor and some of the other parties for their maximum insurance amounts, but they were still looking for more money to pay their rebuilding costs and we were now being dragged in.

We have had many agonizing days trying to determine if we had done anything wrong (we still don’t think we have), many sleepless nights worrying about whether they could take our house (we had no insurance at the time and architects are personally liable beyond their business liability), and many moments of questioning our career path, our current projects, and our future in light of this suit.

I thank God for that passage as I really believe it was His gift to me in preparation for what was to come. I have come back to it again and again – to reread, to remember, and to claim His promise that there is some greater purpose in all of this – to give me hope.

Last Friday, after our first conference in front of the judge, it became apparent that, after nine months of legal wrangling, we are still nowhere near a resolution. They were setting conference dates in March of next year. I got very depressed as I was really hopeful that it might all go away soon and life could return to “normal”. On Sunday morning before church I remembered a lesson I had recently taught the kids – the story of Abraham and Sarah, and God’s clear-as-day promise to give them a son and to bless the world through their generations. Abraham, already an old man of 85, had to wait another 15 years for God to fulfill His promise. Fifteen years! OK, maybe the nine long months I’ve waited are not enough. I still have more to learn, more to be reminded of, and more to grow.

The verse above continues:

If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help and won’t be condescend to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, beliveingly, without a second thought.

James 1:5,6

Our hope is based on God’s unfailing faithfulness, on His goodness, and on His promises to answer our prayers. We must continue to trust Him, even if the wait is long, even if the answers are uncertain. There is purpose behind everything He does and His Word is truly a gift to us.

today's meditation was written by Christine Boles.

Advent Meditation - Day Thirteen - Hope

Riding the BART is a great way to experience the world - the good, the bad and the ugly. Sometimes those discoveries are about myself and sometimes they are about the world. The other day, I saw Jesus in a moment - I saw God in a moment - that gave me hope.

There was a man wandering in and out and up and down the cars. He passed my seat a couple of times. His clothes bordered on rags. They were tattered to shreds and it wasn't very warm. He had to use one hand to hold his pants together. On his second pass, I watched as he disappeared into the car in front of me. He lost the grip on his pants, and more layers of clothes were revealed, none looking warm or comforting. As he walked past, a young man reached into a shopping bag he was carrying and pulled out a pair of jeans and handed them the to man with a smile. I was too far away to hear any conversation that was exchanged, but the body language was loving and the man responded with gratitude.

My heart was full. It was an unbelievable example of being able to serve the world's needs as they appear to you with what you have to give. In that moment, that young man was exactly who God made him to be. I saw Jesus on the BART, humbly giving a pair of pants, and humbly receiving a pair of pants.

today's meditation was written by Abigail King Kaiser.

Advent Meditation - Day Twelve - Hope

Remember five or six years ago when Asian-inspired tattoos were all the rage among suburban white kids? I totally bought into it. Shortly after my 18th birthday, I decided I wanted a tattoo that meant "hope." I found a character defined as "hope, thought, or desire" in an online Kanji dictionary, printed it out, took it to the parlor that my dad's friend on the board of health recommended as the cleanest in the county, pointed to the spot on my ankle where I wanted it to be, and got inked.

The novelty wore off pretty quickly. I liked how the tattoo looked, and I was glad to be reminded of the meaning when I thought about it, but after it didn't hurt anymore, it rarely crossed my mind.

When I moved to San Francisco two years ago, I ended up at the doctor with a bad cold. He noticed my tattoo and asked if I knew what it meant. I told him what the Kanji dictionary I picked it from said it meant, and he said that, more specifically, it means to hope for something when it isn't there or when you can't see it -- almost more like longing.

Aren't the most crucial times to have hope the times when you're longing for something that you can't see, something that feels like it isn't there? Even though I know that God is always there, I have moments when I lose hope in that unseen presence. Whether I am lonely and scared or just empty and uninspired, sometimes the feeling that God isn't tangibly there gets me down, and I long for Him to comfort me, fill me, inspire me, in a real and visible way.

To me, hope is staying focused on what is ahead, even when it feels like what you're hoping for isn't there, even when you can't imagine what's going to come next. This advent season, I'm trying to focus on keeping up hope for the plans God has for my life -- even though I don't know exactly what they are, even though they have not yet come to fruition, and even though I can't picture what they're going to be like when they do.

When I look at my tattoo now, I think about where I was when I got it and where God has brought me since then. And that's enough to keep me hoping.

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

today's meditation was written by Megan Dunchak.