Hello! Somehow my life always ends up running almost exactly counter to my expectations for Advent. This deep into the season, my longing is for stillness and quiet and contemplation. This deep into the season, I instead typically find my experience to be the exact opposite of “quiet” and “still.” Maybe you are experiencing the same. Maybe you and I can both just pause, and take a breath, and remember that the peace we seek is already available and does not come by our own doing. Take a breath, and remember that even a moment of quiet can be enough.
In all my own frenzied doings this season, I’ve not managed to do everything the way I’ve wanted it done. That includes with this blog! But since a blog is a thing that can be updated, rewritten, and revised, I realized that I can pop in and note a few things for the record.
Note #1. When my husband and I publish these hard copy devotions at our church, they’re in tandem with our weekly sermons, and it’s obvious which one of us has written which devotional piece. But since I’m the one who manages our blog and the one who’s been designing and publishing these reflections on the blog, even my husband’s writings are showing up under my name. I didn’t manage to think through this ahead of time, and now it seems inelegant to go back and try to add bylines to old posts (though when things slow down, I may well try to do that). The reflections for the 1st week of Advent were all written by me. The reflections for the 2nd week (last week) were all written by Paul, as all the reflections this week (3rd week) have been. And the reflections for the 4th week of Advent will be mine. We’ve been receiving such lovely responses to these writings, and I want to make sure people know that the two of us have been sharing the writing.
Note #2. As noted above, our weekly sets of devotions were written in tandem with our sermons. We’re both behind in editing our sermon manuscripts for publishing online, but for people who might like to hear the audio of our sermons, you can find those here.
Note #3. When I published the reflection for this past Monday, I accidentally inserted the wrong image. I didn’t realize my mistake until I was publishing the reflection for today – I had inadvertently used today’s image on Monday (they are both vertically-oriented black-and-white renderings, and in the tiny, tiny thumbnail images on my computer screen, I apparently couldn’t tell them apart). Anyway, I fixed the mistake late last night when I discovered it, but in case you read Monday’s reflection and were completely confused by the mismatch between the reading and the image, please go take another look!
Okay, those are my tiny notes about a few small mistakes. Phew! Now I’m going to pause and take a breath before I rush on to my next thing, and I hope you will too!
Seeing the Sacred 