Bring Paint supplies – bucket, brushes, stirring sticks, sandpaper, maybe primer, etc.
Hello! It’s good to see you today.
So I have a ton of stuff with me today. Spread it out. What do you see? Brushes, paint, buckets, etc. Right! Now, what do you think I would use this stuff to do? Paint a house. Right! And I took all of this stuff from my new home where folks from church are busy helping me paint it. Now, I actually like painting because it’s something that you can do, and see that you’re doing it. You can see the wall change color. You can see where you fix holes and dings in the wall. It’s very satisfying to paint – but it takes a lot of work.
First, you’ve got to make sure you’re wearing clothes that you don’t mind getting paint on. And then you have to spread a big cloth – like a sheet or a drop cloth – onto the floor just in case you spill any paint. And then you’ve gotta go around the wall and make sure all the holes are filled in. You’ve also got to clean the wall too, just in case there are any cobwebs or dirt on it. And then you need to sometimes sand parts of it down, to make it smooth. You also have to make sure you have the right kind of paint, the right color, and the right brush. And so – before you even take this brush, put paint on it, and are about to use it – you’ve got to do all this preparation to actually paint – and to paint well.
And just like we have to do all these things to prepare to paint our home or our room – God does similar things to prepare us, to help us, live in this world. In our baptism, in our coming to church, in our listening to different stories about God and Jesus – God prepares us to be kind to others, to care about people who maybe don’t look like us, and helps us make the right choices when hard decisions come up. Because the thing about life is that sometimes we’re going to face hard choices, and we’re going to be confused or we’re not going to know what to do. But God has been with us, since the beginning, helping us through church, through our parents and friends who tell us about God, and through the songs we sing and the scripture we hear, to do the best and most loving thing we can. So, as we now light two more candles on our Advent wreath, marking the number of Sundays as we get closer to Christmas, let’s remember that God is with us, God is preparing us to love the world, and that God is going to never let us go.
Thank you! I’ll see you next week.
Each week, I share a reflection for all children of God. The written manuscript serves as a springboard for what I do. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, 12/06/2015.