Mystically Significant

Notes from the Pastor...

On Sunday we prayed for peace.  This is a plea that we continually lift up, but annually, on the second Sunday of Advent, we take a moment to intentionally and self consciously invoke peace and lift up our
neighbors, our family, and our world in the name of the coming Prince of Peace.  On Peace Sunday, we become acutely aware of the great need for peace  – that tragic courage of war would no longer be necessary; that pain and suffering would cease; that hate and evil would become extinct.

Yesterday, in attempts to entertain two, two-year-olds, who needed to spend some time outside, one of my neighbors and I drove into the snow covered mountains.  On a whim, and looking for peace, we made it half way up Monjeau Road and stopped.  The landscape reminded me of scene in Ken Burns’ documentary,  National Parks.  In a short interview with a rugged park ranger from Yellowstone, viewers are told about a
unique morning when he happened upon a heard of Bison grazing in a high valley covered in snow.  As these mammoth creatures breathed he could see icicles form and fall, but the landscape itself was as silent as the
grave.  The park ranger said, “It was as if I happened upon the moment of creation.”

It is mystically significant that the days following Peace Sunday, you and I benefit from an awaking scene of snow covered wilderness.  We need not look hard or listen long, to be reminded of the moment of creation – an instant of peace.  May we strive to notice and live in that peace, and may we anticipate the birth of “God with us” and the revival of creation’s peace.

Grace,
Pastor Ryan