Do You Hear What I Hear
Consider this posting a beginning homage to Christmas music. I love good Christmas music. Okay, I love cheesy Christmas music, too. But I digress. I was writing a letter to some of my friends who I share life and work with and I was musing about what we need to keep at the heart of our Christian life and mission around our church. I was writing to Carmen, and Marc, and De'Amon and I wrote to them about the three things that I think we need to keep at the heart of things. The final one was that we needed to have a little creativity going. And the truth is that we have a lot of creativity going. But creativity is not about much else than blind eyes seeing from my perspective. Creativity is about discerning -- how to use the gifts of God in the people of God. And so -- we have been looking around at the people in the congregation -- the people who come through our doors. We have a yoga group meeting at the church tonight. I wonder what it might be to ask them to tell us what they think we ought to know about health and spirit. I bet they would have something to say. But the question is how we do that in a world that is not in the practice of listening. But listen we must. And listen we shall. Or at least listen we shall try.
We should be praying for each other more. Okay, I should be praying more. We have a prayer group at the church -- we should be using them for more prayer. Please, we should say to them, please pray that we can see and hear the gifts of God in the people we come across. Why? Because, as Walter Wink says, history belongs to the intercessors. At least if you know that some people are praying with you and for you -- well -- who knows. It sure can't hurt. And it is one of the practices of our faith. Prayer, as William Stringfellow once said is not about asking God for things -- it is about becoming aware of the unity of all things (he said it much better than that).
One of my favorite Christmas songs was given to me on a cd of the Three Blind Boys of Alabama from Troy and John. It's called "I Pray on Christmas" -- some of the words go like this:
I pray on Christmas
That the sick will soon be strong
I pray on Christmas
The Lord will hear my song
I pray on Christmas.
posted by Mike Mather at 8:38 PM
3 Comments:
Maybe someday, if the right person comes along, we can have someone sing "I Pray on Christmas" at church. It's such a gutsy song.
Dear Troy,
Someone is going to sing it on Christmas Eve -- right after the service at the 11 pm worship service.
mike
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