i HOPE this doesn't happen to my car!

this must be what happens to a convertible after living through the storms in the mountain (picture to your right).

i'm hopeful that you had a wonderful thanksgiving; it was probably one of my best, ever! relaxing, congenial group of family and friends, some of whom had never been together before.

i can tell that life is indeed different from how i was raised; i never dreamed i'd be spending a holiday (that was traditionally spent with my mother and highly anxiety producing to boot!) with my ex-wife and her husband at their mountain home (with an old car badly in need of repair!) seeing old friends and our daughter, meeting our daughter's significant and his parents!

everyone brought something to add to the deep-fried turkey (is that now a tradition?), and we spent hours talking, laughing, and getting to know one another on deeper levels.

there IS hope in this day and age. people don't have to argue, and families don't have to look like a father, a mother, and 2.5 children with a dog -- i never did figure out the .5 part of the children, but i digress.... we did have a dog among us, plus two cats and some strays, but they were very well behaved; mom would have been so pleased.

and no sooner than the dishes were done, the season of advent began; a season of anticipation.
we anticipate with hope, a world that will one day be at peace, where love is expressed with great joy. one of the pastor's in our conference sends people forth each week from worship reminding them with grace, that 'the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love'.

that is advent. hope for the world to change -- for us to change -- by being the example we would like the world to be; filled with the hope of possibilities; filled with the peace that passes all understanding; filled with the kind of love that fills the soul, not just our stockings; filled with the joy that carries with it trust and compassion and safety and goodness.

this is the season to help make those things possible, because quite frankly, that is the way Jesus lived. Jesus wasn't at the mall at 3 am on the day after thanksgiving. Jesus was, i suspect, resting; ready to face the world with a new message that had nothing to do with charge cards or wrapping paper. offering the gift of hope to a world full of people who didn't know they needed hope; they just were living, but not really living!

so, may this time of advent be filled with the hope of possibilities for you and yours, and the world at large. may you light a candle each evening that will warm your heart and brighten someone else on a cold winter night. and, if you get a chance this season, put down the top of your convertible -- or come ride in mine! -- and invite others to join you; pull out the quilts and crank up the heater; sing 'joy to the world' at the top of your lungs, because this is the season to offer good cheer in the form of hope. let this be our collective prayer....