"Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness — without it no one will see the Lord." + Hebrews 12:14
Here are some recent highlights:
When we handed these books out to our congregation, this is part of the note we included inside each one:
This might seem at first
to be a peculiar Advent devotional.
But saints often are peculiar people
who stand out in a particular time and place.
In fact, the times when saints shine
the most are times of darkness.
They give glimpses of Jesus’ Light,
which darkness cannot overcome.
Advent begins in the dark.
And we, as part of Jesus’ Church,
are called to live as Advent people
who anticipate Jesus’ coming
into our darkness today to overcome it.
Ultimately, our hope rests in the God of Advent
who drew near to us in Jesus’ first coming
and will come again
to take away the darkness forever
and be our eternal Light. That hope is what saints have embodied
as our sisters and brothers across time,
ethnicities, Christian traditions,
nationalities, and more.
As we step into this next year,
our prayer is that we will shine
all the more with the holy light
of Christ in us and through us.
And we pray that we
“being rooted and firmly established in love,
may be able to comprehend with all the saints
what is the length and width,
height and depth of God’s love.”
After all, “the Father has enabled us
to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light.
He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and
transferred us into the Kingdom
of the Son He loves.”
This post features an excerpt from Our Church Speaks so that you might also walk some of this journey with us with reflection, prayer, and anticipation for how the Light of the world might shine in your life during this season.
Martyrs of Sudan
Sudan gained independence in 1956 and experienced decades of war in subsequent years. In 1983, the government of Sudan declared an Islamic caliphate over the entire country. All citizens were ordered to convert to Islam or face extermination. On May 16, 1983, the Roman Catholic and Anglican Christians of South Sudan made a public, joint declaration that "they would not abandon God as they knew Him." The bishops, priests, and laypeople who signed this agreement knew that their signatures would almost certainly result in their deaths. Over the next decades, Christians suffered torture, death, and violence at the hands of jihadists. As in the early Church, the blood of these martyrs has been the seed of Jesus' Church in South Sudan, where Christianity has increased from 10 percent of the population in 1990 to 60.5 percent in 2020.
In 2011, Sudan was divided into the northern Republic of Sudan, with an Islamic government, and South Sudan, with a Christian majority. But drawing boundaries on a map has not brought resolution to the crisis. Since 2003, between 80,000 and 400,000 people have been murdered in the Darfur region alone, in a mass slaughter now considered the first genocide of the twenty-first century. In the 2020s, the violence continued in Sudan, where Christians were caught in the crosshairs of a violent civil war between Islamic factions. It is estimated that today, over two million Sudanese refugees have fled to neighboring countries and almost ten million Sudanese citizens are internally displaced. They are a stark reminder that the martyrdoms of Jesus' Church are a present reality as the African church continues to rapidly expand in the twenty-first century.
Scripture
"As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech and the power of God; with weapons of righteousness. ... We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also." + 2 Corinthians 6:4-13
Meditation: Living with an Open Heart
How can we protect ourselves from getting hurt in the Christian life? How can we ensure that following Jesus will be good for our mental, emotional, and physical health?
These questions are normal for Westerners, but they are alien to Jesus' Church in the majority of the world. Today, to live publicly as a Christian in Sudan requires a kind of vulnerability that many of us would deem unhealthy or dangerous. This kind of vulnerability is decidedly untherapeutic. But a faith that does not make sense of suffering is a faith that cannot deal with reality. It is an unreal faith. It is faith as a fantasy land that soothes your psyche but does not equip you to deal with cancer, betrayal, exile, or the firing squad.
Faced with antagonism to the Christian faith, some followers of Jesus will resort to one of three different postures: defensive, passive, or aggressive. Flight, freeze, or fight. Retreat from the culture, blend into society, or wage a culture war. Though these postures are natural (and we all have one of them as our default), — fear of suffering. Are we not to rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character — hope, Is not, then, suffering redemptive? As theologian Ed Clowney wrote, "Christ's suffering was redemptive not because suffering itself is redemptive, but because Christ Himself is the Redeemer."
"How do you keep yourself from getting hurt in following Jesus?" You can't. You must live with an open heart. An open heart will be a wounded heart, perhaps even a broken heart. But sometimes the only way for a heart to be whole is for it to be broken.
With the vulnerable courage of Christ, where might you widen your heart?
Prayer
O God, whose arm is mighty to save, uphold, and deliver your servants in Sudan and all those who suffer for Your name, bearing in their bodies the dying of our Lord Jesus, and as they have known the fellowship of His sufferings, make them to know the power of His resurrection, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
pgs. 95-97
The Celebrity & The Saint
The celebrity demands, "Look at me!" The saint whispers, "Look at God."
The celebrity says, "Try to be like me, but you'll never be like me." The saint says, "Why would anyone want to be like me? Who has God made you?"
The celebrity is ever ascending, climbing the tower of Babel to the double-platinum throne. The saint is ever descending, saying, "Please have my seat, I insist."
The celebrity offers you everything you want but can never have. The saint offers you the thing you fear but will redeem your soul.
The celebrity is a Ferrari screaming down the highway with music blaring. The saint is the freshwater creek beside the highway that almost nobody ever notices and is nearly impossible to hear over the roar of traffic. Yet the water murmurs as it wanders over stones and around oak roots. It is not silent.
+ Ben Lansing & D.J. Marotta,
Our Church Speaks
Additional Advent Resources:
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Many blessings of peace and presence,
Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan
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