Magnifying Hope: Welcoming All in Need This Advent

"To go up on some stage somewhere and take a bow, that's not what it's about. In fact, we just had a long-serving member of this congregation hand over a ministerial letter to the president of the United States, and he said, ministry, and she told me about four or five times, I don't want any kind of recognition. I'm a private person. I want you to respect my privacy. She deliberately didn't want any kind of recognition. It's not why she did it. It's not why she gave her heart. That's not why she gave her life, right?" [00:47:09] (36 seconds)


"There's a sense of it's going to magnify, right? It's only going to get bigger. I love the sense that Vicki talked about magnifying God, right? We use that word, mostly in an optical sense, right? Magnification, right? That's what my glasses do besides clarifying things. They don't just make you look bigger. Objects are a little farther away than in reality, right? It doesn't just do that, but like if we're looking through a microscope, or if we're looking through a telescope, right? The object that we're looking at, whether it's a cell or a planet, right? It doesn't actually get any bigger, does it?" [00:48:38] (41 seconds)


"What happens is it gets bigger in us. The magnification happens in us, like in our head, in our mind. You know, we can suddenly see things in the case of a cell or a planet that we had no idea were there to begin with. And the way that applies to what I was just talking about is we can see possibilities for hope. And God is magnified in our lives that we didn't see before, that seemed too minuscule to see. I've seen, because I get to do this, I've seen the devotions for today and tomorrow." [00:49:23] (44 seconds)


"Think about that. You get pretty good at it after a while, right? You'd have it memorized every night at Vespers. As the sun goes down, my soul magnifies the Lord, for He has done great things. What if every day for you ended like that? Talk about magnifying hope. Talk about magnifying love. At one point, this sermon was going to be about songs, but I've done that already a couple of weeks ago, and so I can't talk about songs, but I just, I love to think about and sing and build up my heart with music." [00:51:36] (45 seconds)


"So, I don't know how it is that you choose to do it, but I beg you, I encourage you, make some time to take that second look at your day, at your week, at your month, and to take that second look, that looking with the eyes, what does Jesus say? Of the heart, at your life, and see the extraordinary miracle, that transpires there, in, through, and all around you. The second part that I want to mention about this text is that there's two parts of this song. I don't know if you noticed it while Bill was reading." [00:56:00] (40 seconds)


"Part two is this mess, I don't know if you noticed while Sandy was signing it, but there were some, there were some interesting look at faces she was making when she said, the rich will go away empty, and those who are on their thrones, are you doing it again? There we go. And those who sit upon their high thrones, brought low. It's a song of justice. which tends to happen when God is magnified in our souls and in our world. Make no mistake." [00:57:29] (43 seconds)


"Gather yourself around truth and hope and love and the energy that comes from the Spirit that propels us out of bed and that lays us resting in peace at the end of the day or at the end of our lives, recognizing that God's Spirit has borne us along. No, we don't have to solve every little thing, but do your thing for God's sake and for the sake of others around you. So I want to invite you to think maybe not about your favorite song this time around, but what is your thing? It doesn't have to be a whole lot of things." [00:58:11] (49 seconds)


"For some people, it could be feeding. When I was thinking about this title, Welcome All in Need, sometimes we focus on what that need might be rather than the all we're talking about. I remember serving along with a youth group in Wilmington at a soup kitchen. It was St. Andrew's, I think, in Wilmington. And one of the quirks about this soup kitchen is there was no place to stand behind the serving line. Everything was served at the table and everyone ate together." [00:58:37] (34 seconds)


"And sometimes some of the volunteers would go, that was like a new thing. Because most of the volunteering we do, there's a line between those who are doing the helping and those who are receiving the help. God's Spirit has a way of blessing us. God's Spirit has a way of blessing us. God's Spirit has a way of blessing us. God's Spirit has a way of blessing us. God's Spirit has a way of blessing us. God's Spirit has a way of blessing us. Blurring that line, have you noticed? About who's getting help. What is it that people need? Someone needs you." [00:59:22] (29 seconds)


"Bound up with a calling and launched into this world with a calling. I thought about mine with children, which I've sort of struggled against. It's not something I think I'm ever going to get a reward for. But I just haven't been able to get away from this calling to respect and honor and have a ball with children. Vicki and I were part of leading youth groups and having them lead the way. And I thought about that. And I thought about us for about 30 years." [01:00:33] (29 seconds)


"We're not about this work for anyone who might see. We're about this work because of the miracle of God's Spirit magnifying in our lives. It's the way we live. I thought about telling you about a movie that we saw this week. It was a new Christmas movie called That Christmas on Netflix. I don't know if anybody has seen it, but I was impressed with a couple of things about this. You know, a lot of the Christmas fair can be a little schmaltzy, can be a little overly sentimental, and this was one that attempted to embrace all that this season means." [01:02:35] (40 seconds)