Series: Words For The Beginning
December 08, 2024 | Rev. Brooke Heerwald Steiner
Hope is vulnerable and can feel like a tremendous risk, especially if you’ve experienced loss or trauma. This week we’ll hear the stories of both Mary and Joseph and how they both make risky choices to keep hope alive. Mary’s resilient hope makes space for her son to be born, who will become the hope of her people. Joseph chooses not to quietly dismiss Mary, which would have kept him safe, but chooses trust and hope instead. Together in church we’ll strive to become hope-bearers ourselves in a world saturated with cynics.
Series Information
Advent is a season of endings and beginnings. As a calendar year comes to a close, a new church year begins. Christ's birth ushers us into new ways of living and loving; and yet, the world as we know it spins madly on. In many ways, pregnant Mary was surrounded by endings—large and small, personal and political. But Mary proclaimed hope in a God who was and is making all things new. Christ's birth offered a beautiful new beginning for shepherds and Magi alike—all the while, King Herod tried to bring Christ's story to an end. When we ourselves navigate seasons filled with endings and beginnings, we need reminders. We need words that can feel like steady ground, like a path for our feet to find as we step forward into the unknown.
