“A Charlie Brown Christmas” turns 60 this year! How can that be? It seems like just yesterday when my family gathered around the TV to watch this favorite, animated classic. For those of us who are older, we remember the time when you had to watch a program at a specific time and day. If you missed it, you would have to wait another year.

I admit, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” wasn’t always my favorite. I preferred the more exciting shows like “Frosty the Snowman” or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” It was the action and suspense of these stories that hooked me, even after watching them repeatedly every year and knowing that everything turns out alright when the abominable snowman was chasing Rudolph and his friends or when Karen rides on Frosty’s back to escape the evil magician. This isn’t surprising in our world of more exciting technology and algorithms that are designed to keep you looking for the next best thing.

It's only as an adult that I appreciate the essence and heart of this classic show. Charlie Brown’s despair over the commercialization of Christmas and his journey towards discovering the true meaning of Christmas. As we celebrate the 60^th year, I found out about the overlooked moment when Linus drops his blanket while he is reciting the Christmas story in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 2:8-14). Did you notice this when you watched it?

As the angel proclaims to the shepherds to “fear not,” Linus drops the thing that always makes him feel secure and safe. In that moment, he realizes that he can let go of his worldly security, his blanket. The good news of the birth of Jesus, our Savior, allows him to simply drop the false security he has been grasping so tightly and to learn to trust and rely on Jesus instead.

This world can be a scary place and most of us find ourselves grasping onto something temporal to bring us security. It’s hard for us to “fear not.” What are you holding onto that doesn’t allow you the freedom to live fully in Christ’s promises and love? Money? Reliance on someone else? Fear of getting out of your comfort zone? Fear of what others might think of you? Fear of the unknown?

While I still love the idea of a special once-a-year viewing of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the message resonates throughout the year. Amid our insecurities and fear, this classic can be a beautiful reminder to seek true peace and security in the one solid truth, Jesus was born to be our Savior and Light always. This is an exciting story! Keep tuning in!

Christmas peace to you always,
Angie Seiller, Director of Faith Formation

“Behold! The young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” — God is with us.

We have almost made it. Only two more weeks of preparation, celebration, and anticipation. Only a few more days of Christmas carols on the radio. Only a few more days.

While many people are filled with anticipation and joy during this season, it is also a season of heaviness for others.

· Heaviness of grief: awaiting the first Christmas without our loved one.
· Heaviness of anxiety and worry: awaiting the arrival of family with whom we have strained relationships.
· Heaviness of exhaustion: awaiting the end of the expectations placed on us by family, society… ourselves.

While this is certainly a season of hope, comfort, and joy, let us not forget the heaviness of the season. The days before the first Christmas, Mary was heavy with child. She was weighed down by the full-term child, growing and pushing within her. She was heavy with exhaustion, riding a donkey for days to the ancestral home of a man with whom she was engaged. Heavy with the stretching, kicking, growing Immanuel within her very body — waiting to come forth — exhausting and pressing Mary from within.

I am not sure what heaviness may be within your spirit. I don’t know what is pressing you from within, exhausting you, stretching, kicking, and pushing upon you. Grief feels heavier this time of year. Losses are more tender. Emotions are on the surface.

I don’t know the specific things pressing upon you — but I know Immanuel, God with us, is about to come forth. Immanuel, God with us, is about to enter this world for YOU. A world where the heaviness and stretching of grief are very real. A world where anxiety and fear can weigh us down like a full-term baby. A world where the pains are as real and intense as the labor pains Mary endured in a barn.

But Immanuel, God with us… is WITH US.

Beloved Child of God, as you carry the heaviness of the world with you this season, as your grief and pain feel all-consuming, may you know the hope and promise of Immanuel are yours. May your friends, family, and Lord of Life community comfort you and bring you peace amid the labor pains of life. May you know Immanuel, God with us is here — for you.

Prayer:
Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. With your abundant grace and might, free us from the sin that hinders our faith. May we eagerly receive your promises, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.

Pastor Tracy Paschke-Johannes

The summer before Tera and I were married, we bought a marimba together.

A quick story: Rev. Paul Setterholm was a missionary in Japan following World War II (1952-1975) and needed a way to lead hymns when conducting worship. In an era when pianos and keyboards weren’t readily available, especially in some of the rural areas, Paul would drive from place to place, transporting his 4 octave instrument (think big xylophone with more resonance) and family in their little car, to share the good news of Jesus in a landscape still reeling from the devastation of war.

In each location, Pastor Setterholm would not only preach a sermon and preside over Holy Communion, but would also be the musician along with his wife and children. Huddling around the six foot long instrument, there was plenty of room for a variety of mallets to play multiple melody and harmony parts for congregational songs.

Many years later, I was in several bands with Paul’s son, Joel, while we both lived in Minneapolis. When visiting his parents in the area, Joel’s dad would often play for us. I marveled at the beauty of the rosewood keys and the deep rich tone pouring from the instrument and heard story after story about this incredible instrument played around the world!

Toward the end of Paul’s life, I had the opportunity to purchase the marimba. Even though we weren’t sharing bank accounts, yet, I knew that I had to consult my future bride if I wanted to entertain the idea of any additional percussion instruments being brought into our soon-to-be home. Not to mention spending a hefty amount of money while we were trying to save up for a wedding.

Fast-forward 30 years. The instrument now lives in our home and continues to bring joy to many as it approaches its 90th birthday. Our youngest child is a percussionist, too, and has spent years playing and studying percussion, including hours and hours of scales on the 1938 Deagan marimba. The same rich tone I first heard in North Minneapolis now resonates in West Chester.

My good friend Joel died Thanksgiving weekend following several years of living with cancer. While his physical presence is gone, his intelligent humor, expansive compassion, musical legacy, and yearning for justice and peace in the name of Jesus will continue to loom large in our lives and home. 

Legacy is a powerful thing. Our lives are a beautiful collection of those we meet. Each conversation, meal, walk, and moments of collaboration make an imprint in our lives and faith.

As we approach the threshold of a new year, I invite you to give thanks for those who have impacted your life and faith. If they are still living, take a moment to visit, call, text, or write and share a word of gratitude for their impact on your life. At the same time, consider how God is using you—in a myriad of ways—to pass on the gifts of faith. Your compassionate and courageous words, bold and loving actions, generous financial contributions, and grace-laced prayers have the power to bring transformation and renewal.

“Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy.”
- Saint Francis of Assisi

You might not see it or feel it, but that doesn’t mean that the promises of Jesus don’t resonate through your life to bring hope and joy to the world.

Come, Lord Jesus, come!
Pastor Lowell

“Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son…”

Every week in the four Sundays of Advent, our Prayer of the Day in worship begins “Stir up:”

“Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and Come.”
“Stir up our hearts, Lord God.”
“Stir up the wills of all.”
“Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.”

During one of my first Advent seasons as a pastor, my senior pastor told me how ancient these prayers were and that they had apparently remained relatively unchanged for 1000 years or more. I was fascinated as I considered how these prayers were connecting us to people of past times and spaces.

I imagined my prairie ancestors–1880s Scandinavian settlers–in their newly constructed square white clapboard churches, steeple cradling a bell on the North Dakota prairie. Winter wind's personality intruding through closed windows and doors, piling snow at the feet of people with names like Mons and Martha Rasmussen–who prayed "stir up our hearts, O Lord,” as their beloved relatives in Fitar, Norway shared the same words–though they would never share the same pew again.

"Stir up our hearts, O Lord" prayed my missionary grandfather in the Pele language of Liberia in 1946. Praying the words in a mud brick church built only a year before. “Stir up our hearts” they prayed, as they gazed upon a carved mahogany Christ family nativity. Baby Jesus with wooly hair resting in the manger while my two-week old infant mother slept, wrapped in bands of cloth, laying on my grandmother's chest.

"Stir up our hearts, O Lord" spoken today by you and I in mundane suburbs, live-streams taking our words to living rooms of people across town or across the country. Listeners unaware the words they hear hold a millennia of repetition.

Words of prayer that, God willing, will be heard by babies no person alive today will ever live long enough to meet. Babies, who will be baptized centuries from now when the chapters of our lives have been written and we have joined the company of saints… “Stir up our hearts, O Lord.”

May our hearts be stirred by the hope and promise of the coming Emmanuel–Word made flesh. May we be filled with the same Advent joy and hope as the Scandinavian immigrants who longed for the coming Christ child in a new land. May it bring peace as deep as it did to those Liberian babies who rested in their mothers' arms while my grandfather spoke. May it stir in those who hear us speak these words, so they may continue to pass along the faith first given to us.

Let us pray: Stir up our hearts, Lord, so we may share your love with generations yet unborn. Thank you for the saints whose hearts were stirred and made your love known to us. AMEN.

Praying with you,
Pastor Tracy Paschke-Johannes

I stopped by Drug Mart on the way home yesterday and had to weave my way through the onslaught of Christmas merchandise filling the aisles already. Here we go…the biggest season for me of working on balance and priorities has begun. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Christmas, but it also adds stress to my sense of being in the world.

One Christmas, all my daughter wanted was a Barbie Train. She never really asked for much so I was determined to give her this hot item on everyone’s Christmas list. It was expensive, it took stops at several stores, and I finally found one across town (this was before online shopping). I was overjoyed that we could give her what her heart desired.

She was thrilled when she opened it, and her Barbies rode that train for several days. But after the initial glow wore off, the train was parked in the corner for weeks. When I asked her why she wasn’t playing with it anymore, she said in her sweetest 7-year-old voice, “The commercials made it look more fun than it really is.” What an astute observation for both of us. The worldly things that we think will bring us happiness, frequently don’t.

Throughout the year and especially in the holiday season, I can get caught up in materialism and expectations. I know I still battle in my head when I’m at the store or looking online. What do I really need? Is this the gift that will bring real joy? I have the money, but is this my priority? What is enough? Even setting a budget doesn’t always soothe my heart.

I try to live my life generously. I know first-hand the freedom and peace that it can bring. Using my time and treasures to help others and support organizations that do good in the world lifts my soul more than any material items. So, why do I struggle with the desire for worldly things? How about you? What are your struggles with materialism and expectations?

I will continue to pray that on my journey of faith I remember the lesson of the Barbie Train: The shiny things in the world that can suck us in usually don’t bring us the joy that we anticipate. They don’t outweigh the peace of knowing that my treasures and hopes are in Jesus alone. That joy comes from sharing our time and gifts in ways that lift others up and do good in the world. I’m praying we all enter this season grounded in the sustaining love and hope of Jesus. It will be the guiding light for our priorities.

Peace always,
Angie Seiller, Director of Faith Formation

Sometimes it is easy. It is easy to go help your best friend with a project or give them a gift when you happen upon something that reminds you of them. It is easy to care about causes that affect you, personally. It is easy to be kind with people you identify with or who you already know. It is easy to be generous with your time when you enjoy doing the activity you are being asked to perform. It is easy to spend money when we feel passionate about something we want or give to a charity we have a vested interest in supporting.

It isn’t as easy to be helpful when we aren’t feeling our best. Or to care about a cause that we are barely aware of. Or to be kind when we are angry at someone. Or give up our precious downtime when we know we aren’t going to enjoy something. Or spend our hard-earned money when we aren’t invested in the recipient.

Most of our decisions to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God aren’t even as easy to categorize as easy or hard. There is this whole grey area where we know the right thing to do, but we feel meh about it or just don’t wanna. We end up expending a bunch of energy deciding whether to spend our time, abilities, and money on something we know is good, but doesn’t make us feel anything. And each of us can only do so much with the resources we have.

So where do we put our energy?

Well, I can’t answer that for you. How we choose to spend what we have is tied to our individual core values, and those are as different for each of us as the gifts we have to share. But Jesus gives us some really helpful hints that might help us in our discernment.

First, he tells each of us to love your neighbor as yourself. He didn’t say, "Love your neighbor who looks like you, thinks like you, or gives you good vibes." This immediately pulls us out of that 'easy' zone and challenges us to look beyond our immediate comfort. It means being kind to the coworker who always annoys you, or donating to a disaster relief effort on a continent you'll likely never visit. It pushes us toward the uncomfortable good.

Second, Jesus models a focus on the marginalized and the unseen. He didn't just spend time with his friends; he sought out the sick, the poor, the outcast, and the people society actively avoided. This is perhaps the greatest litmus test for that "meh" feeling. When you’re faced with an opportunity to do good, ask yourself: "Who benefits if I say 'yes,' and is that person or cause being overlooked by everyone else?" If it's a cause that doesn't affect your community directly, or a person who can offer you nothing in return—that's often where the truest kind of love is required. That’s where you have to rely on your values, not your feelings.

The goal isn't to make every single decision a painful sacrifice. That’s a recipe for burnout, not justice. The goal is to consistently shift our baseline of "easy" and "hard" so that the 'meh' decisions start leaning toward generosity.

Think of it like spiritual weightlifting. We start by being generous when it’s easy. Then, we intentionally step into that grey area and push ourselves to do one small, good thing that we really don't feel like doing. Maybe it’s an extra $5 to a random charity, spending an hour helping with a thankless task, or genuinely listening to a viewpoint you disagree with.

We are all limited, but we are also all called. Instead of letting that 'meh' feeling paralyze you, let Jesus’s model be your simple, witty guiding principle: Go where the love is needed, not where the love is easy. Do that enough times, and you might find that the 'hard' becomes a little less so, and the 'meh' starts feeling a lot more like 'yes.'

Discerning with you,

John