A Shepherd’s Night

This is my night—
my night of hope—
taking steps from the fields,
leaving from star gazing
and shock from angel’s songs,
speaking words of longing
surrounding me
with glorious light.

This is my night—
His night of birthing into creation—
taking steps from the heavens,
leaving his crown
to become God with us,
unlocking the prisons of hopelessness,
prisons of oppression
surrounding me,
with life’s futility and fright.

This is my night—
His night,
our night.
I travel to the bedside of a baby,
the bedside of the Savior,
my Savior, our Savior.
Tonight, I rest in peace,
in joy, in hope—
saved, my heart to mend.
My steps begin at the manger
where I kneel,
my today and tomorrows sealed
and where my life’s journey ends.

© 2021 by Barbara Williams-Hubbard

My Unraveling

I am grateful for my journey and I have hope. At times I only have a small amount of hope, but even when there is none, God is there. 

It all happened so slowly and suddenly, my descent from apparent normalcy to depression to bipolar. There were numerous triggers all along the way. My new psychiatrist tells me that I’ve had bipolar for a long time but was highly functional, until I wasn’t.

The unraveling for me was first to feel naked and vulnerable, then needy and fragile and frightened. Always frightened. Had I lived my entire life frightened?

Depression. The depression was tenacious.  Its tentacles reaching and grasping for every part of me, trying to possess me. Unrelenting. When my first depressive episode was upon me, I was pregnant and profoundly depressed. I did not even know it, yet was keenly aware of it at the same time. I was worried I couldn’t pull myself out of the gloom in time for my daughter’s arrival.

Hannah Joy Roe, the joy of my great sorrow was born with a small light brown teardrop under her left eye. Who was the more fragile? Hannah or myself? Gone was any semblance of joy or peace. I didn’t even long for joy. I was way past that.

During a Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s, it was brought to my attention that Hannah had not moved or cried out at all. That was when I was told to get help. I went to a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with clinical depression and given appropriate meds. I stopped going to that psychiatrist when he fell asleep while I was in his office. My general practitioner took over prescribing the same meds.

At a certain point, the antidepressant worked against me. It made me manic. Persons with bipolar 2 have profound depression and hypomania. Persons with bipolar 1 have profound mania and depression. When I had my final trigger for bipolar 2, I was, and still am, unable to remember what took place at home or at work in 2017. I have a few snapshots of things that took place in my head, other people’s memories, and actual photographs, particularly from work.

I know my new psychiatrist is right. I’ve had bipolar for a very long time. I know this because years ago, once I had “recovered” from depression, I wrote a manuscript titled, “Endless Sea of Days.” I had an interested publisher but did not get the rest of the manuscript to him in time and he had relocated. But at that time I would not have been able to begin or complete the story. Now I can.

•     •     •     •     •

A journey should always be pointing towards promise.  So what do you do when you lose hope?  You speak out! Go for professional help, join support groups, stay active in church and other activities.   Speak out to God and those around you.  Circle the wagons.  Surround yourself with the support of those you hold dear. Together you can embrace your stories with ears to hear and listen, with silences, tears, and laughter.  All stories are valid.  God is with you.

© by Allyson Stoffel Roe
Editorial help from Pamela Leggett
Dedicated to the life of Sharon Karlson

Routes

They all had to find their way —

The priest Zechariah, speechless, exiting the temple
Signing before his bewildered people,
Writing on a tablet, “His name is John.”

Mary, before Gabriel, puzzling at his greeting,
Then running to Cousin Elizabeth to hymn
“God’s Love’s turned the world upside down.”

Fear-rattled shepherds walking to Bethlehem
To confirm the angels’ song,
Then, seeing the Savior, filled with wonder 
Returning to fields back home.
.
Joseph, traveling the highways
Of his dreams, Wise Men trusting
The mapping of a star —

When “the Word became flesh,” substantial
“And dwelt among us,” precisely where they were,
Where we are. 
 
“. . . from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (John 1:16)

© 2021 by Sandra Gerstman

Journeying

When we hear the word, “trip,” we think of traveling from one place to another. There is a specific destination, a mode of travel, some kind of itinerary or timetable, a departure, and an arrival date. Trips are specific and limited. But say the word, “journey,” then a whole new constellation of images comes to mind. Journeys imply a much longer traveling time with or without a destination: joys, hardships, unexpected experiences, lessons learned. It is said that life itself is a journey, and just its many passages from one stage to another would indeed make it an apt metaphor.

Almost fifty years ago, when I was still a young adult member of the Japanese American United Church in New York City, I was asked to give a message on Laity Sunday. Later, my testimony was printed in Response, a magazine for the women of the United Methodist Church. When I was thinking about my journey, I was curious to re-read what I had believed so many years ago. In my message, I spoke of my earliest childhood beliefs of who God was. When I was very young, God was the sun who followed me around. When it was sunny, God was pleased, but if it rained, God was crying because I did something wrong. Then, my father had said that his Father in Heaven was very rich. Of course, he was speaking of God and meant His richness in a spiritual sense. But thereafter, I went around claiming that my grandfather was a very wealthy man! I never saw my real grandfather who was already dead, and I vaguely knew that he once lived in Japan. In those years, there was no television, and of course, no internet. No one was teaching about Japan in my school, so for me, Japan existed as a faraway land, like Heaven. My father also told me that God knew all and heard the prayers of even very small children. I pictured in my mind all the calls of distress rising upwards at night, and God as a switchboard operator listening to each one and never mixing up the wires! How incredible! God was also a Santa Claus figure and I needed to “watch out” because Santa knew when I was good or bad. 

Such childhood notions were submerged and replaced by questions, doubts, and conflicting philosophies and ideas in college, which glorified man’s freedom to decide his own course of life without religion. God and religion were crutches that hampered man’s potential and willpower. For a while I tried to believe in humanity and its goodness, but I became more aware of our weakness and fallibility, especially after watching the horrors of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. I wrote, “I don’t feel that I can put faith in man, but I can hope that individuals can become the instruments of God’s spirit.” I was feeling very much disillusioned by our government and man’s inhumanity to man. In this state of uncertainty about what I really believed I recounted another incident that happened in the early 1970s.

Still newlyweds, my husband and I took a trip to Cape Cod where there are magnificent sand dunes. Climbing these beautiful mountains of sand was an exhilarating adventure. I imagined myself crossing some foreign desert, but without the searing heat and hardship. When we reached the top, we sat down on a place where the sand had leveled out to a plateau. Then, as it was September and chilly, my husband’s wedding ring suddenly fell off his finger and disappeared into the sand! I was horrified! We searched and searched, our fingers sifting through endless handfuls of sand, but we couldn’t find it. My husband was ready to give up looking, but I didn’t want to abandon the search. I was feeling desperate and saddened, thinking that this very precious symbol of our marriage was lost. In such a crisis, I prayed in my heart, “God, please help us find the ring!” We resumed the search, and in a short while, miraculously, the ring was discovered!

I wrote this final paragraph: “I don’t know why I prayed at that moment, whether God heard or whether it was just a coincidence that soon after my silent prayer, the ring was recovered. To me, that happening was a part of the Mystery and I am still searching.”

Now after almost five decades, I can look back on this early part of my faith journey and say that definitely, God heard me in Cape Cod and has answered many prayers since then. It was not a coincidence that I prayed because my childhood belief in God’s ability to hear all our prayers had been planted in my mind. It had not disappeared at all, and has become even more firmly rooted. It was not by chance we found the ring, but through God’s love and will in action. Over the years, the mists of uncertainty have cleared to be replaced by confidence in God’s everlasting grace. God has been indeed walking alongside me in this long journey of faith and will continue! Thanks be to God for never abandoning me no matter how often I wavered and stumbled.

“On Christ the solid Rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand; all other ground is sinking sand!”

© 2021 by Emy Kamihara

Bethlehem Journey

Pure love is the giving up of power.
Jesus came, leaving the glory of stars
To walk with us, faithful to the last hour,
To heal the sick and splinter prison bars.

An offense and contradiction to some,
Angels sang Bethlehem’s revelation,
Skies split apart, calling people to come,
With eyes opened they saw their salvation.

A slaughter, a flight and then a return…
Jesus, like Moses, journeyed into night.
And yet He was the bush that would not burn;
He was the evening star, glistening bright.

A journey ending in Jerusalem,
Fulfilling love begun in Bethlehem.

© 2021 by Pamela Leggett

Journey Through Advent

Quite a number of years ago I started exercising early in the morning before I went to work. It lasted for a while but it wasn’t fulfilling me the way that I thought that it would.

After some time and thought I began setting my alarm clock for 5:30 a.m. during the week. Instead of working out I began a daily quiet time of reading, praying, and meditation. I was the only one up at that time, so it was a gift to feel the peace that surrounded me.

This quiet time let me feel the peace of our Holy Spirit within me and gave me courage, strength, patience, and endurance to care for my father, my mother, and my dear brother through their illnesses and their passing into heaven, when God reached out his hand and called each of them home to be with him.

Feeling the need to get away from the materialistic side of Christmas that you can see beginning on Halloween, I began a different journey. Throughout these years I have become attached to a number of devotionals that I read each day. They have given me insight and discernment, spiritual uplifting, and the peace to carry on.

I recite this daily morning prayer created from an old Celtic custom. (Disciplines, A Book of Daily Devotions, 2021) “Bless to me this quiet time, the meeting of hearts and minds in this book today. Bless to me all those who read these words. Happy or sad, troubled or joyful, may we all know God’s Peace. Bless to me this quiet time. Amen.”

To me, the Season of Advent is a season of waiting for the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. I have been reading a wonderful Advent and Christmas devotional by Dietrich Bonhoeffer titled God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas. I found my copy on Amazon a number of years ago. I hope that you will take the same Advent Journey that I take each year renewing, refreshing, and reviving our faith. 

May each of you be blessed with this special quiet time in the presence of our Heavenly Father.

© 2021 by Joan De Jong

Finding Your Way

When the shepherds decided, “Let us go to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place,” they knew how to get there. Generations of shepherds had followed the well-worn paths connecting Bethlehem with the pastures in the surrounding countryside and had passed on oral instructions from parent to child. Maps and written instructions weren’t necessary and wouldn’t have been much use to the shepherds, who were probably illiterate.

For many of the places we journey to, we can get there without too much thought. It’s been many years since Jody and I have needed directions or a map to get to our son’s and daughter’s houses. We even know when we need to leave Clifton or Pittsburgh to get to the Sideling Hill service plaza at lunchtime on the way out or the Arby’s in Middlesex at lunchtime on the way home. Other destinations require advance planning or outside help. Early this summer we attended a family graduation party in Connecticut. I didn’t need any directions until we got off the Connecticut Turnpike, but once we got off, I missed a crucial turn and we drove for several miles in unfamiliar territory before we decided to use GPS. (Yes, we did look for someone whom we could ask for directions, but couldn’t find anyone.)

GPS is a wonderful technology. I have a decent sense of direction and I can read and follow maps pretty well, but there have been more occasions than the one mentioned above where using GPS would have saved time and fuel. GPS has its limitations and drawbacks, though. In The Glass Cage, Nicholas Carr discusses at length how reliance on GPS and other forms of automation can have negative consequences.

Still, GPS is valuable when you have a physical destination you want to reach and you are not sure of how to get there. Moreover, the values that GPS will use to prescribe a route for you — avoid highways, avoid tolls, avoid bridges with trolls lurking underneath — are ethically neutral values that you set yourself.

What if your destination is how to think about a certain issue or how to behave in a certain situation? How do we find directions to these destinations? Social media is like GPS in those situations. We tell social media platforms what our values are every time we like something or click on a link in a post. If our likes and clicks reflect a certain set of values, the algorithms in our social media platforms show us more content with similar values, and those values are not likely to be ethically neutral. We might end up heading toward a cognitive, emotional, or behavioral destination that is dangerous and harmful.

What resources do we have to help us get toward better destinations? We don’t have literal maps for our spiritual journeys, but directions and other forms of navigational aid are available.

Scripture is the most important resource, of course. Passages like Galatians 5:19–23, Ephesians 4:21–22, and Colossians 3:12 offer some basic directions: turn away from lying, anger, malice, slander, envy, and so on. Turn toward truthfulness, love, kindness, mercy, compassion, humility, and patience.

Being Christians, we follow someone who knows the way that we should go. What route did Jesus take? He took the route of exposing and confronting injustice, and He took the route of caring for those who were vulnerable and exposed to injustice.

We can stop and ask for directions. Conversation with family and friends, even with those with whom we might disagree, can often help us see the path more clearly.

Whatever your destination this Advent, may you travel safely, secure in the knowledge that God knows where we are, and in fact is with us, every moment of every day. God stands ready to help us find the way.

© 2021 by Pat Walsh