December 19, 2023
Listen:
Read Along:
A Family of Dreamers
by Janis Monger
It is a blessing to keep company with dreamers in an Advent season of anticipation tinged with anxiety. Christmas is coming! Will we find everything we want? Will we get everything we need?
Chaos, war, longing and loss are piling up like snow drifts even as we inch closer to the celebration of Christ’s birth. Will God’s promise and reassurance arrive on time? Or will it go the way of the Amazon package that winds up on the wrong porch worlds away? Our family lost a beloved son recently. What will Advent bring without the “Hart of our heart” to share it with us?
In the anticipation and anxiety of Advent, I am reassured by the company I keep—a church family of dreamers. Like the Wise Men who travelled towards Christ by a different route, the wise women and men that surround our family at UUMC are able to see around corners, meet life’s challenges head on, and steer straight towards the promise of peace and justice in a fractured world.
Dreams are not just visions. They are a set of instructions! Our son Hart could assemble things of beauty from instructions that seemed confusing and contradictory. In our confusing world, UUMC assembles hot meals for the hungry, builds houses for the homeless, and offers small business loans to our neighbors seeking greater financial security.
Dreams, like dreamers, are made of sturdy stuff. Our UUMC family are dreamers. Praise God, we are not the only ones.
“I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.”
“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. ”
“I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe over the last twenty-five years, that there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple. Help, Thanks, Wow.”
