The Advent booklets and the Meditations on Prayer booklets are printed, folded, stapled, and passed off to Pastor for dissemination.  Pizza Man's lovely bride actually did the stapling for me, much to my surprise and genuine gratitude.  Just folding the things made my hands hurt, my left hand specifically.  It still hurts, as if it ran a marathon or something.

I had brought them to Thanksgiving dinner because I thought it would give me something to do during the awkward moments, a task behind which I could hide.  I brought them because I was running out of time to get them finished, having not had the feedback I needed earlier.  I brought them because I wanted to be able to deliver on a request for help from Pastor.

Today, I spent the day helping a woman move.  I offered because she needed help and she is all alone with three small children.  I offered even though I have no business schlepping boxes about, nor should I really be driving long distances just to do so (she lives in another city).  But I also offered because I wanted to be far away from someone's reach.

I enjoyed the task of throwing myself into helping her, although that first entailed reading to her youngest daughter to keep her occupied.  For the first truck load, I primarily just unloaded things and carted them into the new place, but the second truck load I put them on and took them off.  My greatest help was to venture inside her scary unfinished basement beneath the back of her old home to fetch some things for her.  Funny, I would normally never do such, begging just about anyone to take my place.  But her fear made me want to be brave for her. 

At one point while we were working, she asked, "Just what is it with you religious people?"  Her new landlord is Catholic and when he heard about her struggles and the recent turn around he asked her if she thought about how God could work in her life...rather aggressively questioned her from what I gathered.

Knowing what she meant, how she felt, I asked her if she ever felt that way with me.  Her answer was a quick negative.  While I share my faith--in fact, have given her a huge dose of Lutheran doctrine--I never expect her to be anything other than she is, nor do I push her to believe as I do.

As  Protestant, I would be failing in my proselytizing.  For I should be out there winning souls for Jesus!  But as a Lutheran, as one who believes faith is a gift from God and that only the Holy Spirit can help her understand, my job is merely to speak it, not pressure her. 

I only lasted about seven hours in helping her before all I could do was to keep myself from lying down on her floor.  I stayed a bit longer to help her get all the beds set up and then took my leave, barely keeping my eyes open for the drive home.

After stumbling with Kashi around the neighborhood for his walk, I fell asleep on the couch with the birds on my shoulder.

This evening, I have been thinking about her comment, for she sees me as strange as do I other confessional Lutherans.  She's commented several times about the fact that I seem to care about her, but want nothing from her (except deviled eggs, perhaps!), that she didn't understand me at times.  Sound familiar?

I also kept thinking about the Advent booklet.  Thirty-one years as a Christian and I have never understood what Advent means, what it is about.  I have had a growing distaste for Christmas, a distaste that has nothing to do with my feelings about the holidays from my childhood. No, instead, I have had a growing distaste for Christmas because it seems to be just about presents, about a consumerism that drives true meaning from the holiday and leaves people greedy and broke.  People will go into debt over the holiday, spending months, if not years struggling to recover.  That our nation's economy is at least partially dependent upon strong sales at Christmas turns my stomach.  Don't get me wrong, I like gifts.  And I very much like giving gifts.  I just wish the time for giving and receiving had not been twisted so horribly and tied to the birth of my Savior.

I am sure that I heard about the Church year at some point or another.  A friend would give up chocolate for Lent every year, even though she did nothing else.  I always wondered what the point was, but never bothered to delve into the matter.  It wasn't that the Church calendar was important; just the work of giving up something...purportedly a way of enlarging your faith, making yourself more holy.

Reading through the booklet to edit it, led me to reading more about the Church year online, beginning with Pastor's overview on the church website.  I then went perusing about the Internet reading many things and trying to absorb some of them.  Much was about colors and meanings, what each section was and what it should mean to me.  Yet what has taken hold within my heart was not the details about the Church year, but its heart:  that to begin the Church year anew was to begin another year of Grace.

Pastor commented that Christmas is my anniversary, that it will mark a year to the day since I first stepped foot in his church.  Yet that first step actually started at the end of the Church year, not once it had begun.  It was a year ago yesterday that I endured such ugliness by my stepmother that I could barely get myself home.  It was the day I realized that she had never liked me and there was nothing I could ever do to change that.  It was a year ago that I also realized that I live a life of shame, that it colors all that I do.  I wondered desperately if I could ever do the right work in my faith to change that.  I wondered how I could even think I had faith, given how I felt.

That first step in his church was really my first step in Objective Grace.  For I asked Pastor that day, out of the blue, prompted by something I heard in the sermon...actually blurted out...Is is possible to live a life of shame and still have faith?  Without hesitation he answered in the affirmative.  I thought he was crazy.  I do not know what he thought of me.

A first step that was not followed by a second until Easter.  Kind of fitting if you think about it.  I have...thought about it, that is....

Around the table at Thanksgiving, we were asked to share what we were thankful for this past year.  Everyone named people, their families really.  I spoke of Scripture and doctrine, tears welling in my eyes.   I did speak of Pizza Man and his lovely bride and all the hymn singing and bible reading and praying they have done with me.  However, at that moment, I felt even more out of place.  I wished that I had family to speak of, to be thankful for, instead of what I have.  This year, more so than any other, I have learned in many ways, some cruel, exactly who and what I am to my family...or rather...what I am not.

Sitting there, listening to everyone, I also thought about what I gained in July only to have already lost...what I am losing now...and what I will surely eventually lose.

But reading Pastor P's observation on the Church year made me turn from those thoughts to instead reflect upon what I have received this Church year that remains, upon the Grace God has poured out upon me in His Word and in Lutheran doctrine and in Pastor's lessoning.  Doing so makes me marvel that I am about to begin another year of Grace, in God's hands, at His direction.  I wonder what He will teach me, what riches He will reveal to me in the Living Word.

And I wonder how often, how much more, I will get in His way of doing so....

The Church Year comes to its close almost with a whimper. The last Sunday after Pentecost (or Christ the King or whatever it is called) is a small bump on the highway of our lives. Advent begins, unfortunately, at the end of a week and on the week end more marked by turkey, shopping, and football than thoughts of another year of grace.

The older I get, the more I notice this awkwardness. It is as if the great transition from one Church Year to another lost in the busy-ness of days filled with overeating, overindulging, and overspending. I worry about this loss and about the way we have forgotten this significant step in the passing of God's timing.

The end of one Church Year is out of synch with our secular calendar and with our own seasonal pulse as the world around us shifts into high gear toward Christmas. The start of a new Church Year is too often lost in the push toward Christmas music, Christmas decorations, Christmas presents, and Christmas parties. Advent is not simply time of preparation but time of waiting. And waiting is the discipline of Christian faith and life. We wait upon the Lord, we wait upon His wisdom and purpose, and we wait upon His time and timing.

That is what the end of one Church Year and the start of a new one should be teaching us. We do not direct the pulse of history toward its destiny, God does. We wait upon the Lord -- not as the regretful who lament what we cannot know or control but as the faithful who trust in His providence because we have seen the revelation of His grace and favor in Christ our Lord. We wait upon the Lord -- not as the frustrated who bide their time because someone was late for an appointment but as those place our time in His hands and wait the fulfillment of that which the clock can never measure. We wait for the Lord -- not as the idle who grow weary with nothing to do but as those who have been given a mission and purpose to proclaim the Savior with words that speak of His suffering and death and resurrection and actions that extend the care of His love to those around us.

Those who direct the liturgical calendar have tried to prop up the end of the Church Year by called it various names from Christ the King Sunday to the Sunday of the Fulfillment. It is not the name we need to prop up but the sense of time that the Church Year bestows upon those who follow it. Its rhythm and pulse, understandably foreign to our consumer culture and secular world, is the different drummer that Christian people march to. What we need is not some artificial elevation of one day or another but a sense of who we are and where we are headed -- which is exactly what the Church Year gives to us.

As we are poised to begin another Year of Grace, we need to be careful lest the intrusion of the secular calendar and its celebrations steal away the spotlight from the liturgical calendar. We need to be careful about the endless string of emphases and theme Sundays that come from the head offices of all the Lutheran jurisdictions. We need to be careful about connecting one Sunday to the Sunday to come and to its Sunday past as links in the chain of a people who wait upon the Lord, who are busy during the wait with His purpose and mission, and who live each day trusting in Him whose promise is fulfilled in Christ, whose grace is sufficient for the day, and whose mercy is glimpsed even in sorrow and struggle, trial and tragedy. We wait upon the Lord...