Podcast: Advent 2

Hey, friend. Welcome to another episode of

the podcast. Allison, thanks for joining me

today. Happy to be here.

And thank you for preaching. Yesterday we were back in

Matthew Chapter 1 and Advent Week 2 and talking the whole

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

service, talking about I can never remember what Advent Week

2 is. Peace.

Yeah. No, I always, I always have to

double check. Like just where does love go?

Where does joy go? Where does peace go?

Where does hope go? Every single year, no matter

what, always. Also, my homemade Advent

calendar or Advent candle at home melted.

The whole thing melted last night.

I also always forget what the purple one every year.

I think it's the. Joy 1 so I do.

We do the pink 1, so yeah, I can't remember.

Pink the pink 1. So first one is hope, that's

purple. Second one is purple also, that

is peace. 3rd. Is third is joy pink and then

you go back to purple and then you go to white.

Yeah, but every year I have to check.

Because somebody decided to make our lives complicated and that

can be the intro Great. We're happy that you're

listening and happy that hey, we might be finding you even now on

your way to your Christmas vacation.

Some people already started to say goodbye on Sunday.

Be like, we'll see you in the new year was like lucky for you.

Wow, like that. Yep, that's great.

Going away for a few weeks. I've got 3 questions and what I

wanted to do this week is keep our podcast as practical as

possible. So for each of these questions

for you, listener, I'm gonna pose a question for you to

reflect on and for you to think on, and then a follow up

question for us to discuss, which is more application based.

So we're not going to answer all of the questions, but we're

going to try to wrestle out some of the more practical things for

people as they're wrestling out these bigger picture questions.

So we'll see how that goes. If it works, let us know.

If it doesn't work, also let us know.

Either way, we hope to hear from you.

But Advent week two, I thought it was a great message and I'm

still even wondering through the like, what is God calling each

of us to opt into and to to to kind of choose our way into in

through the rest of the Advent season and even into the new

year. So we were talking off camera.

Like, I thought you had this great wondering.

And we'll start here around, like, what would Joseph's life

have looked like had he chosen to not enter into the story?

Right there is this decision that he has to make.

And like, God is gonna do what God's gonna do.

Yeah. But Joseph is like, are are you

in or are you out? Like, am I in?

Am I out? And so often I think that's like

that's the position that many of us are left in when we face

these interruptions. And I felt like it was helpful

to highlight, at least for me, like that.

That's a really, it's a hard choice.

It's a costly choice he's making.

And so I don't want to diminish that.

And yet sometimes that's all that we're seeing.

And so I also wanted me to pay attention to and asked to pay

attention to that. Look what he would have missed

out. Like look what he actually gets

to be part of. Yeah, right.

You know, I was sharing something with you a couple

weeks ago. Got to be part of a thing.

A bunch of us from church were helping out a family, right?

It was costly. People gave up time, had

babysitters for a bunch of stuff.

But like the joy of being part of that day together and being

like on mission together. That's how I left that day.

I didn't leave going like, whoa, I really gave up my stuff.

I left going, Oh my gosh, I got to be part of this thing that

was that's just like a tiny example, but.

Can I share, like, the one line that you sent?

Sure. Yeah.

In the text message, because that was a great text message.

I think you said this might have been my favorite day as part of

the church. And it didn't even happen inside

the building. That's right.

Which was incredible. And that's what we hope for,

along for. And what we do inside the

building matters. Absolutely.

But only, I would argue only to the extent that it is

transforming people's lives outside the building, which is

what exactly what we saw on that day.

And I mean, like, here's the other thing.

Like I wasn't there. And so like it's it's pretty

incredible start getting those kinds of messages in be like,

this was my favorite day. It didn't have inside the

building like and you weren't. There you weren't.

There and you were there. Well, no, and that's what it

said. I think you said you guys were

you weren't even there. And but like, that's, that's

such a gift as a pastor of a church to be able to see people

embracing those types of costly decisions for the sake of

someone else and for the sake of, you know, people inside of

our church and outside of our church and wonderful thing.

And I think that's just, it is like so often, I think we don't

see beyond the cost, right? We don't see beyond what we

would have to give up and recognize like actually what

would we miss out on? Like what could be possible?

What might we get to experience? Another time that stands out to

me is when I've had really rich experiences of being in

community. It was particularly when I was

on staff with university and the staff team.

And we actually all chose to kind of let go of some of our

own rights, if you like. We all decided to kind of put

our hats in about housing and give up basically our ideas

about where we're going to live and how we're going to live

because we felt and moved to think about some kind of

Community Housing arrangement. So on the one hand, that's like

it was costly. Like it was hard to let go of

where we lived and what we were doing and what that was going to

look like. And also costly to give

ourselves to a communal decision making process to let other

people influence how we were going to spend our money and

where we were going to live and who we were going to live.

And yet we gained so much, right?

Like we gained family out of that, we gained depth of

understanding and insight and relationship and we had a place

to welcome students and like so much that we received.

And so I do think holding both of those things like not

diminishing the cost, but also recognizing that there is joy in

that, right? It's not just a like sort of

drudgery obedience. It's like, actually, look what

we get. To be part of and it in so in so

many ways it captures the invitation to any follower of

Jesus right now yeah so you get lines in in the Bible like take

up your cross just says you know anybody who wishes to follow me

must deny themselves take up their cross and actually do the

thing follow me. And I think a lot of people can

get trapped in that well that that sounds terrible right.

I like pick up a cross like what a what a horrible image in for

the early church to wrestle out absolutely when every single day

they saw criminals crucified on crosses along the roads in and

out of cities. Like how you know how striking

an image for Jesus then to say, hey, if you want to really do

this, you also have to pick up your cross.

And and so we get hung up on that imagery and and rightly so,

there is a significant cost, but there's life on the other side

of picking up your cross and following Jesus and he down.

Jesus never says that it's going to be an easy Rd. but he says it

will be a a life that is truly life.

And so I think that would like the church we do, we need to get

better at telling the stories of where life is truly life.

That's right. And those stories almost always

come on the other side of something significant, like a

significant cost, a significant moment where, you know, I think

like Joseph, Joseph is invited into the life that's truly

really life. And he chooses to obey, which I

think is just that simple step at the end, like to to wrap up

that message. He said like he, he just, he

does the thing that's right. He names Jesus, Jesus, he obeys.

And look then what unfolds. And we didn't name this

yesterday, but this, this choice of obedience is also actually

coming after a lifetime of faithful choices, right?

Like we learned that he is somebody that follows the law

like that. There's a faithfulness to him

already, and yet this decision subverts everything kind of that

he knows or thinks. So it's a huge change to that.

But there's also, there's already a character of

faithfulness basically that is already there that I think

probably equips him to make the decision that he does.

So I think helpful to notice in that, you know, I think as

Christians we can often beat up on like the law and we can, you

know, kind of fall into this trap of saying, well, like New

Testament Jesus, no law. And kind of forget the fact that

Jesus said, hey, I actually haven't come to abolish this

thing. I've come to fulfill it.

Fulfillment looks very different than living under it.

Like absolutely there is a substantive shift in the way

we're meant to live our lives in relation to the law.

But I think what we see in Joseph is that the law like

obedience in that way. And what I would say is like,

I'll say small carefully. And if you're listening, I'm

doing sort of air quotes, like a weak attempt at air quotes here,

but like small everyday routine wrote obedience to the law

probably prepared him, yeah, to make a large leap of obedience.

And it's kind of like I think I was preaching on prayer few

weeks ago and quoted someone who I'm not off the top of my head

now going to be able to remember.

But you know, so we we focus far too much on praying for the big

things without cultivating a daily rhythm and habit of prayer

in the everyday, normal, mundane sort of small things.

And so, so he says, forget it. Like you can't, you can't focus

on praying for these big God. What do I do in this moment and

expect for those moments to actually bear tremendous fruit

in your life. You have to focus on every

single day cultivating small habits and rhythms of prayer and

of conversation with God and of asking and offering and bringing

to God these small things so that hey, the big things don't

feel as big, but you actually have some momentum there when

you when you arrive at the big moments.

And that's yeah, absolutely. That's what Joseph.

I think that's what we see. That's what we see for so many

people in the New Testament who make I think of like Zachariah

and Anna in the temple and all of these people who like

witnessed Jesus's birth everyday faithful slowed down some small

again careful obedience is what positioned them for their then

experience of Jesus arrival like they were ready.

And we still see that, right? Like, as you're talking,

specific people are actually coming to mind for me, right,

who have gone through horrific things that like are your worst

nightmare. And yet in those moments, you

see something coming out of them that you're like, there's like

that is only coming from what's already there.

You can't put that on in that worst moment, right?

Like it's only your what's already in you, what you've

already built and those faithful little choices, Like that's what

you're drawing in in those moments, right?

Like there's no sort of preparing for that exam or well,

there is the preparing for that exam or moment.

And it is in those like small, small faithful choices.

So OK, just jumping off that because we're going to end with

obedience again, but I've got 3 questions.

I think one of the questions that you hope people are

wrestling with, and I hope, you know, I was listening to your

sermon yesterday thinking about our church.

One of the questions that I hope people are wrestling with is

this. And I wrote them down so that

I'm just going to read them. But where might God be showing

up in the messy or inconvenient parts of your life right now?

So again, I don't think for us to answer those, but for you

listener, to be thinking about and even better, talking with

somebody about how God might be showing up in the messiest parts

of your life or what you see right now is most inconvenient.

So even in like my own head, I'm going, Oh yeah, OK, tight

timeline. Like I've got sick kids at home.

That's inconvenient. Like what's the invitation?

And that's like a little thing, right?

That's not a a big thing. So various levels of

inconvenience, various levels of messiness, life is not, it

doesn't go the way we plan it to.

And at times I go, hey, thank God it doesn't.

And other times like banging ahead against the wall trying to

figure it out for our people, though that I think what might

be really helpful is how do you or how have you learned to start

to respond with obedience and trust?

I think trust is, you know, I think those sometimes you can

respond with trust that leads to obedience.

Sometimes you can respond with obedience that eventually works

itself out as trust. But trust obedience instead of

what I think our default response is often, which is fear

and worry, anxiety, those types of heightened emotions where

we're like, I don't even know what to do now.

So how do you push against fear? How do you work toward trust

when you start to experience interruptions in your life?

I think one thing I am learning and I would say I feel like I've

actually been learning this through my parents in a a in the

last couple of years and a particular challenge they've

been facing. My mom will say this is that

like hard things happen, but that God is with us in them.

And I think I've spent a lot of the last 10 years really railing

against the hard things and wrestling with those.

And I think being able to settle a little bit in hard things

happen and God is with us and how do we look for the ways that

whether the mess we're in is what we chose or something that

happened to us like beyond our like, however we got into it,

how is God showing up in it? Because he really is faithful in

the midst of it and shows up in in small and other ways.

Like I don't know if this is works as an example, but this

week as I was trying to get ready to preach, I had a lot

going on. And then I got a migraine, which

happens to me from time to time. And I'm just going, OK, so we'll

call that the interruption. And I'm like this, this is like,

I was already working really hard to try to like do

everything I needed to do this week.

I don't have time to have a migraine right now.

Like this is this is not going to work for me.

And I reached out to a couple of people and asked them to be

praying for me as I was preparing.

And when I wrote to ask them to be praying, I found out they had

already been praying for me. And I just was like, wow, that's

really cool. And then was struggling with my

migraine going like, I think something like this would really

help, but I don't have it. My uncle showed up at the door

and my aunt had sent him on a mission to because she knew I

had a migraine to like deliver it.

And I just like they were such small things, but that to me was

such an example of like, you know, we could get into a whole

to godsend the migraine. Did he allow like that's a whole

other thing we don't necessarily need to get into.

The fact was I was interrupted with a migraine.

And also I could see these places where God was showing up

in it. And I think if we're talking

practical, like this isn't rocket science.

It's not something people haven't heard before.

But I do think the practice of gratitude can be really

profound, especially when we are in those times where it can be

really consuming the interruptions, like we can't see

past them or we're just aware of how much we are struggling or

suffering. And so I think the discipline of

pulling back and actually thinking about the things that

we are thankful for, you know, scientists have shown that this

wires our brain differently, right?

Like that there's actually something to that.

And so I found in seasons where I have just like a little

notebook and at bedtime, I'll try to, I have no number.

I don't have to fill in a certain number.

I just try to think of like, what are a few things I'm

grateful for today? It's part of that practice.

I think of examine that you have laid out in one of the Advent

practices going back over your day and thinking about where

have I seen God at work? And it just, it just offers some

perspective that I think is really significant.

Almost laughing I so I pulled out my notebook.

This is like my back pocket notebook and I carry this for

two reasons. One, I reach for it before I

reach for my phone now. Hmm.

So, and it throws people off because like even on Sunday, I

was exchanging like phone numbers with somebody and I had

my phone on me and I gave him the notebook and I was like,

here, just write it down in this.

And so I, I do so not only gratitude, but what I found it

to be so helpful for is exactly that because I have a harder

time thinking through like, and I think we all naturally do this

like, but by the time I get to the end of my day, I want to

look back on where I was grateful as opposed to like when

I try to think of, OK, how was I throughout the day, I can really

easily focus on the negative things.

Like I didn't respond well here. Oh, I lost my patience there.

Oh, that was, you know, that was too bad.

I should have said this or done that differently.

And so instead, what I've started to do is in the moment,

I'll try to write down what I'm grateful for and the things I'm

thankful for because then I can look back on my day and actually

read through, Oh yeah, I was thankful.

And I still am thankful. So I'm laughing like carrying a

notebook around has seriously changed.

Like, I'm not going to say it's changed my life.

It is changing my days for sure. Well, and and it really is

rewiring our brains like like I would find Even so, I love that

that you're doing it throughout the day.

I think that's fantastic. But I would find that even if I

was just doing it at night, it changed my day, right.

I would be going through my day being like, Oh, I have to

remember that one for handy if I had notebook to write it down,

but I'd be like, Oh, I have to. And it helped to shift to be

like, Oh, that's something I'm grateful for.

Oh, I'm going to remember that thing.

Oh, look, it just reframed how I was, how I was looking at it.

And, and I think that that I think it sounds simple, but I

think we don't want to underestimate how valuable that

kind of practice can. Be yeah, the one thing before

you move on to the next question that I would encourage people to

try to is in your gratitude. I've shifted away from saying

I'm thankful for and saying to God, thank you for.

And that for me has changed my I, I never found like practicing

gratitude really like transformative or impactful on

my own, like mental health or psyche, like whatever.

Like I until I shifted away from saying I'm thankful for because

I'm still like, I'm still the subject there.

I'm still, it's still about me. Yeah, I'm, I am thankful.

And so the, and I can't remember who it is not my idea.

I heard somebody talk about this shift and I started doing it,

said God, thank you for and that eliminated me from entirely from

the equation. So I'm, I'm thanking God.

And then very often I'm thanking God for a specific person who

is, you know, maybe through whom I'm experiencing something or

seeing God at work or, you know, even if it's just like naming

people that I'm grateful for each day, It's I'm, I am

grateful toward God, grateful to God for this individual.

Yeah. And that that has changed my

relationship, I think, to gratitude and in general.

So I would encourage people to write it that way as a prayer

like God. Thank you for.

One more thing. Before you move on, yeah.

OK, changing gears, but I feel like I'd be remiss to not name

this as like because you asked like, how do you, I can't

remember exactly how you put it, but how do you respond in?

Trust and not. Fear and that you trust and not

fear again, community, right? Like there are definitely,

definitely times where I have leaned on the faith of other

people when I have not had my own.

And so I've talked about borrowing hope from people when

I feel like I've run out and I'm like, I know that they have hope

for me and that they can see through the other side of this.

And I'm going to choose to lean on, I think these are wonderful

people I respect and love. No, I'm not feeling the things

that they are saying, but I'm going to choose to trust and

believe and borrow their hope and borrow their faith when mine

feels really weak. And then I've had experiences of

actually getting to do that for other people too.

And I remember again, sitting with a friend in a really,

really low moment and I could see through it.

I could see through her situation and know that there

was like, I had hope for her. And I said that to her too.

I said, like, you can borrow, you don't have to have it for

yourself. And I just think there's such

such strength of that in community, right, is that we

don't actually have to muster it up ourselves.

I feel like that's our world is off to talking about like, you

know, what we have to like muster up from within us and

it's OK if we don't have it. And that's the gift of being in

community. But again, kind of like what we

were saying before, it really does help if you've actually

nurtured those relationships already that you then have

people that you can lean on in those times and moments.

Of course, you can also build that and you go deeper in

relationship in those moments with people for sure.

But when you have some of those relationships with people that

you go, yeah, I'm not feeling it.

I don't really get it. I don't know how this is going

to be. OK.

And and I think the other thing that happens in those

relationships is you get the opportunity to build the

language out, right. So even just for, for groups of

people, for communities to start talking about borrowing hope,

Yeah, gives you language in moments to say, hey, I need to

borrow some hope right in this. Like that's how, that's how I'm

feeling. Yeah.

Or alternatively, to come in and say, hey, like, let me share

some with you. I'm not trying to fix your

situation, but sounds a little bit like you need to hear that

that there are moments of hope and other reason why it's so

important to tell our stories and to tell them to ourselves

and to retell them and to tell them to others and to write them

down and. Here's another example of what

Ken fuel costly like. It can feel hard.

It can sometimes feel like a choice of obedience or

definitely vulnerability. And yet look at what we gain

from from that. Yeah.

So let's shift a little bit, but still on the theme of

interruption and obedience. Joseph, we don't, I don't think

need to get into all of this, but Joseph finds himself in a

interruption that is in, I would say entirely of God's design.

And you know, that's the reality of his big interruption.

Not all of our interruptions are God's design.

Some are our own making, right? And some are situation and

circumstance we're in not of anything we've done, but that

are equally not God's like specific doing.

So I I mean, the the question was, is every interruption from

God or not? I think the answer to that is

no. Yeah.

But let's talk a little bit about how you have started to

discern that is an interruption from God.

Is it not from God? To what degree does that matter?

Yeah. And then what if it does or

doesn't matter? Yeah, I'm glad you raised that

because I definitely was feeling some of the tension of that in

this story. Like when when we're trying to

like there's I think there's tons for us to learn about how

we live in our stories from this story.

But I did feel the tension of like, OK, this is a particular

moment in history of like God doing this crazy thing for Mary

and Joseph. And that is.

So yes, we can learn from that. And also it isn't the same as

most of the things that we face and live with every day.

So I felt I felt that tension. Yeah, as you're as you're asking

the question, I think that is the thought that comes to mind

is maybe it doesn't matter only in that I think probably the

response is the same. And I wonder if in walking.

So the response being that we draw near to God, we draw near

to community, we ask him where he is in this, we look for the

places of how he is at work. The express, like the Psalms

teach us really well to express our anger, our frustration, our

doubt, our like we, we stay in communication with God about

those things. And I think that that's probably

true regardless of if it's a, like, divine interruption or

just a reality of the life that we're in, world that we're

living in. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I think that's good. I'm just, I'm writing down so I

don't lose the thought. Yeah, because I I think that

it's really important just to say I, I agree.

I don't think that it matters as much as we think it matters

because I do think that we get stuck in the is this from God or

is this not from God And that we you listen like.

I think that's a good question to ask and pose, but I think we

can get so often stuck in that. How could God cause this to

happen? And that is this massive ocean

of both chaos and calm. Like it it it is.

There's so much to wrestle through once you go down that

that road and at times in life, like like I've done it, you've

done it like we need to, you need to wrestle that out.

But I don't know that that's like every single thing you're

like, did God cause us to God not cause this?

I think what is important is, and I'm this is, I want to be

very careful here. So this is like, OK, baby heresy

territory because it's not in the Bible, like it's not in

Joseph's story. But I can imagine Joseph asking

that question like, OK, God, Like God, is this actually from

you? Is this not from you?

And then there's another question if if it's from you,

what am I to do? If it's not from you, same

question. Yeah, what am I to do?

So I think the, the faster we can get to that question with

God, the better off we're going to be.

And, and acknowledging that, yes, in season you, every single

one of us needs to wrestle out the did God cause this to

happen? Did God allow this to happen?

And if so, what does it say about me?

What does it say about God? Like how are we, how am I to

make sense of of the, the, the horrible things that happen

inside of the world That is part of your faith journey.

But I think in terms of every, like thinking about all of the

ways in which life is interrupted, the faster we can

get to asking God specifically whether whether this is your

design or not, whether this is from you or not, what, what's

the step that you are calling me to take in it?

I think that's the step that Joseph gets to.

I also think it's often like, OK, again, this is a different

situation, like Angel telling them what's going on, different

situation in our situations. I often think it's it's not even

possible to know. I think sometimes we have to

walk through it and then we get a better sense of like, oh, that

really was from God or like, Nope, but he was with me in

that. And I think there's, I think

that there's some. So the response I think, is the

same as what we're seeing. Yeah.

And I do think that sometimes you figure it out as you go.

Sometimes it remains a mystery. But I think sometimes we're

desperate. I know I am at the outset of it

to try to figure it out and make sense of it.

I'm definitely guilty of like trying to make sense of what is

this that's happening here. And I think sometimes, and

that's hard, but sometimes we actually just can't, can't know.

So to think about a third question, and maybe we'll leave

these in the description just to help people follow each three or

each question, we see this. So Joseph doesn't have the full

picture, but he gets to that point where he's able to obey

and he does get to a point where he's able to walk through it.

And like, like you said, like maybe it's in hindsight that

he's wrestling it out. Maybe it's in real time.

Different than like unless an Angel appears exactly and says

something very specific to you. Yeah, you're going to have to

wrestle it out a little bit different than Joseph.

But he does obey. He does take a step.

He does name the baby Jesus, which I think is this Like it's

almost like he's he's planting the flag.

He's saying like, OK, I am going to choose to do the exact thing

that you've called me to do. Yeah.

And we will see what happens. Right.

Like, it feels a little bit like that kind of moment for Joseph.

Have you found any like really practical plant the flag.

This is what I'm going to do in order to signal to myself and to

God. I am choosing to trust and I'm

taking a step of obedience. Steps might all look different

all the time. I'm thinking like, you know, is

it is it that you name it to somebody, right?

You're like, this is what I'm in.

This is what I'm feeling and experiencing.

Here's the interruption. Here's what I'm gonna do.

Like maybe just naming that to somebody else.

That's I think like a we're going to plant the flag kind of

moment and say God, I'm going to choose to obey.

Take a step. Anything that's been really like

practically helpful for you to signal steps been taken.

Yeah, I think definitely naming it for somebody, I think there's

there's significance and power in that.

And then later when we're not sure or we're doubting, we have

somebody we can go back to who's like, no, remember why, you

know, like This is why this is what was happening for you.

In a similar way, I think writing some of that stuff down,

I'm an inconsistent journaler, but I do think the times where I

can look back and be like, wow, look at what how I was trying to

respond. I mean, sometimes I look back

and go, whoa, OK, thank you Lord for changing me and moving me

through. But also look back and be like,

wow, I really was trying to be faithful there.

And this is where that came from and how I was hearing God in

those moments. We we remember an essence of it,

but I don't think we remember all the depth of what's

happening in those moments. And I think there can be, yeah,

can be really huge value in us writing it down.

Yeah, so I think I I think name, name a step to somebody super

powerful, write it down, also really powerful.

And you know, you might look back and go, oh, I didn't do the

thing I said. I was like I said I was going to

do her felt God calling me to do didn't take that step.

I think naming it to somebody just gets it outside of

yourself. Writing it down gets it again,

like outside of yourself. And I think the, you know, if I

could suggest in order, I would say write it down and then name

it to somebody. And I've found that that so

often is, you know, if I've got alright, sensing God calling me

to do this in this moment, write it down and then take that to

somebody and say, hey, this is so you're not changing it on the

fly. You're not like there's no

backing down from it. It's it's written down, you've

named it and then name it to somebody else and away you go.

There's, I don't, I don't know exactly, you might help me

translate this, but there is that Old Testament practice,

right where people would have these profound encounters with

God and they would mark the place, they would name it,

they'd like build a pile of stones there.

And I think there's something in that, right?

Like something in sort of marking and naming, something

happens, something with me and God happened here.

And so I don't know exactly what the equivalent of that would

look like for us today. I don't know, you know,

sometimes this, again, probably not a great example, but there

was this Christmas sermon I heard years and years ago with

this profound idea that like just stayed with me.

And one day I was out at like 10,000 villages or something and

saw this ornament that to me represented that idea.

So this is maybe trivial, but I was like, you know, I think I'm

actually going to by that ornament and it's one of

actually only a few, but that when I look at it, it reminds me

of that truth. Yeah.

And so I think, yeah, if there are ways to to market, to name

it, to build that pile of stones, maybe we plant a tree,

maybe it like. But I think that there can be a

helpful physical outlet to doing something tangible or having

something to look at that reminds us of of that.

No, absolutely. Yeah, I, funnily enough, like

Connie and I have done the exact same.

We have ornaments and Christmas ornaments that we've purchased

and started when we were on our journey of longing to have kids

and it not working out for that season.

And so we had bought ornaments during that season.

And then when when Anna was born, we bought an ornament as

well. So it, it wasn't, yeah.

It was just a, a practice that that was with us in seasons of

grief, yes. And sorrow.

And then we carried it through into seasons of hope and

anticipation. And then yeah, into.

What? And it probably actually gives

you a way to tell that story now to your girls too, right?

Yeah, because they look, they're like, well, I know this one's

mine, then they have that language.

But who's this? One right?

Right. So we have that.

The other thing I did, and I'm not suggesting this at all, and

this might, we might cut this one out from the podcast, but I

get asked all the time why I have a tattoo on my arm and it's

that same story. Yeah.

So for me, it was a way of marking, literally marking a

moment where I said, yeah, like I, I, I want there to be a very

definitive mark. That's right, of both God,

you're faithfulness in the midst of deep sadness and sorrow and

in the midst of exceptional joy and celebration.

And for me, it was a way of saying again, the, the verse is

essentially for me what it is saying or what it is declaring

is this my, my posture toward God is going to be the same in

these moments of deep sadness and sorrow as it is in the

moment, deep cloudiness and deep joy and celebration.

And so whatever that is, I will bless the Lord at all times.

So God's praise gonna be on my lips.

That's how I'm gonna choose to be, even though that's not how I

feel. So I love that I think choose

something not, not suggesting that everybody goes and gets a

tattoo. That is absolutely not what I

want you to hear. But I have a physical, tangible

declaration of, OK, this is how we're going to choose to be.

I think is a very significant thing to do.

Yeah, I want to say thanks. Thank you for preaching.

Thanks for bringing peace. I think, I hope, I pray into

people's lives and in the midst of what feels may be messy and

inconvenient. And I think those small steps of

obedience is what leads you more toward experiencing God's peace.

So thank you and thanks for those of you listening.

We'd love to hear from you. And in the meantime, pray that

you continue to practice your way toward Christmas.

Build your little Advent wreaths with candles.

Practice, evening meditation, prayer, reflection, the evening

examine and all of the things that that we're hoping and

praying for you into God's hope and peace and joy and love this

season. So until next week, blessings on

your week.