December 6th – Mosaic at the Majestic 10:00am

Sunday, Dec. 6th: Mosaic at the Majestic – 10 am
Brunch will be served so please bring along food.
Don’t forget the students and our guests!
Last names beginning with…
A-H – Bring Fruit and healthy stuff
I-P – Bring Muffins or Bagels or Danish’s or other breakfast food
Q-Z – Bring cheese slices or breakfast meat or hot dish

As we move into the Advent Season, I hope you will take time to focus on the main themes of each week (Hope, Peace, Joy & Love).  This week I encourage you to be thinking about the “Shalom (peace) of God”.  The great Messianic prophecies of old include the hope of peace that we all long for:

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.  For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.  Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.”
Isaiah 9:2, 4-7

NT Wright, in speaking about this passage says, “First, we are promised victory over tyranny – but not the normal kind of victory.  ‘The yoke of their burden, the rod of the oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.’  Now just as we know the stories of the Somme and Ypres, of Dunkirk and Arnhem, so Isaiah’s hearers knew the stories of the old battles; and the point of the famous victory over the Midianites was that it wasn’t a battle at all.  Read about it in the book of Judges.  Gideon and his men surrounded the camp by night, blew their trumpets and waved their torches, and the tyrannical Midianites fled in panic.  Justice re-established without violence….

Isaiah says: ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; for to us a Son is given, the Prince of Peace.’  And we who live between the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and the final establishment of the kingdom he came to bring, the kingdom in which justice and peace shall be knit together at last and for ever – we are entrusted with a mission.  Not simply to save a few souls from the wreck of this world, since God so loved the world and has promised to redeem it.  Nor simply to tinker with the world’s own systems, merely to do things a bit differently here or there.  No: rather, by prayer and courage, and holiness and hard work – and it will be hard work – we are called to discover the practical ways in today’s and tomorrow’s world of seeking justice without violence, of making and maintaining peace without tyranny.”

This kind of peace begins in the heart.  Is your heart at peace today?  Do you know God’s shalom; the reality that you are right with God, with your fellow man, with the whole world?  This is the shalom that was begun in Jesus and that we seek to be a reality in all areas of life.

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