Like many American boys, I grew up interested in war.  I read about historical wars and their battles.  I played war with my friends, and any stick could become a gun.  I noted on the evening news the Vietnam War body count, with about a hundred American soldiers killed each week, and many hundreds of enemy Vietnamese.  It seemed like keeping score, and that we were winning. 

The other night at Small Group Ministry, we were reflecting on love, and I wasn’t thinking about the verse we just sang, but I said that, for me, disappointment is tied up with love. 

Just as long as my heart beats, I must answer, “Yes,” to love;
disappointment pierced me through, still I kept on loving you.
If they ask what I did best, tell them I said, “Yes,” to love.

“Though I may speak with bravest fire, and have the gift to all inspire, 
and have not love, my words are vain, as sounding brass, and hopeless gain.

Or as Paul put it, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” 

Where does love come from? Are we born with it? Or do we have to seek it and find it?

You know that saying about Inuit people having many different words for snow, to describe the different kinds of that frozen stuff—dry and fluffy, hard and icy, heavy and hard to shovel? Why don’t we have multiple words for love?

“Ours is no caravan of despair,” we just sang. This is something I need to be reminded of! Isn't this something we church people ought to remember, that when we are together we should celebrate every now and then? I don’t know about you, but I can tend to be earnest, and serious, and so I appreciate and I need this reminder to laugh and to loosen up a bit. This earnestness is part of who I am, but it’s not all of me. 

The hymn we just sang was Martin Luther King’s favorite. And I can imagine, given the struggles he faced, that it was also his prayer: “Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand, I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.” King often asked Mahalia Jackson to sing “Precious Lord” at civil rights rallies, and she sang it at his funeral.

Do you remember the movie “The Big Chill”? It’s about a group of college friends who come back together for a funeral, and they end up staying for the weekend. The title comes from a line in the movie, when during that cozy reunion, one of the characters reminds his friends that it’s a cold world out there. He says, “Wise up, folks. We're all alone out there and tomorrow we're going out there again.”

“O come, all ye faithful.” I wonder—do you count yourself among that number? Do you see yourself as faithful? Too often faith is equated with what you think, is seen as believing the right thing, even believing in the unbelievable. But that’s not what faith is. No, faith is about how you act. 

With yesterday’s snowfall, it feels like winter is upon us. Even though it doesn’t officially arrive until the solstice on December 21. I actually like winter. I like shoveling snow, the invitation to shovel Zen-like, methodically and mindfully. I like to imagine the winter falling upon us, the way the snow does, bringing a change of pace, bringing quiet to the land. I like how winter makes one glad to come indoors, to get warm and be cozy; how this season invites a quieter, more interior way of being for a while.