Tangled

“Preparing the Lord’s path toward peace requires overturning the world as we know it. …. Preparing for God’s arrival means rethinking systems and structures that we see as normal but that God condemns as oppressive and crooked. It means letting God humble everything that is proud and self-satisfied in us, and letting God heal and lift up what is broken and beaten down. The claims that the world’s authorities make often conflict with God’s claims. Paths that seem satisfactory to us are not good enough for God. John calls us to let God’s bulldozers reshape the world’s social systems and the landscape of our own minds and hearts. God’s ways are not our ways.[1]  - Judith Jones

Advent is a time to notice how we are bound by sin: bound by the landscapes of our minds and hearts, by systems and paths which aren’t good enough. baptism of repentance does not undo past sins, but it does unbind people from them. It opens the way for a life lived in God’s peace. Today we are invited to be unbound.

As you look at this image what sins at you being invited to be untangled from?

As a church, or as a country, what sins are we being untangled from?

Where is peace this advent?

“The Simple Path
Silence is Prayer
Prayer is Faith
Faith is Love
Love is Service
The Fruit of Service is Peace” [2] ― Mother Teresa

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[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2702

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/peace?page=2