Colourful Dreamer

Mount Maunganui –   4 th Sunday in Advent - Year A – 2025 Readings: Psalm -                         Psalm: 80:1-7,17-19 First Reading -              Isaiah 7:10-16 Second Reading -        Romans 1:1-7 Gospel:                        Matthew 1: 18-25 What I want to happen: -         How do we experience God with us today? -         how do we live God with us today? What I want to happen: During this week I invite you to take time at the end of each day to give thanks for ways God with us has both brought love into your day; and through you brought love into the lives of others. I also invite yo...

Merry Christmas! After the three long years of dealing with Covid and all that has done to us, merry Christmas. After this year of war in Ukraine, high inflation, covid tinged normality, merry Christmas. In the simmering confusion and stress, impatience and frustration, weariness and longing, merry Christmas.  We have spent the last four weeks in Advent reflecting on the themes of living in hope - believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change (Jim Wallis); centered in God’s peace – shalom - when all is as God desires for this world; knowing God’s love for all creation while nurturing the divine gift of joy. For the great Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus, this is what Christmas is all about. The coming of Christ was not to fix anything or to save anyone, but God’s first thought. Christmas is God being born in a food trough not in a palace. Shepherds are the first witnesses, not the powerful. This is a statement of God’s commitment to the poor, the b...