Slow Down This Season

CREATION WAITS

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 6 P.M.

FAITH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

We are an Instagram people who hate to wait and have developed the technology to avoid it.

How do we learn to wait with eager expectation? Advent means the coming of someone and something of extreme importance. That someone is not Santa Claus and that something is not more “stuff” under a Christmas tree or an elf on a shelf.

When we allow ourselves to slow down and wait with our longings, feeling our own frustrations and the brokenness around us, seeing that this world is not as it “should be,” we will cry out with the hymnist:

COME, O COME, EMMANUEL,

AND RANSOM CAPTIVE ISRAEL!”

COME

An invitation, a need for nearness.

EMMANUEL

God-With-Us.  Jesus Christ.

RANSOM

Redeem. Rescue.

To free from captivity or punishment by paying a price.

Recognizing the reality that self-reliance is an illusion.

CAPTIVE ISRAEL

Realizing we are as needy as exiled and rebellious Israel of the Old Testament.

Just as enslaved and just as helpless.

Advent helps us live in the tension of the “already and not yet.” We remember the incarnation and  coming of Jesus Christ. We recognize our true longings for Jesus to return to make all things new and right. And we realize our need to slow down and wait with all of creation, learning to rest in the knowledge that He is Emmanuel/God-with-Us in this present moment.

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InSpero’s Creation Waits asks you to lay aside your technology for one night—the first Sunday of Advent—to slow down and find Jesus Christ in the midst of your waiting.  Singer and songwriter Jenny Pruitt will share her meditations on Advent through her original music.  Painter Gina Hurry will paint live in response to her music.

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Come wait with us as we begin Advent in a quiet worshipful way on Sunday, November 30 at 6 p.m. at Faith Presbyterian Church and afterward for a discussion with the artists and reception.  Doors open at 5:30 p.m. There is no charge for this event but donations are welcome and needed.

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