It's a gray rainy day as I look outside my office window. Beautiful yesterday.  Today, not so much.

It's fitting, it seems.

I'm not preaching this week, but my Monday morning routine is engrained in me nonetheless.  Scanning a few choice websites for the latest news, just to have ruminating in my mind as I prepare to step in the pulpit.  Here's what I found in a quick 30-second scan:

• Domestic terrorist attacks (involving, surprising for some, a domestic shooter)
• Continued high-alert ISIS threats
• Harmful political rhetoric from presidential candidates
• Refugees being held at bay
• Devastating climate change
• More harmful political rhetoric (cause apparently that's a thing these days)
• Shooting threat at an esteemed American university
• Someone bragging about taping their dog's mouth shut with duct tape (for real)
• Loneliness is bad for you (in case you were wondering)
• Continued mourning of Paris

Man.  Perhaps I should've kept the laptop shut.

Although what good would that have done, really?  It wouldn't have kept that stuff from happening.  I'd just learn about it eventually. There's no getting away from it, certainly not shut laptops.

All of which strikes me as I think about what we did at Trinity yesterday.  We gathered in our sanctuary for Sunday worship and began with a single candle lit - our first Sunday of Advent candle.  The candle of Hope.

One of our young families did the honors reading the assigned text from Isaiah:

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light
Those who live in deep darkness -
on them light has shined.

And then we pray together the words found in the morning's bulletin: grant that the light of your love for us, God, will help us to become lights in the lives of those around us. Prepare our hearts for the love and gladness of your coming, for Jesus is our hope. Amen.

We pray those words, but in truth, we prayed for much, much more:

• For love to always trump fear
• For harmful political rhetoric to be replaced with helpful dialogue
• For our deeply human desire to welcome the stranger to win out over isolationism
• For swords to really be transformed into plowshares
• For people to begin seeing the creation and its creatures not as a resource to exploit but a gift to cherish
• For loneliness in the loneliest time of the year to lead to human connection
• For mourning to turn to dancing

All of which is captured in the last words spoken by the family up front - the youngest member, commissioned with the final and perhaps most important line:

Let us worship God!

And the way she said it - the way only a child can, perhaps - took my breath away.  See HERE for yourself.  I'd spoken those words a thousand times before worship, but this was something else entirely.  

And maybe that's because of the hope? Hope in the sweet sound of a child's voice saying something so utterly profound; hope in the simple imperative for God's people to come together and be taken out of themselves and out of the darkness into the light, so when it's all said and done that light can shine from us to where it's needed the most.  

Let us worship God.  Or, as I like to say at the close of worship, let us live simply, love generously, speak truthfully, serve faithfully, pray daily, and leave everything else to God.  (1)

Especially in hopeless times, there sure is a lot of hope in that.


1 - my benediction every Sunday, adapted from words by Fred Craddock.

Sigh.  The supposed "war on Christmas."  Like holiday decorations at the mall and cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies, it seems to come earlier and earlier each year.

The latest incarnation involves the paper cups of a popular coffee house chain. Starbucks has elected to remove their classic holiday imagery on their red Starbucks cups, which has apparently led to massive freaking out by at least this guy who is crying foul and declaring that Starbucks is anti-Christian and trying to whitewash (redwash?) Christmas of any spiritual meaning.

Sigh.

May I offer two reasons why, in my humble opinion, this argument simply doesn't hold water/coffee; and then offer what I think is an appropriate and faith-filled response to the red cup silliness?  Thanks.

First, the images were never religious to begin with.  Snowmen.  Snowflakes.  Some girl ice skating.  Some guy sledding with a dog on his back.  A fox with a scarf on (yep, it's true, check it out here, far right).  They're great holiday imagery for sure, but last time I checked, there were no snowmen in the manger scene and a newborn Jesus didn't go sledding in a foot of snow.  You'd be more accurate accusing Starbucks of declaring  a war on iconic winter wonderland scenes, but really, is that necessary?  And even if it were iconic religious Christmas scenes they'd removed, it'd still be silly to cry "war on Christmas" because.....

Starbucks is not a church.  This can be confusing, I know, because when I visit Starbucks to grab my cup of jo before heading to church on Sunday mornings, I'm simultaneously impressed and depressed by the number of people I find there.  Place is packed.  To many of them, I imagine, the community and fellowship created there is, in fact, a kind of church; which makes me wish that actual church were doing a better job of creating community and fellowship itself (we're getting there).

Even so, Starbucks is not a church.  Their mission is to sell coffee, and lots of it.  Their mission is NOT to do the church's job for the church, which is to proclaim God's love to a broken and hurting world.  To be clear, that's the job of the actual church.  Which we admittedly could be doing a better job of these days.  Instead, we're often our own worst enemy - such as when we gripe about what a coffee house chain elects to put or not put on their paperware.  

So - you're perfectly within your right to be offended by plain red Starbucks cups as a person of faith, but perhaps a better response would be this: 

Write your own faith story on them.  

You can do it literally, if you want. Grab a Sharpie and get busy.  Draw a cool picture of something that is meaningful to you in your spiritual journey.  Baby Jesus in a manger.  Mountaintops and sunsets.  The parting of the Red Sea or King David dancing around the Ark of the Covenant or Ezekiel's valley of dry bones if you want.  The possibilities are endless!

​(Just try to stay away from images of Jesus hanging on a cross, okay?  Let's let Jesus be born before we kill him off.  Easter will come soon enough.  Let's carve out some time to celebrate the Incarnation first. Thanks.)

Better yet, whether you have a Sharpie or not - write your faith story with your actual life.  When you're holding that blank red Starbucks cup as you sip on the java goodness within, don't get mad, get busy.  Surprise the person behind you in line by paying for their coffee.  Hold the door for the person coming in on your way out.  Head over to the food pantry and stock shelves for an hour.  Forego a personal gift request and ask family and friends to donate to a charity that inspires you.  Make a promise to yourself to tell at least one person every day what they mean to you.  Serve food for your church's homeless ministry dinner and then sit down with those folks and get to know them.

View the plain red Starbucks cups not as an absence of something to get angry about, but as a blank slate just waiting for your story to be written on it.   The possibilities are endless!

​Trust me, you'll feel better. And I bet the coffee will taste better too.

Continuing my monthly music blog for the Presbyterian Outlook, I take a look at an album my 13-year old introduced me to a while back.  Twenty one pilots are a pretty interesting duo - check the album review out HERE.