Christmas Reflection

One of my favorite authors and a mentor to me through his pages is Henri Nouwen. In his book, The Road to Daybreak, he says, 

Somehow I realized that songs, music, good feelings, beautiful liturgies, nice presents, big dinners, and many sweet words do not make Christmas. Christmas is saying "yes" to something beyond all emotions and feelings. Christmas is saying "yes" to a hope based on God's initiative, which has nothing to do with what I think or feel. Christmas is believing that the salvation of the world is God's work and not mine. Things will never look just right or feel just right. If they did, someone would be lying.... But it is into this broken world that a child is born who is called the Son of the Most High, Prince of Peace, Savior.

Luke 2:1-7 says,

In those days a decree went out from Emporer Augustus that all the world should be registered.... All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house of David. he went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. 

A reflective prayer for these thoughts  could simply be: 

    Thank you, Lord, that you came independently of my feelings and thoughts. Your heart is greater than mine. I welcome you. Amen.

May these thoughts turn your heart to Him and minister to you soul as you celebrate His first coming and await His second. Peace to you from our family. 

                 

Voice of the Youth Night in Pictures

Voice of the Youth Night...a success!!!

God is doing some great things in the Grove these days and one of them happened last Friday night (the 30th of Nov) when we held our first Voice of the Youth event. Just to give you a bit of background, one of the areas Urban Resurrection works through here in the the Grove is to create a space for people to have a voice that will be heard where they normally would not. It is also a place for people to share ideas and express themselves to each other and thus build the movement and momentum that will in turn create action and transformational change in our community. We call this a Voice Group. Our first Voice Group meeting happened in August and we have met pretty consistently every other week or so ever since. Out of these meetings it has come through that our neighbors have a real desire to see the youth of the community involved and having a voice as well. Due to the recent violence there was a more urgent desire to make this happen. SO the Voice Group decided that they and our Urban Resurrection team should create just such an opportunity for the youth ages 14 to 21. We all though that using the creative arts as a medium for this expression would be a good way to do it so we developed the Voice of the Youth Night. This was held at Rustic Treasures, a local coffee shop owned by Bona and Walt Parlins (Voice Group Members).  We had a church donate over $400 worth of art supplies that made it all work. So we advertised at the local youth hangouts and handed out fliers then prayed really hard that some youth would actually show up....

    Well, we were not disappointed because over 40 youth came through the event and many actually participated in the hip hop, drawing, graffiti wall, and open mic! We were thrilled to say the least and we even had ten youth sign up to be a part of the planning process for the next one!! So we plan to build on this event and hopefully it will grow into a full fledged part of our ministry. All of this aligns really well with our vision and we have decided to call the arts portion of our ministry BEATS which stands for Bringing Eternal Arts to the Streets.  Enjoy the pics!!!