Never before in my life, have I personally witnessed so much despair in the lives of so many people. The economy has been depressed and depressing for five long years now. It seems so many wonderful people are struggling on a daily basis to keep their head above water. Most are struggling. Many are stumbling. Collectively, we are surviving but few could honestly say they are thriving. We are still in a war. Politics offers few answers and little hope. And then there's the church which pretends as if nothing is really wrong and holds to sameness, gripping its collective fear of change and moving ever so close to the cliff of no return.Five years ago this week I led a retreat for white collar workers in Denver. I asked the question, “How many of you are living with more fear in your life than at any other time?” Every hand was raised. Today, as I travel, speak and work one on one with leaders both in the market place and the ministry, fear is the predominate descriptor of emotion that most people I work with are expressing. Truly, we are living in a most sobering time--a season calling for deep searching and few answers. It doesn't matter if we are white collar or blue. Democrat or Republican-- American or African---we are quivering in our boots in an unparalleled season of floundering without breakthrough and endurance rather than hope.Allow me to be honest and transparent. All of this takes a tremendous toil on a small ministry where we seek to raise our support year after year to be a resource to leaders both in the business world and ministry sphere who themselves are struggling. I have my own questions. Can we survive? Will we make it? Is there something--anything I can possibly do that would help?We are in “it” together. We are waiting for a better time. We are hoping to turn the corner to a time when so much struggling, work and effort to stay alive, sustain our lives and experience a fulfillment of a dream, a hope and a vision.Friends, this is precisely what “ADVENT” is all about. Advent is a season of expectant waiting for something to happen that will turn the table and improve our most desperate situation. Most followers of Jesus wrongly assume that being saved is a once in a life-time event. But life teaches us that we need to be saved from MORE than just our sins. We need to be saved from despair. We need to be saved from coming unglued. We need to be saved from merely surviving to experiencing a robust sanity in life.The coming four weeks of Advent are weeks to move away from the commercialization and sick emphasis on materialism as the answer to our dilemma. Advent is the intentional waiting on God to show up and do something about our sick condition. Many followers of Jesus are unaware of the practice of Advent. We’re throw the baby of this important season out with the water to be relevant and “seeker friendly.” In doing so, we have found ourselves more caught up than ever before in Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Depressing December year-ends. 
Returning to Advent is the beginning of a new way to look at life. Take each week and simply light a candle each Sunday marking the long, awaited wait for the Day that God will finally appear. Each week, watch your mantel, coffee table or dining table grow brighter and brighter with light. Isn’t that what we want—more light; more hope; more progress. The candles of Advent literally show us the way forward through the long, dismal season of darkness. Here’s a link to one of the best resources I am aware of that helps us embrace not scorn this important season: https:/www.adventconspiracy.org/If you find yourself nodding your head in agreement to what I have written here, you are not alone. Read my opening sentence again. Many of us are struggling. Advent is an important part of the answer. Let me encourage you to consider the practice of having a small advent wreath in your home or use an Advent calendar—perhaps even before you decorate a Christmas Tree. I believe movement in a spiritual direction will help. The Bible simply says, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.”This season, make daily efforts to mark this season different from other ones. Be with friends. Choose to attend services where Advent is practiced and learn something. Perhaps, it’s not about finding a new church but finding a new way to worship God this season. Choose to live Advent and turn the despair from disillusionment to hope. Hope in God to turn our ways to His ways.Here’s my prayer everyday in this season of Advent waiting:“Lord, Help me to receive what you give, release what you take, lack what you withhold, do what you require and be who you desire.”
Thanksgiving Observations
I've heard it said, "Be kind to everyone, for everyone is in a great battle." This year brings this ancient quote to mind for so many I love; so many I care about; so many that matter to me are in an uphill season of their journey. The way is steep and the journey is arduous.So how do we turn our hearts to be grateful in such a time as this? My son will be deployed again in a few days to a war---yes, a war where real sons die everyday and real daughters never come home. Yet, I am grateful for his courage; his willingness; his resolve to be my defender--your defender.This past year, we have walked with many who have received disturbing and unsettling diagnosis about their bodies as well as their emotional conditions. How can we be thankful when disease and death rob us of those we love so deeply? How can we express gratitude when illness, be it mental or physical makes people walk with a limp so crooked that they may never walk straight again? We can be humble in our words this Thanksgiving and recognize that any life--no matter how damaged or spent matters. We can give thanks for the years we have spent with loved ones who have given us joy though now they sow only the seeds of strife and hard times. We can be thankful to realize that an illness does not, in the end, define a person. A person who is stricken with an illness is still the Beloved of God and this, in the end is what really matters.These are hard times for many of us regarding our money and the lack of it. It's our toughest year in ministry. We are significantly down in our support. It causes great concern because you wonder how you can go on building into the future when the sand that you are standing on seems to shift at the slightest ebb of the tide. What matters is this: God knows. God cares and we are all in the hands of the Potter. We simply open our hands to receive what He gives and this, in the end, makes us thankful when we realize that for far too long, we have taken advantage of the generosity of our Heavenly Father. Thank you God for our daily bread. We trust you for tomorrows!Many I know are feeling alone. Not anchored to a stable community, we feel like there is an aloneness which is larger than our sense of community. Do people really care? Will the church ever wake up from it's long winter's nap and offer us what Jesus intended all along--a place to belong. Last night, I held hands with a few folks and we made a circle. Every circle we stand in is a visible symbol that we are not alone. I am thankful that I am not alone---that there is a circle of friends both in heaven and on earth that stand with me even now. I am thankful for Lord Byron's words he penned hundreds of years ago when he wrote, "In solitude, where I am least alone." The gift of solitude shapes our hearts to realize that we are never alone. That across the threshold of aloneness is Jesus himself. I am so thankful for this.For families that feel so fragile.... I am your brother here. My own family feels so fragile. My Mom is in congestive heart failure and her days seem short not long to me. There is tension sometimes and exhaustion at other times. Yet there are the memories of love, happiness and contentment that feed my soul and help me to realize that "There is a time for everything" and that no time last forever--not even this time of feeling like we are but dancing on thin ice and we can hear the cracking all around us. Let us at this Thanksgiving turn our hearts toward our brother, Jesus and our father God and rest in the fact that we are family with the Trinity and in that family there is no end to the joy we will one day relish at the big, thanksgiving banquet that will go on and on and on.Let us be reminded that the very first Thanksgiving was one full of paradox. The pilgrims found themselves in a frigid, frozen new world, yet their hearts were filled with hope.... by this time next year, life will be better. By this time next year, we will again, see God's faithfulness. By this time, next year, we will have overcome a year that might have been hard--perhaps the hardest we have endured, but this will cause us to bow our heads and pause in this hurry sick world and say today, "Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices."Thanksgiving Blessings 2012Steve and Gwen SmithPotter's Inn