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Praying about the flow of time: Advent can be confusing

Lynne Baab • Tuesday November 26 2024

My congregation focuses on one word for each Sunday of Advent: hope, joy, peace, and love. When we light the Advent wreath in church every Sunday, each candle represents one of those words. In Advent, we prepare for Jesus’s first and second coming. To me, those four words — hope, joy, peace, and love — seem to relate more to Jesus’s arrival than preparation for his coming. I find this confusing.

Advent has traditionally been viewed as a penitential season. “Penitential” means focused on sorrow for having done wrong. Penitence moves us to confess our sins and receive forgiveness, and penitence helps...

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Praying about the flow of time: The joy of the kingdom of God

Lynne Baab • Tuesday November 19 2024

Numerous praise songs call God our king. The creative Hillsong musicians have given us King of Kings, with this refrain:

“Praise the Father, praise the Son, Praise the Spirit, three in one, God of glory, Majesty, Praise forever to the King of Kings.”

A traditional hymn that evokes God as king begins like this: “Come, Thou Almighty King, help us Thy name to sing; help us to praise.” This focus on praise, visible in both the Hillsong song and the hymn, is common in praise songs and traditional hymns that name God as King.

In contrast, a popular Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” ends with a verse about...

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Praying about the flow of time: The overlap of the sacred and the ordinary

Lynne Baab • Tuesday November 12 2024

In 2013, I heard a speaker who changed my perspective on how congregations help people grow in faith. Nancy Ammerman is a sociologist of religion. In two talks just over a decade ago, she described her recent research, published a few months later in her book Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life. She and her team of researchers interviewed dozens of people in two major American cities, talking with them at length. The interviewees included Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and people committed to various other forms of spirituality.

The researchers found that people with the deepest...

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Praying about the flow of time: Small actions with big benefits

Lynne Baab • Tuesday November 5 2024

A woman with school-age kids told me that after she says goodbye to her kids each morning when they leave for the school bus, she stands by the door for another minute. She places her hand on the door and prays for each child’s day at school.

A busy children’s ministries director at a church with lots of kids takes a complete day off every Thursday. She calls it her Sabbath, and one of her favorite Sabbath activities is grocery shopping. She lingers in the produce department, looking at the beauty of fruits and vegetables, handling them reverently as she places them...

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