If you are reading this, you must be
on a journey—one that has led you to wonder about
the meaning and mystery of life. Perhaps you have
traveled along the way known as Christianity, or
maybe you’re aware of something Larger thank
yourself but haven’t yet found your way.
Wherever you are on your journey,
keep going. You are doing that difficult but
necessary work of discovering the truth that Love is
the guiding light on this adventure we call life.
If you are on this journey, know that
you aren’t alone.
• You aren’t alone in asking your questions.
• You aren’t alone in naming your fears.
• You aren’t alone in stating your doubts.
• You aren’t alone in your wondering about what this
all means.
If you are on this path, you join a
great cloud of witnesses who have been where you now
are. Many have pondered the mysteries of faith in
their hearts, including a young woman named Mary.
“To ponder” means to think carefully about
something. The Mother of God first pondered the
announcement the angel made to her in Luke 1.29. The
Greek word (what is the Greek word, if you’re going
to write this… otherwise, say “In the Greek text, we
understand it means she is turning…) means that she
is turning things over in her mind. She’s thinking.
She’s not a vacant field in which God will plant the
seed of the Messiah. She’s not a servant to be
ordered around.
Before Mary joins in on the movement
that would change the world, she pondered. It was
her pondering that opened her up to what God was
about to do in the world. While God bestowed the
identity of“Favored One” on her as a gift, Mary is
the one who claims it for herself and declares her
own agency. To answer the question that one song
asks: Yes, Mary did know that her child would grow
up to continue the movement of love God started long
ago.
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If you are pondering things in your
heart, keep it up. In your resistance to cookie-cut
answers to global and theological concerns, God is
making Her way to you. Your story matters. In fact,
your life—in all the beauty and messiness it
contains—can magnify God. God and Mary (like God and
us) are co-conspirators, weaving threads of
community, lifting up the lowly, feeding the hungry,
saving the world. Each person has this same capacity
for magnifying the Lord.
If you are reading this, you are on a
journey that will lead to the peaceful presence of
God. And you, like Mary, are a magnifying glass to
help others see God in greater detail and to help
see God in a bigger way.
Friend, during this Advent season
leading to Christmas, take time to ponder and to
turn things over in your mind. In a culture that
thrives off of quick fixes and pithy promises, sit
in the mystery. If you need a place to ask your
questions, to name your fears, to state your doubts,
and wonder about the perplexity of faith, we have a
place for you at First Presbyterian Church.
After all, it was in the unknowing
that Mary ushered in the coming of The One who
Knows.
Adam Quine/First Presbyterian Church in Lincoln
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