Mtr Kelli Joyce

"A child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and for evermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this."

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Dear friends in Christ,

Advent continues. Our waiting continues. Perhaps you still have Christmas letters to write or decorations to complete, or a festive meal to finish planning for your loved ones. Maybe some of you are finished with your preparations for the holidays, and all that's left to do is wait.

This Friday evening, God willing, I will be ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Smith. (The service is at 5:30pm in the church! Y'all come!) And so this Advent, my thoughts on waiting have taken on a new sort of weight. I began formally seeking ordination in early 2011, back when I was still a Baptist, and the road from there to here has been a long one. Prepare and wait and then prepare a little more and then wait some more.

Sometimes the arrival of the wonderful thing for which we've been waiting and preparing can be nerve-wracking. What if it doesn't measure up to our expectations? What if we don't measure up to what it asks of us? Who will we be, once our waiting is over and we who have spent so long walking in darkness finally see the great light of Christ?

I don't have good answers to these questions - they're the ones I'm still asking myself. But I do know this: God will come to us unhindered by our small expectations and assumptions. God will come to us in ways and places that we cannot predict or perhaps even imagine. But when God comes and upends all the things we think we know, we will not be left alone to fend for ourselves, trying to make sense of a world that is both familiar and new. We may be more comfortable with the waiting we already know than we are with the wild exhilaration of God's arrival. God's arrival demands action on our part. But it also means that we will not be left alone. The God who arrived as an infant in Bethlehem and as tongues of fire on Pentecost is still present with us in the Sacraments and in our love for each other, as members of the Body of Christ.

In peace,
Mtr. Kelli