Valerie Hess

It is December 24th and the Twelve Days of Christmas are just beginning. Christmas Day is the start of the holiday, not the end of it.

Blessed and Merry Christmas to you all!

In diverticulitis, as I understand it, pockets are formed in the intestinal tract that trap food. That food then basically rots in your gut causing problems. ‘

It struck me this morning that it is possible to have “diverticulitis of the mind.” In this case, negative thoughts would get trapped in little pockets of your mind and begin to rot there. Unresolved hurts and pain, jealousies, resentments, self-condemnations, hatreds: all of these can get trapped in our minds and begin to rot our attitudes and our outlook on life, our perspective on other people.

To heal diverticulitis in your gut, you need to eliminate some things and add in others. I think that would be true for this condition in the mind. One would need to be intentional in not taking in more negativity and in substituting a diet in the discipline of celebration, which is based on Philippians 4: Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and it there is anything worthy of praise, THINK ABOUT THESE THINGS. (emphasis added).

To rid ourselves of these festering pockets in our minds, we need to intentionally by-pass them and fill our minds with the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Just as a person with diverticulitis must be intentional about what they put into their mouths or pay the consequences, so those of us who cul-de-sac in these rotting pockets of negativities in our minds must be very intentional about what we think about or we (and those around us) will pay the consequences of bitterness and strife.

“The deepest revelation of our character is what we choose to dwell on in thought, what constantly occupies our mind,” says Dallas Willard. Let us choose a diet of godly thinking through the intentional use of the discipline of celebration, which finds ways to praise God IN all things, though not necessarily FOR all things.

This may help transition from mall time to Church Time at this season of the year!

This is a piece I wrote for the December Conversations Journal Blog:

We need Advent. Why? Because Advent is not Christmas.

The Nairobi Statement on Worship and Culture says the Church is to be transcultural, contextual, cross-cultural, and counter-cultural.  When we, as Christ-followers, follow Church Time vs. mall time, we live out these principles intuitively. By living into Advent, a time of focus on the Second Coming of Christ, as well as his first coming, we are less caught up in the madness of December and what our culture calls “the holidays.”

In Advent, we live in a different rhythm, a rhythm practiced by Christ-followers around the world, today and in centuries past (transcultural and cross-cultural). Not rushing into Christmas the day after Thanksgiving (or sooner) is very counter-cultural. So is celebrating Christmas for the Twelve Days (December 25 to January 6, the date of Epiphany); the Church begins Christmas just as the world ends it.  We can be very contextual by speaking the ancient prophetic words of Advent (“coming”) into a modern, next-door world that has lost hope.

Advent is not a warm-fuzzy but rather a real Word to fractured, hysterical people rushing to find happiness and a sense of family in all the wrong places. Advent has hard edges; it looks to the cross that hangs over the manger. It says that Christ will come again and not in swaddling clothes. Yet, when the madness of December is over in the mall, the Church will still be standing, like a light on a hill, giving direction and hope to all who have lost their way. As “the holidays” become 75% off in the world, the Church says that Christmas continues, not with the false tinsel of materialism but with the Word made flesh.

We need the fasting and introspection Advent invites us to. As the days in the Northern Hemisphere get darker, we need to reflect on the darkness of our hearts, a darkness which keeps us from full fellowship with God. John 1:5, part of the Gospel reading appointed for Christmas Day, only makes transformative sense if we have been through Advent: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” We must know what that darkness is to understand the strength of the Light. Advent teaches us that strength and helps us offer it to others.

Advent is not a parlor game or something that only certain denominations observe. It is not a time to “get ready for the holidays” in the way most of us understand the purpose of December. Advent is a spiritual transformation gift of time from centuries of Christian thought and practice. We need Advent to understand Christmas and the Incarnation of Jesus.

“Be not afraid,” the angel of the Lord says more than once in Scripture. God must not want us to be afraid! Does fear indicate a lack of trust in God’s loving care and ultimate protection? Where is the line between healthy fear (face-to-face with a cobra) and fear of doing the right thing? Courage, a word with French origins relating to the heart, is a way of living and being despite knocking knees. It is a willingness to say NO in the face of evil, knowing that that evil will not back down easily or without a fight in many cases. Courage hears the music of heaven above the cacophony of earth’s violence and injustice. As O. P. Kretzmann once said, the cry of the Child in the manager is the beginning battle challenge of the Prince of Peace.

May we take up the cry of our Commander-in-Chief and move boldly through this day.