Dear Friends,
Years ago there was a great Baptist preacher at the Clarendon Church in Boston, named A.J. Gordon. He was fond of telling a story that says something about the meaning of this Advent season.
It seems that one day he met a young boy in front of the sanctuary carrying a rusty cage in which several birds fluttered nervously. Gordon inquired, “Son, where did you get those birds?” The boy replied, “I trapped them out in the field.” “What are you going to do with them?” “I’m going to play with them, and then I guess I’ll just feed them to an old cat we have at home.” When Gordon offered to buy them, the lad exclaimed, “Mister, you don’t want them, they’re just little old wild birds. And besides, they don’t sing hardly at all.” Gordon replied, “I’ll give you $2 for the cage and the birds.” “Okay, it’s a deal,” the kid said, “but you’re making a bad bargain.” The exchange was made and the boy went away whistling, happy with his shiny two dollars of coins.
A. J. Gordon then walked around to the back of the church property, opened the door of the small wire coop, and let the struggling creatures soar into the blue. The next Sunday he took the empty cage into the pulpit and used it to illustrate his sermon about Christ’s message of people who had become lost, becoming saved. “That boy told me the birds were not songsters,” said Gordon, “but when I released them and they winged their way upward, they seemed to be singing quite nicely indeed.”
Sometimes we may forget it, but Christianity is essentially a religion of freedom and of joy. And in this season that we celebrate Christ’s coming, the invitation is the same: to become more free, and to become more joyful. My prayer and hope for these four weeks of Advent, and preparation for Christmas, is that we might see if we can free ourselves from some of the frantic doings it is so easy to get caught up in, and see if we can’t settle into the peace of listening in stillness for the voice of the Christ who wants to make a new advent, a new coming, a new approach into our lives. Doing so can help turn these holidays into days that are not only liberating, but filled with a newer, deeper joy.
Happy holidays. And…..I look forward to seeing you in church on these four Sundays of Advent.
Your pastor,
Tony Acheson
