Weddings are joyous occasions, but can also be prone to being sent off the rails when things go wrong - which is especially painful for something so important. God is with us in all the important moments of our lives, and knows the impact of helping us through things going wrong with blessings for a life that can be made right and whole.

We are invited to be adopted into God’s family, participate in co-creation in God’s Kingdom, and even to be formed in Christ’s likeness. Sometimes these encouragements to be part of the life of God can reveal what we think the core character of God is in a way that still needs forming. Where do we see God guiding God’s people for what being made like God is like that can help form our faithfulness in truth and depth?

We are probably most used to our culture prioritizing will as the most important characteristic for beginnings, but in the Bible, we see God’s beginning’s are rooted in personal, relational Word and Wisdom. If we let God’s values shape us in our beginnings and transitions, how might that transform their impact on our life and sense of self?

Chrismons are a special tradition for Christmas decorations, but we may not know about or understand all the symbols, or where the tradition came from. How can we deepen our faith by learning about some of things, and also think about how we can be careful not to fixate on the symbols meant to point to God, but be able to use them to help us grow in our knowledge and understanding of God beyond what is most natural and preferential to us personally?

Even in the moments we celebrate now as the triumphant arrival of Jesus, there was plenty to see as troublesome and worrying - parents with reason to feel stressed about each other, a dirty “delivery room,” strangers crowding things up, imminent threats and more. Our lives can often feel this way, too, so how do we recognize God moving in even and especially our struggles “precisely as the Gospel needs to”?

In times when love is painful and hard, we may be encouraged by Tennyson’s lines, “Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all…” But what helps us hold on to love this way in all its ups and downs? If we see how God loves us with that same vulnerability, and even more so, has risked to be loved that way by us even as we’re prone to let things down, what strengthening of love becomes possible through the Spirit?

Our whole range of feelings and experiences take on a different dimension - a deep joy - if we are able to share them with others, or if we feel as if we have to experience them alone, which is especially dispiriting. In the arrival of Jesus, God gave the ultimate expression of this empathy, solidarity, and connection. How might we experience more of the thriving of salvation life by sharing with each other what God has first shared with us?

In Advent we celebrate God coming close, and that initiative means a lot in the theme of peacemaking. God moves to enact peace and reconciliation, and so we can expect that peace may often be more about transformation and a new way of being than just calm, stillness, or quiet. God also helps us recognize where there is a balance in disturbing peace, and we should be ready to join in the side of the lowly and outcast so we can be a part of the true, holistic peace of God’s Kingdom.

We can often feel as though having hope is most about how firmly we can focus on a positive outcome in the future. Yet we can also find that the hardest to muster in our most difficult situations that need change and hope the most. Advent helps us to realize that even when things are overwhelmingly challenging and painful, the deepest, most transformational hope can begin with the realization that God joins us in those circumstances, does not reject us because of them, and will go through the full process of change with us.

As Congregationalists, we can learn a lot and take plenty of inspiration from the experiences of our Pilgrim forebears that are commonly remembered at Thanksgiving. While most of us are unlikely to move across continents as part of our faith journeys, we can still relate the ways they discerned how to follow God through a range of challenges in life to our own day to day experiences.

Discerning God’s voice and how our call may fit into what God is doing in the world can be hard to decipher. We may doubt if there’s a place for us unless we have heard something specific enough or feel we are special enough. Scripture shows us that God has made room for everyone to participate in the ongoing movement of the Kingdom with what they have to offer. We can join with that standing invitation rather than worry if we are picked special or not.

We often expect that the only way to be a part of a call from God is to get a very specific word as a very special person. Yet God includes all of us, and inspirational stories of those who were open to following where God might use their talents and interests in small ways to turn into a significant impact can remind us how we all have a place in God’s call to bring salvation life to the world.

Interviews done well can reveal what’s most important to a person, foster connection between people, and perhaps inspire new understandings of each other and the world. A secretive, but vulnerable interview between Jesus and Nicodemus early in Jesus’ ministry was one such encounter, and reminds us all of the importance of seeking and finding new birth into salvation life from Jesus.

Sometimes it feels like we can’t proceed into our lives of faith (or we want to control how others walk with us faith) unless we have really specific, glaring signs from God about what is going on. Much of scripture shows us that God walks with us in faith with less of a list to follow and more of a shared exploration of all God is doing on the foundation of values that can be built upon a number of ways. How can we understand discernment to bring us freedom in following God, rather than fear that holds us back from connection?

Discomfort and challenge are inevitable parts of life, but because they are difficult, we can often have trouble discerning how God is guiding us through them, and even using them for our growth and development. Embracing the experience of wrestling with God can help us experience more closeness with God and learning in our lives of faith.

Wisdom takes time to cultivate, and we may go through a period of fumbling about in all sorts of places trying to find it as given by God, but God has provided outlets in all aspects of life for us to find as we value listening for the Spirit over pride in ourselves.

When God has moved to bring more and more of the world into fellowship with God and each other, it has often yielded mixed reactions and uncertainty for those who already saw themselves as God’s people. It can be an inescapable part of the process that we have seasons of discerning what it “SEEMS” like God is doing. Can we use that to reach out and grow from God’s leading, or are we likely to retreat within ourselves?

In some of our most complicated and painful decisions, there is often a context around us of what “proper and powerful, maybe even religious people are supposed to do.” That may or may not actually align with the deepest, truest values God wants us to discern and strive towards. How do we humbly pursue that, even if it stretches us or costs us in the eyes of others?

Figuring out how best to make choices and move forward in action can be one of the more complicated aspects of life. People of faith generally hope that God’s values will influence their discernment and God may even guide it directly in some way. From even creation and the nature of humanity, God gave building blocks for this, that even in a state of brokenness, we can tap into for the thriving of salvation life.

There are times in life when things get “really real,” and we know we’ll have to adjust to incorporate that into our lives. These tend to be both exciting and challenging - like reaching a new stage of commitment in a relationship or having kids. Our faith can be like that, too, and our human condition will have some reaction of wanting to withdraw from these circumstances, but also wanting to figure out how to step up. How do we find God with us in these situations so we can say together, “OK, let’s go.”?