advent

How Do You Recognize the Messiah?

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Matthew 11:2-11

Early one Friday morning a while back, a street musician took a spot by a trashcan in the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station in Washington, D.C. He was nondescript – youngish, jeans, baseball cap. He took out his violin and threw a few dollars in the case so people would get the point. For the next 43 minutes he played six classical pieces while over a thousand people passed by on their way to work. Only seven people stopped. Twenty-seven people dropped change in the violin case, mostly on the run. So that morning, if you count the twenty-dollar bill dropped in by the one person that recognized him, Joshua Bell, one of the finest classical musicians in the world, made $59 for a 43-minute concert on his three-and-a-half million-dollar Stradivarius.

Why didn’t people recognize Bell? They would have recognized him at Carnegie Hall or Kennedy Center. They would have recognized him if they’d paid $200 for a ticket. But playing for free in a Metro Station isn’t what a world-famous violinist does. It wasn’t what they were expecting.

This Matthew passage raises the question: How do you recognize the one sent from God to save God’s people and God’s world? How do you recognize the Messiah? Once again, we meet John the Baptist. In last week’s lectionary passage when Jesus came forward to be baptized, John seemed to recognize him as the one for whom they had all been waiting. But now John is in prison where he’s had some time to think about it, and he’s not sure Jesus fits the mold. He likely wonders why that Roman puppet and tyrant Herod is still on his throne. He likely wonders why he, John, is still in prison.

This Sunday is just eleven days until Christmas, and this passage tells us not of angels or shepherds or mangers but of John the Baptist and his doubts and disappointment. “You aren’t who I was expecting. You don’t look like a Messiah.” But the thing is, if John could ask such things, we can, too. “If you are the one who is to come, why is my friend dying of cancer? Why does every generation seem to need to go to war? Why are so many kids hungry, neglected, abused? Why are there still people all over the world, like John the Baptist, unjustly held in prisons?” Many of us have friends who have asked, “How can you believe in a just, merciful, all-powerful God when the world is such a mess? If God exists, and if Jesus is as important as you claim, shouldn’t things be better by now? Why are there still diseases, wars, earthquakes, greed?” Wouldn’t the Messiah clean up this mess?

Many of us have asked those questions ourselves. We still wait for the fulfillment of the Christmas promise: peace on earth and goodwill among all. That very promise is the reason Christmas can be so difficult. The headlines and sometimes our own lives make it clear that peace and goodwill seem as scarce today as they were a couple of millennia ago.

Quoting Isaiah 35 and 61, Jesus tells John’s disciples, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “We want only to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard . . . that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is seen a New Creation.” Jesus says more is going on than John has noticed. Yes, John is still in prison. But Jesus is saying, “Listen. Look. God is at work here, maybe not with the ‘unquenchable fire’ that you were expecting (Matthew 3:12), but God is at work just the same,” here and there in the world, and now and then in ourselves. Jesus is both the fulfillment of the people’s hopes and something altogether different. Something no one was expecting.

This means a couple of things. First, Jesus hasn’t fixed everything. We don’t have any better answer for our non-Christian friends than, “You’re right. The world is still a mess. We aren’t claiming that everything is ‘all better’ since the advent of Jesus as God with us, only that now we have a clearer idea of how to spot that new creation, a concrete hope for its fulfillment, and a fervent prayer for the present time: ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’”

But it also means something bigger. When Jesus tells John, “yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than [John]” (Matthew 11:11), he’s talking about us. The only example of power Jesus will give us – serving, feeding, healing, giving himself away – is the same power that we have. It is because of that power that here and there in the world, and now and then in ourselves is seen a new creation. I know people who don’t want to have anything to do with a God who doesn’t solve all the world’s problems in a blinding flash of light or with fiery judgment. But what we celebrate this season, the coming of God into our world, this world, the real, human world is more along the lines of what Thich Nhat Hanh has said: “The miracle is not to walk on water but on the earth.”

Still, during this season of festive excess, even that miracle can seem unattainable, unavailable, or simply not enough, to those who have experienced loss, trauma, ill health, economic setback, or fear what the future might hold. Some congregations offer a “Blue Christmas” or “Longest Night” service, a celebration of Christ’s incarnation and birth a few days ahead of December 25 and designed particularly for those who are dealing with loss, disappointment, grief, or depression. This reading, revealing that even intrepid John the Baptist had doubts and fears, might be an appropriate text for such a service. Doubt and grief are not unfaithful. Those of us who are feeling festive can stand in solidarity with those who long, who wait, who hope for something better; to assure them through our presence that God is with them, even if not in the way they might wish. It’s an opportunity to sing what David Lose describes as “that most honest of Advent hymns,” “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

You can see a short YouTube video of Bell’s subway performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw. 
Paul Tillich, The New Being (New York: Charles Scribner, 1955); http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=375&C=15. 
Mary Hinkle Shore, https://members.newproclamation.com/commentary.php?d8m=12&d8d=15&d8y=2013&atom_id=19021.  

Walter Brueggeman, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly Gaventa, James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: Year A (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).


Advent Waiting

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Matthew 24:36-44

This Sunday’s passage from Matthew is another text that seems out of place for the season. The culture around us is fresh from Thanksgiving and Black Friday and rushing headlong into Christmas, decking the halls and making merry. But instead of tidings of comfort and joy, the first gospel reading for Advent offers us a flood, a thief in the night, and warnings to be prepared. This year, it doesn’t seem so much as though these messages are coming from out in left field, and therefore, they’re more comforting.

The passage comes at the end of a long apocalyptic prediction by Jesus. Apocalyptic literature is crisis literature. It’s meant to bring comfort to distressed communities and it encourages faithfulness and courage during the struggle. The promise of God’s deliverance is normally linked to instructions to be watchful. Be alert. Pay attention. These apocalyptic passages always show up early in Advent. Of course, there is always something we can do, some action we can take, however small, to participate in God’s coming reign, but these passages remind us that there are some things we simply can’t make happen. Sometimes we have to wait. We may have to wait for a diagnosis, for the pain to stop, for a loved one to heal, or for a loved one to die. We may have to wait to find out whether we got the job, or whether we’ll lose the job. We may have to wait to figure out whether we’ve made the right decision. We may have to wait for justice, or to be loved. There really are some things we can do nothing about. That’s hard news for many of us who like to think we’re in control of our lives. We want to be proactive – which is good and right and faithful. But sometimes we must wait.

Advent re-tells the story of people who, like us, were waiting for the promises of God to be fulfilled and striving to live faithfully as they waited. Down through the ages, Christians have waited for the “Second Coming” of Christ, and that’s still language that many people use today. Presbyterians give a nod to this in our communion liturgy when we recite, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Speaking for myself, I’m not waiting for a cataclysmic end time; I believe, instead, that the reign of God is realized among us; as Frederick Buechner wrote, “Insofar as here and there, and now and then, God’s kingly will is being done in various odd ways among us even at this moment, the kingdom has come already. Insofar as all the odd ways we do [God’s] will at this moment are at best half-baked and halfhearted, the kingdom is still a long way off – a hell of a long way off, to be more precise and theological.” So, when I proclaim, “Christ will come again,” I don’t mean at the end of the world as we know it but in the next instant, or in our next encounter, in our next opportunity to meet Christ in others and in other situations.

Either way, Christ’s work isn’t complete, is it? God’s promises are not all fulfilled. The world is not beating its swords into plowshares or its spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4). As much as we wish we could, or pretend that we can, we can’t make God’s reign come on our own. And so we wait. Advent offers us the reminder that waiting can be a spiritual practice, a holy practice, because Advent not only reminds us that there will always be times we have to wait; it asks us how we are waiting.

The lectionary cuts off the reading of Matthew 24 at verse 44 but the final half-dozen verses of the chapter provide an analogy about household servants. In verse 45 Jesus mentions that a commendable servant would be the one who gives the other servants their food at the proper time. In other words, the good servant is commended for making dinner! It doesn’t say he amassed property and goods so that he’d be secure, even if others were suffering. It doesn’t say he hunkered down into an armed compound or bunker. It says simply that what made him a good servant was that he made dinner for others and served it at the usual time. In other words, he carried out the ordinary service of his ordinary life. Might it be that being faithful servants in our everyday routines demonstrates holy watchfulness for Christ’s return? Is being an honest office manager, a careful school bus driver, an ethical attorney, a thoughtful homemaker really a sign that we are aware that God will indeed fulfill God’s promises? Yes, it is.

This kind of waiting – being faithful in our everyday routines, paying attention and listening, watching for God’s active presence here and now – is a spiritual practice, a holy waiting, because it means we recognize our own limitations and rely on God. The Serenity Prayer is a terrific Advent prayer: “God, grant us serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.” There are things we cannot change or fix. For those things, we must wait; we wait for God. And here’s the thing: spiritual transformation doesn’t take place when we get what we want, when we want it. Spiritual transformation happens in the waiting room. Waiting is soul work.

As the Serenity Prayer reminds us, there are things we can change, and our faith asks us to join with God in changing those things. And so we wait for the kingdom by working for the values of the kingdom; being alert and paying attention to the voices on the margins, the voices we might not even want to hear. Joining in the work God is already doing in the world; working for God’s kingdom of justice and peace and kindness and generosity with a fierce hope that never dies.

And God does come. God comes with comfort through the kindness of a friend when we lose someone we love. God comes with healing through gentle touch. God comes with reassurance when we’re afraid. God comes with energizing spirit when we’re discouraged and life-giving love when we’re depressed. Sometimes God surprises us in coincidences that shift our thinking. Other times, God comes quietly – in the birth of the child of Bethlehem long ago and in the birth of love today, now, in the world, in your life and mine. The message of Advent is that God indeed comes into the world – to lonely exiles centuries ago, and to you and me.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Henri J. M. Nouwen, “A Spirituality of Waiting,” an article condensed from a tape available from Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, http://bgbc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/A-Spirituality-of-Waiting-by-Henri-Houwen.pdf.
David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2014/11/matthew-24-32-51/.
Scott Hoezee, “Advent 1A,” November 21, 2016, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/advent-1a/?type=the_lectionary_gospel.
Pete Wilson, “The Spiritual Benefits of Waiting,” November 19, 2015, http://www.faithgateway.com/spiritual-benefits-waiting/#.WDcMhqIrJsM
John M. Buchanan, “The Work of Waiting,” November 29, 2009, http://fourthchurch.org/sermons/2009/112909.html.

Magnificat

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Luke 1:39-55

   Historically, Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been held up as a role model for women.  In order for her to be the role model that suited the purposes of culture, however, she’s been reinvented as meek, mild, and passive.  The flowing, modest blue robe, downcast eyes, covered head.  That Mary bears very little resemblance to the Mary in Luke.

   The angel Gabriel has told Mary that she will bear a child.  Gabriel then explains that Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, is also expecting.  Elizabeth is “getting on in years,” so this, too, is extraordinary news.  “In haste,” Luke says, Mary goes to see her.  When Elizabeth greets Mary, her unborn child recognizes Mary’s unborn child, and turns a joyful somersault.  In Luke’s gospel, Elizabeth’s unborn son will grow up to be John the Baptist.  The message we’re to take from this is that even before they were born, John the Baptist, as well as his mother Elizabeth, heralded the coming of Jesus.  Elizabeth exclaims that Mary and her unborn child are blessed, and then Mary begins to sing.  We know her song as the Magnificat, named after the first word of the song in Latin.  Biblical scholars tell us that these words are not original with Mary.  The song is remarkably similar to Hannah’s song in the Old Testament – Hannah was the mother of the prophet Samuel.

   And what a song it is!  William Willimon tells the story of a college student explaining to him that the virgin birth is just too incredible to believe.  Willimon responded, “You think that’s incredible, come back next week.  Then, we will tell you that ‘God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.’  We’ll talk about the hungry having enough to eat and the rich being sent away empty.  The virgin birth?  If you think you have trouble with the Christian faith now, just wait.  The virgin birth is just a little miracle; the really incredible stuff is coming next week.”  Martin Luther said that the Magnificat “comforts the lowly and terrifies the rich.”  William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 19th century, warned his missionaries to India never to read the Magnificat in public; the verses are too inflammatory.  Several biblical commentaries use the same word to describe the Magnificat.  That word is revolutionary.    

   I wonder, if they really gave it some attention, whether more American Christians, or Christians generally, would have a harder time with the story of the virgin birth, or with this song of Mary’s.  Mary’s song blesses God for the victory won over the proud, powerful, and rich for the sake of the lowly and the hungry.  This is not a sweet soprano solo.  One commentator says it’s more like Janis Joplin.  But it’s all about God keeping God’s promises.  God moves, and the people at the top who have organized reality for their benefit but at the cost of others come under siege.  God keeps the covenant, and a teenager, a nobody from nowhere, testifies to wealth redistribution for the sake of the hungry.  The fact that she sings means God does exalt the lowly; that this happened to her means that the overturning of the inhumane order has begun.  She is lowly, and she is lifted up.

   Now, this is a good news, bad news proposition, isn’t it?  Revolution sounds pretty scary to many of us.  Cornelius Plantinga writes, “When our own kingdom has had a good year we aren’t necessarily looking for God’s kingdom.”  At first blush, Mary’s Magnificat might sound even a bit vengeful. But biblical scholar Sharon Ringe notes that a leveling, rather than reversal, is what Luke intends here, as God’s action moves us to a common middle ground, to a world where winner takes all is transformed into one in which all have a place at the table.

   So that is the question for us on the Fourth Sunday in Advent: Can we hear Mary’s song as good news for all people, not just for some, but for all?  Can we truly hear that lifting up the lowly and bringing down the powerful is good news, even for us?

   If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the little video, “An Unexpected Christmas,” produced in 2012 by St. Paul’s Church in Auckland, New Zealand, a church with a ministry called St. Paul’s Arts and Kids.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM1XusYVqNY.  This video captures precisely what Luke intended in the first two chapters of his gospel, in the story of Elizabeth and Mary, and in the Christmas story as well.  “Brilliant!  They won’t be expecting that!”  Although, to be fair, Luke’s version is edgier.  Luke gives center stage to these two women, ordinary women chosen by God and unhindered by men. 

   If you go to church, you hear the Magnificat and the Christmas story every year.  In the sentimental glow of the season, it’s easy to forget that when the angels sang about good news of great joy for all people, what they meant is this: God wants justice, peace, and well-being – shalom – for everybody, and so God comes to us in a vulnerable baby born to non-white, non-English-speaking, non-Christian, nobody parents in a backwater village in the Middle East, in a stable surrounded by mess and bad smells, with “no crib for a bed,” and the first people to hear about it, those shepherds out on a hillside, are the kind of people you’d never invite to dinner and you’d pray your daughter wouldn’t marry. 

   Which means that God can reach everyone; anywhere at any level, even when things are messy, or all messed up; even when our best laid plans go awry; even when we find ourselves at the bottom of the heap, whatever heap we’re in.  It means it is just like God to be at work in uncelebrated or unexpected ways in other times and places, too.

   Even in us.  Which, my friends, is truly brilliant.  They won’t be expecting that!

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Turn Around and Do Something Different

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Luke 3:7-18

I don’t blame any preacher for choosing the Philippians passage over the Luke passage this week. “Rejoice!” feels so much more Christmas-y than “You brood of vipers!” But it’s Advent; it’s not Christmas yet, and John the Baptizer is all about preparing the way. In spite of his harsh and scolding tone, there are some great Advent messages in what John tells the crowd.

The word “repentance” feels like a reprimand even without John’s brood of vipers indictment. As I wrote last week, to repent just means “turn around.” Go in a different direction. There is good news in recognizing and accepting that what you’ve been doing isn’t working. There is good news in making the decision to turn around and do something different. This good news is the beginning of healing, for ourselves and for our society.

What we’ve been doing isn’t working, or at least, it isn’t working for a large portion of the population of our world, and it certainly isn’t working for our planet. When the people ask John, “Okay, so what do we do?” his blunt and fairly simple instruction is to stop acting as though they live in a world in which their actions don’t impact others. Stop being greedy and dishonest; start sharing the wealth.

John seems to threaten that when the Messiah comes, just as in the song, “Santa Claus is coming to Town,” you’d better watch out. We learn when we encounter Jesus that he doesn’t wield a winnowing fork or threaten anyone with unquenchable fire. But like John, Jesus preaches that a life realigned with God’s purposes is good news. Luke is known for “good news to the poor,” and certainly this realignment is good news for the poor. But Jesus proclaims that it is good news for everyone. Years ago, author Barbara Ehrenreich was asked in an interview what she would give up to live in a more human world. She answered, “I think we shouldn’t think of what we would give up to have a more human world; we should think of what we would gain.”

John tells the people who come to be baptized by him, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Those with enough, and particularly those with more than enough, should share with those who do not have enough. As simple as this is, it is countercultural in our society, especially at Christmas. Even with Santas ringing bells on street corners and “Giving Tuesday,” most of our Christmas celebrations are shaped more by our consumption-driven culture than by the nativity story. The forces behind our patterns of consumption are complex and entrenched, and we will not solve anything by scolding people in the pews. The way we consume is a systemic issue, built into our economy and culture. However, systems are created and supported by individuals. We can go along, or we can turn around and try something different. So we might hint that we are challenged, or perhaps even called, to figure out what is “enough.” We might suggest that the reason some people want more and more stuff could be because they don’t think that they, themselves, are enough. We might assure them that our things are not what make us enough, or good, or important, or valuable. Every one of us is precious – just because we are who we are, the way God made us. And we might point out that this planet on which all of us – ALL of us – depend, is suffering from our consumption patterns.

A handful of resources you might use for a gentle but critical delivery of this good news:

1) An excellent 20-minute video entitled, “The Story of Stuff,” a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM
2) A terrific children’s picture book by Kaethe Zemach that isn’t just for kids, entitled, Just Enough and Not Too Much (New York: Scholastic Press, 2003).
3) An oldie but a goodie: Jo Robinson and Jean C Staeheli, Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love and Joy Back into the Season (New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1991).
4) John De Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas Naylor, Affluenza: How Overconsumption Is Killing Us – and How to Fight Back (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014).

The Word of God Came to a Nobody

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Luke 3:1-6

   After listing seven of the powers that be of the time, Luke concludes with “the Word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.”  Compared with the seven names mentioned just before, John is a nobody.  He’s in the wilderness, where no sensible person wants to be found, so he’s a nobody who’s nowhere.  Yet this is precisely where the Word of God went.  Not Jerusalem, or Athens, or Rome, or any of the other centers of culture and power, but to the margins.  And maybe that’s often where the Word of God shows up: just where we’d least expect it.

   This isn’t our first introduction to John in Luke’s gospel.  Mary’s cousin Elizabeth is miraculously pregnant beyond the normal years of childbearing.  When Mary visits Elizabeth with the news of her own miraculous pregnancy, Elizabeth’s child, John, does a cartwheel in the womb.  From the beginning, Luke’s gospel tells us that God is working to change the world through the weak and small – babies and barren women and unwed teenage mothers and wild-eyed prophets and itinerant preachers and executed criminals.  During Advent, we look not to Christmas but beyond, to the time when God’s work on this earth will be completed.  We just have to look around to know God isn’t done yet.  John reminds us that even today, God continues to work through unlikely characters to announce God’s good news of shalom, the Hebrew word that includes not only peace but justice, healing, love, and hope. 

   When you’re a minister, you end up telling your “faith journey” over and over, in seminary and to ordination and church calling committees and so on. When I tell my story, I always mention Bill Anderson.  I’d quit going to church in college.  My father’s rule was, “As long as I go to church, you go to church.”  That pretty much guaranteed that my sister, brother, and I would quit going to church when we moved away from home.  Even more than an expression of adolescent rebellion, however, it seemed to me that Christianity was all about who was getting into heaven and who was not.  I found this focus absurdly speculative, but even worse, it is mostly used to divide people, to manipulate people, to create insiders and outsiders; not to heal or bring people together. 

   When my older daughter was four, out of the blue she announced that she wanted to go to Sunday school.  I think she’d figured out that Sunday school was a chance to play with other kids one more day of the week, with the bonus that she could wear her Mary Janes.  I’d been raised Presbyterian, and a little church near the Marin County suburb where I lived at the time was the closest Presbyterian church.  I figured I could take her to church once, she’d get it out of her system and that would be that.  Sunday school was before the worship service and I wasn’t willing to leave my 4-year-old while I headed for a nearby coffee shop, so I stuck around for adult ed., which was held at the same time.  Adult ed. was a series on exploring things the church could do to help change the world.  That, by itself, was a surprise, but the guy who set the hook and reeled me in was Bill Anderson.  He was older than my dad, and he said Christianity was a social reform movement, a way to change the world – this world – to make it more just, more loving, more peaceful, more like God intends it.  Today I’d say, yes, it is that and so much more, but back then I’d never heard it put that way and it was exactly what I needed to hear. 

   During World War II Bill had been a military engineer who led troops onto Omaha Beach the day before D-Day.  His company was to secure the beaches to the extent possible before the actual invasion.  Bill wouldn’t talk about that day.  He’d get just so far into the story and then stop.  But it wasn’t Omaha Beach that caused him “to grow up fast and hard,” as he put it.  What really changed his life was being part of the military team that liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1945 and 1946.  It spurred him into the work of resettling refugees, which he did on and off, including after the Vietnam War.  He also served as a Witness for Peace in Nicaragua.  He went on three walks for peace in the Soviet Union, making connections with ordinary people who wanted peace and did not want to continue living under the threat of nuclear annihilation just because the Tiberiuses and Pilates and Herods of the world couldn’t let go of a grudge.

   Luke’s outrageous claim is that the “Word of the Lord” comes to a nobody named John in that no-place called the wilderness, and that this is more important than all the important people and events of the day.  And what is truly startling is that this is still possible.  Bill Anderson was a nobody in the grand scheme of things.  And yet, during the eighth year of the presidency of Ronald Reagan, while George Deukmejian was governor of California, and Diane Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco, the word of God came to Bill Anderson in Larkspur, California, who shared it with me.  Bill would be the last person to describe himself as a prophet.  When I’d tell him that he was largely responsible for the path that led me to ministry, he’d say, “Don’t blame me!” 

   Unlike John, Bill wouldn’t have used the word, “repentance” to describe what we’re supposed to do in response to God’s love.  But repentance, as loaded a word as that is, is exactly what Bill Anderson lived and preached, although he would claim he never “preached” at all.  To repent means to turn around.  It means quit going the direction you’ve been going.  John is saying, “Stop doing the things that sew hatred and strife and injustice; stop moving away from God’s shalom; turn around and move toward it.”  Bill Anderson lived and taught this for everyone to see.  He lived the good news that God loves everybody, not just some of us; that a loving God wants shalom for everybody; and the way we are to respond is to pitch in where we can.  In other words, we are to repent. 

   God is still working through the nobodies in the nowheres of our congregations, neighborhoods, and communities.  I hear God’s word of shalom, regularly, from many people; in what they say, and in what they do, which is often so much louder than words. 

   Frederick Buechner wrote, “Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.  Amen, and come, Lord Jesus.” 

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.