Pastor Darren: Well, are we ready for the season now?
Pastor Darren: We got Thanksgiving done.
Pastor Darren: Are you ready?
Pastor Darren: Right.
Pastor Darren: Oh, it's exciting.
Pastor Darren: You know, Home Depot can finally put up all their Christmas stuff.
Pastor Darren: I know they've been waiting.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: We can start playing Christmas music.
Pastor Darren: I know everybody's been holding off.
Pastor Darren: You know, but it is interesting.
Pastor Darren: We get into this season with so much levity and so much lightness and all those songs that we enjoy, the foods we enjoy, the presents and the gift giving.
Pastor Darren: And it's such a great season.
Pastor Darren: And then we get to the Christian calendar, and all of a sudden we get Noah and flooding and wiping out the earth.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: We get two women who are grinding meal and one gets taken and one does not get taken.
Pastor Darren: And then the owner who has to prepare for the thieves who will come in the night and take his stuff.
Pastor Darren: You ready to make a pie now?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: You're ready to go put the Christmas lights up?
Pastor Darren: This is uh, you know, this is how we get you ready for Christmas here in the Christian church.
Pastor Darren: We get you all excited by talking about the time in Genesis in which God wiped out most of everybody on the earth.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: It just sometimes you wonder when you're getting into this Christian calendar.
Pastor Darren: The story to me actually, it reminds me of a story in my own life.
Pastor Darren: For a while, I was appointed out in Texas outside Austin.
Pastor Darren: And I don't know how many of you have experience with Texas, maybe experience even over a long period of time where you were able to experience a Texas rainstorm.
Pastor Darren: Have you ever been in a Texas rainstorm?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: The kind where the water is just if you happen to be driving, it feels like your car is gonna cave in.
Pastor Darren: It's coming down so hard.
Pastor Darren: When you're uh uh um in your house, you're a little nervous that it might be too much water for your roof to hold everything up.
Pastor Darren: Has anybody been in that kind of situation, Texas or otherwise, right?
Pastor Darren: A few of us, you know what I'm talking about, right?
Pastor Darren: So I remember when we were living out in Texas, and it was one night where the kids had gone to sleep.
Pastor Darren: Uh, I was actually up in bed as well.
Pastor Darren: Brenda wasn't ready to go to bed, I guess.
Pastor Darren: She was downstairs watching TV, and all of a sudden, on a thunderstorm night, we get the loudest boom I've ever heard.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And we're jumping out of bed as quick as I can jump out of bed, right?
Pastor Darren: Because you know something's going, something's gone wrong at this point.
Pastor Darren: It was that kind of boom.
Pastor Darren: And the storm was already running.
Pastor Darren: So you're already half ready for whatever the heck might happen, right?
Pastor Darren: Or what might be happening.
Pastor Darren: Now, for me, I go to bed and you know, some very uh familiar clothes will call them.
Pastor Darren: So I had to get, you know, some pants on and uh get myself ready to be able to go, what the heck's happening in our house?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And I come downstairs and we're talking to each other.
Pastor Darren: We're like, this is this was crazy.
Pastor Darren: And then of course we start smelling gas, right?
Pastor Darren: And we're like, okay, well, I'm not a genius, but I know that's not good.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: You're smelling gas in your house, and you're thinking this isn't something we ought to be uh experiencing or believing in.
Pastor Darren: I I think the power went out, right?
Pastor Darren: The whole smoke alarms went out.
Pastor Darren: It was it was quite a night.
Pastor Darren: Meanwhile, it the rain didn't stop with that, right?
Pastor Darren: The rain was continuing to run, but we're thinking we've gotta get we gotta get out of this house, right?
Pastor Darren: So we go over and neighbors are two houses over, right?
Pastor Darren: But that's a trip when it's had rain in Texas rain, right?
Pastor Darren: And there's lightning and thunderstorm and all of this is going on, and you're but you but you're thinking, well, it's gas going on.
Pastor Darren: We learned a bit about my daughter as well.
Pastor Darren: She must have been five or so at that time, and um, she slept through it.
Pastor Darren: So we thought, all right, well, you're safe if things go wrong.
Pastor Darren: You're gonna sleep through whatever the heck happens, right?
Pastor Darren: So I end up picking her up, we carry her across, we get over, and we kind of huddle over there.
Pastor Darren: The gas people show up.
Pastor Darren: Uh, they did the simplest thing, which it's you know, when you're a young dad and don't know simple things, just turned off the gas at the oven, and and that pretty much solved it.
Pastor Darren: And we were able to go back home, and you know, and things started getting back in in order.
Pastor Darren: But what we learned was that lightning had hit the house.
Pastor Darren: It had actually hit our house, and and uh the only like recognizable damage turned out to be that gas line that undid there and and then was blowing into the house.
Pastor Darren: But lightning hit our house, and clearly we were not fully ready for such an experience.
Pastor Darren: So when I read this passage today about Noah being the way we uh uh teach ourselves about being prepared, about the women, some getting taken, some not getting taken, you know, and the boss needing to be aware of themes, so we better be ready.
Pastor Darren: I think of that story.
Pastor Darren: And I'm telling you, when I think of that story, my next thought is boy, am I much more ready for Advent now?
Pastor Darren: Christmas may as well come today because I'm ready.
Pastor Darren: I don't know if you feel the same way reading this passage.
Pastor Darren: It just takes me into this weird space of what are we thinking?
Pastor Darren: How is this how is this getting us ready?
Pastor Darren: How is this inspiring us to prepare for the coming of the birth of Christ?
Pastor Darren: You know, that our as Christians are evidence of of God's true and deep love for us in the flesh here amongst us.
Pastor Darren: How does that get us ready for that?
Pastor Darren: How does that even teach us about getting ready?
Pastor Darren: But after that, I started thinking and remembering another story from my past.
Pastor Darren: Some of you know I did a lot of youth ministry uh before I switched into the big kid ministry here with the the big churches.
Pastor Darren: You know, I was uh running around uh uh with young people, kind of like Nancy, only I was a little more sane.
Pastor Darren: I didn't do the crazy things she did.
Pastor Darren: I will never do a mystery night.
Pastor Darren: This is my commitment.
Pastor Darren: Yeah, oh, a mystery week.
Pastor Darren: I'm out.
Pastor Darren: But I remember as a uh youth uh pastor, youth director in the churches, we would go and do the summer camps.
Pastor Darren: Right.
Pastor Darren: And for us, we live down near the lazy W United Methodist camp down there.
Pastor Darren: I think from here you might be going to Wrightwood.
Pastor Darren: Probably used to go to Colby, uh, but uh we don't go to Colby anymore.
Pastor Darren: If you go to Colby, that road that scared you to death, yeah, we don't drive that road anymore.
Pastor Darren: So you don't go to Colby anymore.
Pastor Darren: But I was at summer camp, and I remember being in uh a family group, which is what we called the small discussion groups that you would be in when you were at summer camp, right?
Pastor Darren: An opportunity to process whatever lessons or theme was going on, and you'd have usually two leaders and then some kids, and then it was just it was kind of the group that you got a little more intimate with, along with your cabin over the course of the week.
Pastor Darren: And I remember I was paired off with uh a friend of mine, Vicky Richards, and uh we felt like we were a pretty good teaming of people that we thought we'd done enough camps and and had good heart for all of these kids.
Pastor Darren: But uh secretly, what I knew is I'm kind of a nut.
Pastor Darren: I'm mostly there to entertain everybody.
Pastor Darren: That's my main job when I'm at summer camp is to make sure it's fun, not like here.
Pastor Darren: And we were doing closing night, and on closing night, uh we recognized that one of our kids was having a really emotional time.
Pastor Darren: It was a weighted time, and his head was down, and he was kind of feeling the weight of things.
Pastor Darren: Some of you who've been on this kind of experience might have had a a similar story in your life of just that the poignance of the moment, you know, God's presence weighing so heavy, you're just feeling the emotions, and and he's feeling it.
Pastor Darren: And my good friend Vicky Richards says, Go talk to him.
Pastor Darren: Go over, he needs somebody right now.
Pastor Darren: And I'm like, who, you know, well, I'm a funny guy.
Pastor Darren: Am I gonna go talk to him?
Pastor Darren: What am I bringing to to this to this party, as it were?
Pastor Darren: But you don't go against Vicky Richards.
Pastor Darren: So I got up and I went over and I talked to him, and we really had a good moment.
Pastor Darren: And I was able to be kind of helpful to him.
Pastor Darren: I like to use the words now in my life, that I was able to be God's instrument, be able to speak the words that God would have spoken to him, that Jesus would have spoken to him in a way that uh there was some inspiration, there was some comfort, there was some healing that was able to happen.
Pastor Darren: I I got to be, I got to be that that guy.
Pastor Darren: I think of that story because I I don't necessarily look at uh at myself in that time and say, you know, I really was uh ready.
Pastor Darren: I made myself ready.
Pastor Darren: You know, I I don't know that I could claim that.
Pastor Darren: You can hear it in the way I tell the story, right?
Pastor Darren: Vicky had to goose me along to get over and do that.
Pastor Darren: So in some ways, I don't know that I really felt like uh uh I was a ready person, but I was in the right place.
Pastor Darren: I was where I knew I had seen God's presence, I had felt God's strength, I had seen and experienced opportunities to be in that that space where I got to be that love, where I got to experience that love, where I got to to to know what it feels like to be part of what makes this world a blessing.
Pastor Darren: A blessing to me, a blessing to those that I'm able to engage.
Pastor Darren: I knew enough to get myself to that camp.
Pastor Darren: And I wonder if this is a little bit of what Jesus is trying to get across with this passage.
Pastor Darren: We don't always know when the opportunity to be an instrument of God's love, when the opportunity to get to experience God's living presence amongst us, with us, we don't know when that's coming.
Pastor Darren: It might happen now, it might happen later today, it might not happen for a week.
Pastor Darren: We don't really know all the ways that God is going to be working through this.
Pastor Darren: But you know, to be in that space where we actually get that opportunity and to see it coming and to be able to live into it, I think is what Jesus might be pointing to here.
Pastor Darren: In this context, I look at that metaphor of these two women who are grinding meal together.
Pastor Darren: One of them gets taken by God and one of them does not.
Pastor Darren: We hear that story and we're thinking, oh, it's some sort of rapture kind of thing where one gets to be with God and one gets to be somewhere else that we all don't want to be.
Pastor Darren: But when I look at it through this new lens, this lens that says, you know, God's God's offering opportunities for us all the time to have that experience, to be that experience for other people.
Pastor Darren: And sometimes we're ready for it, and sometimes we're not.
Pastor Darren: Just like the two women who are grinding a meal.
Pastor Darren: So as we enter into this Advent season, as as we start getting ready for this coming Christmas Eve in which we we're gonna celebrate the living presence of God in this on this earth, the evidence of God's deep, deep love for us.
Pastor Darren: I'm wondering if we're going to see the opportunity, see the signs of what God is doing, of where Christ is real.
Pastor Darren: Are we gonna see these opportunities over this season?
Pastor Darren: Or are we gonna miss it?
Pastor Darren: Let's hope we see those signs and see those opportunities and that we're able to live into it and that the birth of Christ becomes something as meaningful as it can be for us, life changing in deep, deep ways.
Pastor Darren: Amen.