GREETINGS TO THE HOLY PEOPLE OF GOD,

When a man undertakes to repent toward his fellowmen,

it is repenting straight up a precipice;

when he repents toward law,

it is repenting into the crocodile's jaws;

when he repents toward public sentiment,

it is throwing himself into

a thicket of brambles and thorns;

but when he repents toward God,

he repents toward all love and delicacy.

God receives the soul as

the sea the bather,

to return it again,

purer and whiter than he took it.

Henry Ward Beecher

The season of Advent invites us to repent. John the Baptizer invites us to repent. Henry Ward Beecher fine tunes repentance and redirects our repentance toward God. Repentance is a turning again toward God, even changing our mind about God.

As we are immersed in our culture we are tempted to look to the culture and the community for the hope, peace, joy and love we seek and desire. But we will not find what we are looking for in our relationships or the law or public sentiment. Beecher’s poetic imagery of the unscalable precipice, the crocodile jaws and the thorny brambles help us to see the dead-end of where these repentances lead us. We want our society, our culture and our relationship to be good, lifegiving, and trustworthy and how we get there is by turning to God, changing our mind about God, looking again at how God is at work in us and all the world, the world God created and deeply loves.

So, we follow the boney pointing finger of John the Baptist, who so faithfully helps us to turn to God and see Jesus and inhale the power of the Holy Spirit. God is with us. Wake up! Repent! Christ is coming.

God’s peace,

Pastor Connie Spitzack