Advent Pepper

As I refilled my bird feeders this morning, I was reminded of the time a children’s Bible lesson went awry.

Katherine Vest came up with a great idea on a Saturday night for how to teach the parable of the sower the next morning. She was slated to lead story time for children in the 8:45 am service who leave the Church just before the sermon and return at the Peace. Katherine’s neighbor had multiple bird feeders and kept a tub of bird seed in her garage, so Katherine asked if she might take a cupful. The next morning, after retelling the parable of the sower, she gave each child a handful of seeds to throw outside on the Church grounds as a way of reinforcing the parable with some interactive fun.

Afterwards as the children waited outside the Church door to return to their pews, one child rubbed her eyes, and then began to cry out, “Owww! My eyes hurt!” As children do, the others immediately touched their own eyes, and similar wails went out, and soon Katherine was ushering a group of crying children back into the Church.

What Katherine did not know was that her neighbor mixed cayenne pepper in with her birdseed to keep the squirrels away.

Sometimes Advent can feel like the Church is mixing pepper into what is hyped to be a sweet time of year. Last Sunday our gospel reading warned of a day when stars fall from the sky; this Sunday the austere John the Baptist shows up calling for repentance.

Advent seeks to deepen our experience of Christmas by encouraging us to spend time in quiet, in reflection, getting real about how our lives have gone awry. While we wait for Christmas, ironically, we can be relieved that God did not, and does not, wait for us to get our life in order before arriving with gifts of hope and love and peace. And those gifts mean more when we are willing to acknowledge how much we long for them.

A blessed Advent to you all.

Lisa