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Mother-daughter team, Beth Fitch and Darby Gerlicher, share their reflections on Auden's " Christmas Oratorio" i n this two-part series. If you missed the first half, you can find it here ; otherwise check out the second portion: The Father’s Proof By Darby Gerlicher Joseph: How then am I to know, Father, that you are just? Give me one reason. Gabriel: No. Joseph: All I ask is one Important and elegant proof That what my Love had done Was really at your will And that your will is Love. Gabriel: No, you must believe; Be silent, and sit still. Imagine, with W. H. Auden, what Joseph might have experienced when Mary became pregnant. In the lines that precede this excerpt, he portrays a respectable man who became the subject of whispers. Those who were kind to him acted out of pity, but many ignored him instead. Law enforcement did their best to keep Auden’s twentieth-century Joseph from physical harm, even if they could not pr

Mother-daughter team, Beth Fitch and Darby Gerlicher, share their reflections on Auden's " Christmas Oratorio" i n this two-part series. First, Beth shares her thoughts in: The Demands of Christmas By Beth Fitch Perhaps some of you join me in enjoying the works of poet W. H. Auden. One of my favorites is the lengthy poem, first published in 1944, “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio.” It never fails to challenge me to think deeply about familiar Christmas Scriptures. The poem takes the events of the story of the birth of Christ and draws out their incarnational impact on all aspects of life, even the mundane. Five lines from the first section, “Advent” part III, are especially thought provoking: We who must die demand a miracle. How could the Eternal do a temporal act, The Infinite become a finite fact? Nothing can save us that is possible: We who must die demand a miracle. In what way do those who must die demand a miracle? The p

By Lisa Lueken I am so excited that Pastor Ritch is preaching through Romans and has camped on Romans 12:1-2: “ Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” because it is my life verse! I would like to tell you a bit about how the Lord transformed my thinking by the renewing of my mind as it relates to getting older. On August 6, 2016, I turned 50. For many, this is a joyous occasion and full of jokes about being “over the hill.” But I had been dreading that day for years! (That’s right... years! ) It could have had something to do with the fact that our culture does not really value older women. It could have been because my 50 th birthday coincided with bi