A Prayer for the New Year By Wil Triggs

Heavenly Father,
Maker of all things,
The One who holds all things in his hands,
We bless you for the richness and depth of your mercy and love.
 
As we begin the year, 
let us start with thankful hearts, postures of humility,
openness to new and better things from you.
 
Thank you for our homes.
Help us to remember those who are without homes or feel far from home.
Thank you for our community.
Help us to open ourselves to those who feel as if they have no community.
Thank you for the freedom to openly worship you.
Help us to remember those who risk their lives to practice their faith.
 
Thank you for our city leaders.
Give them wisdom from on high to lead us in ways beyond ourselves.
Thank you for our courts and their officers.
Help them to faithfully seek mercy, justice and peace.
Thank you for our sheriffs and our police.
Guide them in the way of peace in the midst of trouble.
 
Thank you for the creative beauty of our park district and forest preserves. 
They help us to see your handiwork all around us.
Thank you for our school administrators, teachers and staff.
Bless them as they bless our children with the gift of learning.
Thank you for our neighbors.
May we bless them throughout the coming year with our presence and care.
 
Thank you for College Church
And the gift of giving ourselves
To this church and its people.
Help us to serve with all that we are,
With everything we have,
With our hopes, treasures, trials and dreams.
 
Guide and protect those who lead our congregation.
Empower them by your Spirit
To lead with your wisdom, not theirs,
To teach with your Word, not the word of man,
To give of themselves like Christ for his bride.
Help our following to be grumble-free.
 
Thank you that you make us messengers.
Bless our messages with your grace and love.
We ask you to make 2025 a year of blessing and growth for our people, community, nation and world. 
May many discover the life-changing wonder of Jesus.
Bring peace, we pray.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, may we bless you with everything that we are, with all that we have, in our weaknesses and our strengths, we pray. 

May you bless us and may we bless others in new and unexpected ways in the days ahead, we pray. 
 
Thank you for the blessing of prayer. May we pray and grow in prayer through good and bad and glorify you in word and deed.
 
Amen
This prayer was adapted from a prayer written for the Wheaton Leadership Prayer Breakfast.

Smelling the Clouds By Lorraine Triggs

It was one of the worse insults we could bestow on a friend: “She’s smelling the clouds.” Simply put, the friend had turned up her nose on the creative endeavor my sisters and I had planned for the neighborhood for something better—if that were even possible. Smelling the clouds was our euphemism for being a snob, and one we used without a hint of irony.

According to the esteemed Cambridge Dictionary, a snob not only judges people’s importance mainly by their social position but also “gives a very high value to any quality which that person believes makes him or her better than other people.”  It’s the second part of the definition that creates some dissonance, because as Christians, don’t we have a quality that makes us better than other people?  Say the quality of our righteousness?

This perceived righteousness of ours could have potential upsides. Instead of feeling inferior to a culture gone awry, we can feel superior that we’re right and those others who sit in deep darkness are wrong. We shine our lights brightly among ourselves, assured of our rightness. It also would make it easier to follow the Apostle James’ instruction in James 2:1-4 to not show partiality. We wouldn't be interested in showing the person with fine clothing and wealth the best seats in church. We would be too busy saving them for ourselves.

There is one major sticking point in all this. Righteousness isn’t a quality anyone inherently possesses. God doesn’t change us into better people, he changes us into new people. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) It has never been, nor will it ever be, our righteousness that saves us. “For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:17)

In his blog “Does the Pursuit of Godliness Lead to Self-Righteousness?” (posted on The Gospel Coalition site on May 7, 2024), Trevin Wax wrote: “Of course, the pursuit of godliness is a dangerous path; it’s easy to be ensnared in pride, to wander into pomposity and fall into self-righteousness. Those dangers are real.

”But rightly understood, pursuing godliness ought to remind us of the massive distance between us and God. The bigger God is in our vision, the smaller we feel. The more we look up to him, the less we could even think of looking down on our neighbors. The closer we get to God, the more we see how far is left to go.”

When my head is in the clouds and I'm pursuing God in my own way, I am forgetting the way of Christ, who came to pursue me when I wasn't interested and was not running to but away from God. Pursuit is only possible because of being pursued.

There are days I am so pre-occupied with smelling the clouds that I trip and fall flat on my face, which is a grace as I land exactly where I should be before God.

Jazzy the Lamb Gets to Bethlehem—Barely By Wil and Lorraine Triggs

This musing is adapted from a story we wrote for the 4:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service this year.
 
“While shepherds watch their flocks by night, I make my great escape.” Jazzy the lamb knew how to sing, but he didn’t tell anyone. He just sang to himself. He was there that night except for the part when he wasn’t.
 
Good Shep had just finished counting all the sheep when Jazzy managed to sneak away.
 
Sneaking, creeping, running away, free from the rest of that boring flock that just followed the staff or the dog and free from the watchful eyes of the shepherds. Jazzy slipped and stumbled over the ground. Then he tripped over himself on the rocky ground. When he regained his footing, he looked back and saw flashes of light. In fact, the dark cold place where his flock was resting seemed like it was glowing. Something was going on in the sky.
 
“Whatever. If I just keep walking, I’ll find better pastures sooner or later,” Jazzy rationalized to himself.
 
But the path ahead seemed to be getting darker and darker. And where he come from was looking more and more like day. It sounded crazy but—Ouch! Oh no.
 
Jazzy’s hoof was stuck. He couldn’t get it out from a rocky crag. And the thorns—they hurt.
 
His mind wandered a bit at first. Nowhere to go now, he thought. Whatever that light show was, well, he bet good old Good Shep was getting ready to head into town to see something new and probably exciting. But Jazzy knew Good Shep would do his counting to be sure he had all the sheep.
 
95, 96, 97, 98, 99—99—there should be one hundred. Jazzy could hear Shep saying it seriously to himself. No one else was so precise and careful about each sheep. The sheep talk, and word gets around. Jazzy heard stories. Some shepherds get sloppy when it comes to the flock. A missing sheep here or there—that’s just the cost of doing business. Not Good Shep. So what if the other shepherds didn’t care. They wanted to hightail it to Bethlehem to see whatever was coming next.
 
But Good Shep would have none of it. “Go on ahead,” he said to the other shepherds. And they did.
 
Jazzy started his bleating, baah-haaing cries. His hoof had started to throb and bleed. He raised the volume on his cries.
 
“I think I hear him…It’s Jazzy.” Good Shep was the only person who could tell. “I’d recognize that bleating anywhere.”
 
Jazzy was starting to panic. No matter which way he turned, he couldn’t get his hoof out from the rock. It was stuck good and tight. Everything Jazzy did made it worse. He had heard about animals less refined than he chewing their limb off to be free of a trap. That was so not Jazzy's style. But he couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if a wolf or a coyote passed by.
 
Then suddenly, the hands of a human freed him from the rocks and thorns and raised him up high. Jazzy shook a little and then saw who it was. Good Shep lifted him from the cold, hard, uncomfortable ground and gently put Jazzy over his shoulders. 
 
“You’re quite the mess, little guy,” he said.  “Let’s get you cleaned up, and we can catch up with the others on the way to Bethlehem.” 
 
So, he cleaned Jazzy’s wool and bandaged his hoof.
 
Good Shep told Jazzy that running off meant he missed the angels singing and telling them about a new king coming. The shepherds were some of the first to know. Good news for people everywhere.
 
Good Shep and Jazzy caught up to the others just as they entered the stable.
 
And there in the feeding trough for the donkeys and cows was a baby, a human baby. A manger. In at least one human language, it means eat.
 
Jazzy didn’t really get it. After all, he was just animal, but then Good Shep said that this baby was going to save people all around the world. He was going to save people just like Good Shep who left the shepherds and the flock to find Jazzy and bring him back home.
 
Jazzy never was so happy as when he realized Good Shep was setting him free from his mess and carried him on his shoulders. If that was what this baby was going to do for people, well, that was some good news that’s really out of this world, yet somehow in it.
 
Merry Christmas shepherds. Merry Christmas lambs. Merry Christmas sun. Merry Christmas moon and stars. Merry Christmas everything and everyone everywhere.
 
Merry because—as Good Shep later told the flock—the baby in the manger would one day be a shepherd like him and a lamb like Jazzy, only perfect. On his shoulders, even and especially when comes the cross, he bears it all, he carries all.  And he will tell the people to mangent—eat. And drink and be merry. Remember that I came to live, die, live that you might know, eat and drink and live in that glowing-in-the-dark kind of light where the angels say, “Do not be afraid. Be exceedingly glad.”
 
Now both shepherds and sheep lie down by still water and rest.

It Came Upon a Midnight: Fear By Lorraine Triggs

My childhood Christmas fear wasn’t ending up on the wrong side of Santa’s list; it was the Christmas tree lights—those big, old-fashioned lights that became hot to the touch in a matter of seconds. Even though my father, the electrician, carefully strung the lights on the tree and nary a frayed cord among them, I remained convinced that the hot lights would touch innocent pine needles, and the entire tree would become engulfed in flames. It never happened, but my fear remained until the tree came down.

That first Christmas was no stranger to fear or troubled hearts.

In a setting ripe with fear (after all, it was in the days of Herod, king of Judea, according to Luke 1:5), we meet righteous Zechariah and Elizabeth—old and childless. Elizabeth’s reproach was about to turn into rejoicing, but not before fear fell on Zechariah when Gabriel, the angel of the Lord, appeared with assurances to not be afraid, because of the good news of answered prayer and John’s birth.

Six months later, Garbriel appeared to Mary. According to Luke 1:29, Mary was greatly troubled at Gabriel’s greeting—not his appearance—“Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” (Luke 1:28-29), and their conversation continues as we celebrate the child that was born. We also meet righteous Joseph and unsuspecting shepherds who are startled by fear.

What’s curious about this first Christmas fear is the ready obedience that follows. Mary describes herself as a servant of the Lord, and submits to his word, Zechariah writes J-O-H-N on a tablet, Joseph takes Mary as his wife, and the shepherds hurry off to Bethlehem in the middle of the night.

But what to make of the wise men from the east? Astrologers, astronomers, learned. Matthew doesn’t record a troubled heart among them, but an expectation of a newborn king whose star they saw as it rose. In its online seriesTroubled Passages, Crossway Publishers has a post about the wise men in Matthew 2:1-12. Wrote Dan Doriani, “Magi, or ‘wise men . . .' were royal counselors. At best, they were learned and prudent. At worst, they were charlatans, sycophants, and brutes . . . . Whatever their character, the line between astrology and astronomy was thin, if only because stargazing was respectable. Scripture both prohibits and mocks astrology . . ., yet God reversed expectations and spoke to stargazers in language they understood, thereby calling Gentiles to Jesus.”

Actually, there was a troubled heart among them—Herod’s heart, a proud heart that worshiped only himself and his power, contrary to what he told the wise men. Those stargazers, however, never did return to Herod, instead “they departed to their own country by another way.” (Matt. 2:12)

I think the wise men not only went home another way but also went home as changed people because they met Jesus as T.S. Elliot wrote in his poet, “Journey of the Magi,”

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

We all are glad for another’s death. We are glad for great news of great joy that a Savior came to save his people from their sin, glad he came to those sitting in great darkness, and glad he came for troubled and fearful hearts that choose to trust and discover all their hopes and fears are met in Jesus now and forever.

Merry Christmas.

Pink Candle By Wil Triggs

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”  (Luke 2:10b-11)
 
“Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”  (Luke 2:15b)
 
“For a second year running, there is no Christmas cheer in Bethlehem, with tourists shunning the Palestinian city and many residents seeking a way out as the Gaza war grinds on,” a Reuters story reported December 1, 2024. “Bethlehem's Manger Square in front of the Church of the Nativity is largely deserted and souvenir shops are shuttered.”
 
Life can be tumultuous.

William Blake's paintngs include two sides of humanity—one of Newton planning and creating, leaning forward with a compass planning for higher things; the other is Nebuchadnezzar, matted hair on head and beard, leaning forward on all fours eating grass in the field like a wild animal. These images are the power and folly of human leadership without God in a fallen universe.

The head on the side of the building could have been Caesar or Nero or Caligula. Think Marx. Think Lenin, Stalin, Tito, Mao Zedong. Wall portraiture rendered itself with some features but years and decades smooth over the faces, trading them out for new ones. Pilate, Kim Il Sung, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic. Nebuchadnezzars all of them. We hate or we exalt leaders in various ways. Bashar al-Assad. Duvalier. Ceausescu. Ivan the Terrible. Brilliant and powerful one moment. Animals hungry for grass the next. And then Ozymandias.
 
In contrast to human leaders of earthly kingdoms, Jesus brings an other-worldly joy to us from the kingdom of heaven. Where the world celebrates the power of human might and humans running away from or drifting toward tyranny, Jesus calls us to sacrifice, to a way that puts the good of others first.
 
The Old Testament prophets foreshadow the altogether new.
 
Hosea lives the foreshadowing—with the prophet marrying a harlot, with children named Judgment and No Mercy and Not My People. The Lord said to Hosea, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel.” (Hosea 3:1)
 
The glass is dark, but the light is flickering, dawning into a new day that is not the way of man.
 
God’s ways, not ours. Against his better judgment, Jonah journeys from the stomach of the whale into the heart of Ninevah to call people to the one true God and then to sit under the tree... “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” (Jonah 4:2b)
 
To be like Jesus is to bleed and die and, by faith, live again.
 
Did all the shepherds live to hear the Sermon on the Mount? Did any of them eat the miraculous bread and fish? Did they see Jesus on the cross? Were any of them among the witnesses of the resurrected Christ? For Simeon and Anna, seeing him as a baby was enough. It was not the full picture—no miracles yet, no cross, no empty tomb or disciples staring up at the sky. But they were not bereft of joy in their waiting.
 
We are blessed to have the full revelation of the Bible—rejoice in that! But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that we can fully grasp or attain everything here until the darkened glass grows clear. And though it is clearer than it was, it is still dark.
 
Yet we must embrace joy. We can’t help it. We follow the Jesus joy-giver.  We can know this shepherd joy before us now no matter what we might face.
 
Missionary Amy Carmichael wrote, “Joy is not gush. Joy is not mere jolliness. Joy is perfect acquiescence—acceptance, rest—in God’s will, whatever comes. And that is so only for the soul who delights himself in God.”
 
For those who pray year after year for loved ones to turn in believing faith for the first time ever,
 
For those of us with loved ones estranged from God,
 
For those who wonder—did that person die lost or was there a cry out before the end, he comes.
 
For those facing or fighting disease that robs of strength and health,
 
For people who don’t know who they are and their families who don’t know what to do,
 
For those with broken marriages who wonder if healing and change will ever come,
 
For those grief-stricken with the loss of ones loved, and loved ones who can never be replaced, he comes.
 
If you find yourself wandering in a strange land you never dreamed would be your home,
 
If you find yourself in prison—literal and metaphorical—waiting, longing, dreaming of freedom, he comes.
 
Every dream and every longing, the lost coin, the precious pearl, the smallest of seeds sown in the land and in our hearts—know that it grows. The Good Shepherd, having left the 99, setting aside the robes and splendors, finds us and hoists us onto his shoulders from the ground where we are caught or hurt or both, and he starts the walk back to the flock.
 
The inns are all filled, but the good Lord Christ enters in to the forgotten, stinky manger places of the soul; he knows the longing, doubting, fearing, loving hearts. Even when he seems far away, he’s near, right beside us. We are carried unknowingly on his shoulders.
 
With laughter and with tears filling our eyes, we light the pink candle of the shepherds, the candle of joy.

Awed by Awe By Lorraine Triggs

We can now add awe to diet and exercise in our pursuit of a healthy lifestyle. So writes Hope Reese in her article “How a Bit of Awe Can Improve Your Health.” Reese quotes Dr. Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkely, who defines awe as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.”

It’s also accessible to everyone and part of everyday life as Keltner writes in his book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. Keltner says that awe “is its own thing,” and not one of the six basic emotions—anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear and sadness—that were identified in 1972.

I don’t know how we coped prior to 1972 with these emotions and awe, but Keltner and other experts are currently awed by awe and its impact on our health and well-being. A professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University points out that “intentional awe experiences, like walks in nature, collective movement, like dance or ceremony” improve our psychological well-being.

Awe hasn’t always meant nature walks or well-being. The archaic definition of awe is dread or terror, to fear greatly or to feel a great reluctance to meet or face, which underscores the audacity of Moses’s request of God in Exodus 33:18, “Please show me your glory.” (At least Moses said please.) God turned down Moses because of awe. God knew that no one could see his face and live. Instead, God showed Moses his heart—his goodness, his grace and his mercy.

Like Moses, David had a sense of this archaic awe in Psalm 51, but instead of asking to see God’s face, David asked God to hide his face from David’s sin. Like he did with Moses, God showed David his mercy, unfailing love and great compassion. Even Dr. Keltner would have to agree that this is awe, something so vast that it transcends our understanding of the world, especially in a world that finds retribution easier to understand than mercy and compassion. But God, who is rich in mercy, unfailing in his love and abounding in compassion, brings healing in his wings and light to people sitting in darkness.

This is the awe of Advent—vast transcendent visits of angels to a young girl, a carpenter and senior saints one minute and the night sky the next, proclaiming great news of great joy of a newborn baby who chose to enter the very world he created, full of grace and truth, unfailing love and great compassion, to save his people from their sins.

May we all be awed by awe this Advent.

The Paper Pumpkin Thanksgiving Mystery By Wil Triggs

This last Sunday, we asked the Kindergarteners to think of something they’re thankful for and 25 children, gave or take a few, raised their hands. Lorraine had a bunch of construction paper pumpkins, and when the children replied, they could put a pumpkin on the whiteboard under the banner “We are thankful for. . .” Repeats were allowed. We will ask for more thanks this Sunday, but so far, this is their pumpkin harvest of thanks:

God
Sister
Dad
Stuffed animals
Mom
Jesus
God
Thanksgiving at grandparents
Aunt Sarah
Fish
Sharing food
K class
Pumpkin pie
Family
Ana and Noah
Jesus
Family
Grandparents
Pumpkin pie
God
Family

To me, there’s something about writing down one’s thanks that makes it more real, more concrete. I sometimes save notes people mail in or drop off at church. One stands out. I go back to it often.

Eighty-six-year-old Anne sent a notecard to College Church with the following message:

One of your church members gave me a ride to the train station last week. It was a cold and snowy day and with my cane I was not managing the snow-covered sidewalk too well.

She would not accept any money so I told her I’d put it in the donation at church.
This is to say thank you, God bless,
Anne

At the Thanksgiving Eve service, brave people stood and publicly expressed thanks. They were brief and heartfelt. You know with each one that there is longer story in the background.  

Loving parents, family, home, my friend, College Church, my job, the prayers of the church for my mother, youth group, ever-present Jesus, sharing the gospel with my students, College Church’s music, KMs, HYACKs, the goodness of God, the family of the church, KMs, the Living Word class, the Lord's help when I faced thoughts of suicide, God's covenantal love, the seventh-grade boys, Mike, the metaphor of a new pair of glasses, Baxter, my job, women's Bible study, God's presence in the storms of life.

As I listened, what people said brought things to mind from the past year. How interwoven we are with others, blessed to be connected and worshiping together.

Thinking back to Anne’s note, there’s a mystery to this message. How did Anne know her helper was from College Church? It doesn’t matter really, but it makes me curious to know more of the story. There is mystery when people help others. I think sometimes because we don’t always know how God might be at work in the kind acts, or the kind words we say to strangers, or the path we walk together through the years.

These are the type of mystery I think I like best—not a whodunit, but just the good stories of lovingkindness spreading without the need of shining a spotlight anywhere else but on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He is working, especially in those times when we don't even know it, hearts burning with us.

Who is the man on the road to Emmaus talking to us with such wisdom?

How can we feed such a multitude with only one boy’s lunch?

Terrified, I wonder what I’m seeing in the storm, the figure of a man walking across the stormy roiling waves as if on a level floor?

Why save the best wine for last?

Why does only one in ten healed of leprosy bother to say thanks?

Why tell a crippled man to get up and walk?

Why cast our net on the other side of the boat after a whole night without a single fish?

Why open the tomb after a man has been dead for so many days?

Who is it I see from the boat cooking breakfast onshore and calling out to us?

Jesus, thank you for coming to us in the storm, thank you for talking to us on the road, praise you for giving us wine when we only expect water, bless you for filling our nets, casting out demons, bringing to life muscles, nerves, bones with the simple command, get up and walk. Thank you that your ways are not ours and you do not leave us to our own ways. Thank you for accepting meager thanks, even when we know our hearts should be overflowing with thanksgiving. Jesus, thank you for empty tombs and tombs, our tombs even, that will be empty one day, each of us stepping out or up or in from temporal to eternal, Jesus.

So as thankful as I am for pumpkin pie, corn casseroles, mashed potatoes and turkey, I am even more grateful for a simple breakfast on the beach and your invitation to come, follow, love, give.

House Church by Lorraine Triggs

In its heyday, my childhood church in suburban Detroit was a megachurch before megachurches existed. The building was a wonderful mishmash of church architectural styles from the 1940s, 60s and 70s when various additions were made. It made a great home for the children of the church, where we children freely roamed the educational wing, obediently heading to our classrooms when the bell rang for Sunday school or evening Training Union.

Until the evening someone dared Billy to stick his head through the bars of the stair’s railing. Billy was an average size kid with an average size head, and as good Baptist children, we loudly voiced our opinions about the dare, but before a consensus could be reached, Billy took the dare and stuck his head through the railing.

We were in awe, until Billy realized he couldn’t pull his head back out. The bell for Training Union went off, no one moved and then chaos ensued. Teachers ran out of the classrooms and tried to pull Billy out. Someone ran down the stairs to the church kitchen for a tub of lard. Billy twisted and turned his head and started to cry. Then off in the distance, a siren wailed. We began to breathe easier. Help was on the way, and despite that nasty-sounding electric saw cutting through the railing, Billy’s head remained attached to his body.

I’m happy to report that we all made it safely to adulthood and today communicate mainly through the church’s alumni Facebook group, since my childhood church no longer exists. It wasn’t abandoned but demolished, unlike the roughly 1,100 former churches currently for sale in the U.S. according to an article in The New York Times. It was the headline that caught my eye: “For Sale: Hundreds of Abandoned Churches. Great Prices. Need Work.” I am still deciding what bothers me more—the demolition of my once-vibrant home church, the abandoned churches put up for sale all over the country, or the buyers snapping them up to convert them into one-of-a kind private homes.

In early church history, houses became churches—not the other way around. In 1 Corinthians 16:19, the church in Aquila and Prisca’s house sent hearty greetings to the church in Corinth. Paul deepens the definition of a house when he instructs the believers in Galatia to “do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” (Galatians 6:10) Paul’s personal greetings at the end of his letter to the Romans use the language of family to describe the members of this new household of faith—Andronicus and Junia are kinsmen (as well as fellow prisoners), beloved Stachys and Persis, and Rufus’ mother—who has been a mother to Paul.

The church is at its best when it is a home for the lost, the found, the sick, the ones who are sick but don’t admit it. It’s a home where the door is left open for a prodigal’s return, or gently closed on the clamor and chaos for the world weary to find rest. It’s a place where you and I are “no longer strangers and aliens, but . . . fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” (Ephesians 2:19)

In the end, the church is home to pilgrims who are looking forward to a feast set on a table that overflows with the bounty of grace and mercy in a home that lasts forever.