 Hello, it's good to be with you, and during the season of Advent, as I said earlier, I'm going to be with you each week during Advent to look at a unique election for the appointed Sunday in Advent, ones that we normally would not hear in church on Sunday mornings that most pastors would not be preaching from if they were lectionary preachers. But I think, given that 2020 has been such an unusual year, that having some different eyes, some fresh eyes of looking at what's happening around us and preparing for the birth of Christ child could be very helpful to all of us. It is to me, and I simply want to share that with you, the good people of the North Texas Conference. The reading for this morning that I want to reflect on with you is from Paul's first letter to the Church at Corinth. I'll be reading from chapter 1, verses 3 through 9. So here are these words, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in Him in speech and knowledge of every kind. And just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. And God is faithful and by Him you are called in the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Well, this passage in 1 Corinthians begins like most epistles that Paul writes to the Church. And it's important to remember that Paul is not writing just to an individual. So while you may be listening to this alone, Paul is always writing to a church. A group of Christians, he has either helped form or he has begun a church there or people whom he has heard about and wants to address about his perhaps coming to visit them. But Corinth was of course a body of Christians with which he was very familiar. And he is already beginning to say grace and peace to you. And every time we hear the word grace we think it's about forgiveness, but it is really a symbol of a blessing in the way in which Paul uses it frequently to begin and to end a letter. And it's his way of blessing that which is good among the Corinthian church. And that is because of their own faith in Jesus Christ that God has made manifest any number of gifts among them. And he even talks about skills and knowledge that they have in this passage. And I think that's important to look for. I think there's sometimes when we gather as a church or that we perhaps gather in a church meeting. In some of the cases we look at what we don't have and what we want or think we should have rather than what we have in our midst. And I think it's an important time to think about that. We've been through a unique period this year in our communities, in fact in our country and around the world with the spread of the COVID-19 virus. So many things have not happened like we thought would have happened or what normally would have happened. So if we reflect on this year in that manner and you think about how many things have changed, I celebrate some of the changes. And this is what I've noticed. And it reflects what Paul wrote to the Corinthian congregation, that is the kind of spiritual gifts that had become evident in so many of our congregations. There are a number of technical gifts that people have had to use in order to produce worship, for example. But just the gifts in terms of how they've begun to reach out, many of you have begun to reach out around your church to people whom you do not know. And when I think about the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people perhaps that collectively our churches have met, either virtually or let's say in feeding any number of people, week after week after week, that's a spiritual gift many of you didn't know. I'm wondering about how many people may have been even drawn to a church virtually that would not have been doing this if things had been going so well around them in the culture and the world. But somehow somebody said, why don't you get online and go to church? And a number of pastors who told me about baptisms they have performed, not virtually I might add, but privately or in front of a virtual congregation, I'm thinking people somehow there's perhaps this reawakening of the spirit and that's a graceful thing and that's not about gifts, that's just about a blessing. And rather than during the season of bad vent, the possibility is we're not going to be able to celebrate Christmas perhaps the way we normally do. It may be because of the gathering of your family, it may be because of the sanctuary will not be full on Sunday night or Christmas Eve I should say, and it's just a way that all the celebrations will be different, all will be different, but it does not make them less than it makes them real and authentic and true for the time in which we live. So I think Paul is sort of anchoring us in the present because in the Corinthian church there is a lot of division going on which he addresses letter in this letter later, but there's a lot of division and he just goes to that which is good and I think a focus on that which is good among us that Grace that he offers about the knowledge we do have, the gifts that have been made evident in so many of us and in the lives of our churches is a blessing unknown yet, but so is the coming of the Christ child. It was unknown to those people who waited for a long time. The people that Paul is writing to are aware of the birth, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ and so are you, but this is the word for us. Let's just look deeply into us, not only individually, but as a church. What do we know and what is the gift we've discovered? Blessings to you this week.