Happy New Year!   Does the New Year fill you with a sense of dread or does it energize and excite you? I have always had mixed feelings about the New Year. As I said last year, I gave up resolutions a long time ago but I do love the idea of planning for the coming year. Resolutions, to me, are rooted in giving something up, subtraction rather than addition, and frankly, most of us don’t like giving things up. Because of this, I loved it when our pastor spoke last Sunday about

I love Christmas because I love the season of Advent, a word pregnant (pun intended) with meaning. The word advent  means, the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event. The word Advent means, the coming of Christ at the Incarnation. It is derived from the Latin adventus, meaning arrival or appearance, from advenire, to arrive, to come (Webster’s).   Okay, but what does Advent really mean, to us as Christians living in 2025, and why do we celebrate it?    “To be serious ab