Have you thought much about how we use the word “stop”?

It just so happens that I have been thinking about that this week. It’s not a word that we use very often in a happy, serene way, is it? Ask Bill Cosby…[PLAY video]

Now, when you’re running sprints, the word stop is a beautiful word. When a kid is in time out or kept after school in detention, stop is a beautiful word.

One of my first jobs was at a grocery store when I was in high school, and one of my jobs was to clean and mop the floor in the back bottle room. It was a never-ending task. That floor had such layers of sticky gunk that you could literally clean it forever. When my manager would come back and say, “You can stop now,” it was such a relief! Such a sense of freedom from those four little letters.

Maybe the best use of the word stop is the way we hear it used this time of year. More and more people are looking at the craziness of Christmas and saying, “Stop! Slow down! Don’t try and do it all.” Stopping something that is difficult, stopping something that is hurting us…that might be the best way to use the word.

Stop. I can stop.

Christmas heightens some of the most difficult things about living in our world today.

We are busy, busy people. When I’m over at Friendsview, I often am amazed at the schedules of our retirees. They are volunteering at George Fox and in schools and with Meals on Wheels. They are serving on committees and visiting grandchildren.

Our kids don’t just play a sport a season, they have spring soccer and fall baseball and summer basketball.

Americans work an average of 25% more hours per week than our counterparts in Europe. We have more conveniences than any other generation or place in the history of the world, but it has come at a cost.

We’re busy. And when we add the expectations of the holidays, the pressure to buy the perfect, thoughtful gift for everyone, to out-Griswald the Griswald’s with the lights on our house, to host and attend parties and have our house look like a picture print by Currier & Ives…

When we have all that, the word “stop” starts sounding pretty good.

Maybe the hardest place for the word “stop” to be said is to good things, good things that simply add up to too much.

There are not many times when I wish for a royal scepter or a magic wand. But if I could have one that had the power to wave over the world and give everyone of us the freedom and the clarity to say “stop” to the good things that surround Christmas but push us over the top, I would do it.

Because encouraging us to take time to stop is not something we do because the things are necessarily bad or unhealthy. It’s not like when a brother tells her sister to “stop pulling my hair”. It’s not that decorations and Christmas cards and giving thoughtful gifts are bad things in themselves.

Our encouragement to make one of our Advent themes “stop” comes because it is so hard to say “no” to good things.

But just like higher highway speeds bring about more dangerous accidents, if we leave the speed of our lives unchecked, we’re putting ourselves at risk.

Our family watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas” a few weeks ago.

One of the beautiful things about that special is how it contrasts the birth of Jesus with the craziness of commercialism and lights, the distracting power of all the trappings of Christmas. The question driving the whole show is Charlie Brown wondering about the meaning of Christmas.

And Linus gives it to him, in the most memorable scene of the movie. He just so happens to quote the very passage of scripture that we are looking at today. [SHOW]

Without trying to paint an unrealistic picture, or look through rose colored glasses, the shepherds had something over us.

Built into their everyday lives…or perhaps I should say, their every night lives…built into their every night lives was time to stop. To wait. To have space.

I’m not saying it was easy. I sure wouldn’t want to have to keep track of a bunch of sheep on a hill at night. I’m not saying it’s easy or idyllic. But in the midst of a difficult life, they had built-in time to think, to stop. They were primed and ready to hear from God, and they heard from God in very dramatic fashion.

Modern life does not have very many “built-in” times to stop. I wouldn’t want to go back to life without microwaves or washing machines or cars…but isn’t it true to say that without those things, life had more “built-in” time to think and reflect? Even a hundred years ago, life was filled with hard work and things to do from sun up to sun down…but a lot of that work to feed the family and keep them clothed and warm, a lot of that work gave space to think and reflect.

Whether people did or didn’t use that time to listen to God is another question all together. But I want to draw attention to the contrast between us and the shepherds, between our modern world and times past, to say this: OUR lives are such that if we want to have time to reflect and listen to God, we are going to HAVE to be intentional about it. We are going to have to proactively build in “stop” time…especially at Christmas.

We all know the truth that busyness and noise keep us from holding on to what is really important.

It’s difficult to think and reflect when things are crazy. There was a moment at our house this past week that immediately comes to mind. Aubrey was saying over and over again, “Will somebody read me a book and get me a glass of water? Will somebody read me a book and get me a glass of water?” Talli and I were talking through a homework project she had that was difficulty. Hayley had a friend over, and her mom had come to pick her up and was talking with Elaine, and we all converged in the kitchen at the same moment.

It was chaos! Nobody could think straight, and if someone had come in and said, “I’d like to tell you directions to the place where I’ve left you a million dollars,” we wouldn’t have even heard it, let alone remembered how to go find it.

This is normal for many of us. Stopping and reflecting and listening for how God is trying to communicate with us is difficult.

So what can we do to stop?

Probably at this point, your schedule is what it is. There probably aren’t a whole lot of other things you can cut out or stop. So I’m not going to spend a lot of time suggesting you take a day at an abbey somewhere, journaling through the most important and profound questions of your life. (But hey, if you can do it, by all means, do it!)

No, I think it’s much more helpful to give some suggestions that seem doable right in the middle of all this stuff that goes on in the season.

How can we make little choices that are sort of “little” stop signs: simple, practical ways to build space into our Christmas to center on and worship Jesus? Let’s try a few:

Take a walk.

Leave the car in the garage or at the office and walk for one errand instead of drive. On Friday, I walked over to the library instead of driving from my office. I did it intentionally. It took me 10 or 15 more minutes total. But on that walk, I thought more about a conversation Elaine and I had the day before. I prayed for my kids. I heard a Christmas carol and thought about the words. I prayed for a lady I passed on the street. Walking for me, especially when I do it “on purpose”, slows me down and gives me a chance to think about things and people that are important to me, instead of just what I have to do next.

Lie down on the floor or on the couch next to your Christmas tree.

Maybe just for one or two songs playing on your iPod or your stereo. I try to do this at least once every year, and it goes back to a time in seminary when I had finals and papers and was up late, long past Elaine, and just laid on the floor of our tiny apartment in front of our 2 foot fake Christmas tree, and felt my anxiety get swallowed up in God’s peace.

Take advantage of the very practical things that people in our church have offered up for you.

Remember that big packet of Advent stuff we gave out a few weeks ago? There are several suggestions in there for taking time to stop. One of them is a prayer practice to do some creating, to do some art or a collage or writing. Next Sunday, we really hope that many of you will bring the results of that to worship, right here in this room. We want to hang them up and take time in the service to look at them all and celebrate Jesus! Taking time to stop this week and do that prayer practice will also help us celebrate together better next week.

Use that picture puzzle that Jo Lewis created for us.

Just look at the picture, and see how many references to the bible you can see in the drawing. Take some time to read through the bible references in the little booklet, and think about why Jesus is important to you.

Take time this week to come to the worship stations.

From 6-8 in the morning and 6-8 at night, we’ll have stations set up in this building and in the Barclay building, stations designed for you to go through on your own. They help us stop; they help us reflect on what’s really important at Christmas. We started this last year, and people who came said it was incredibly helpful.

Chop some wood!

If you’ve got a fireplace, if you’re building some fires, use one of the times when you split wood as an intentional time to “stop”. Ask yourself why it was important that Jesus came as a baby. Why was it important that he came to a poor family?

We had a listening life insert last Sunday from Kathy Watson.

It was FULL of great, simple, practical suggestions for stopping. If you didn’t keep it, go to listeninglife.org to download it. It’s under the “For Participants” tab, weekly materials, dated today.

Here’s a few of her ideas: Turn off all technology for one hour and see what happens. Stop by the live manger scene at Attrell’s on Villa Road and consider Jesus’ simple beginning. Invite him to show you where you can simplify your holiday plans too. When you bake for friends and neighbors, stop after you put something in the oven to picture your friends’ faces and pray a blessing over them. [CLICK]

If nothing else, you have this time of worship.

We’ve all made a good choice this morning to stop everything else that is going on, and take time to worship God. We’ve made the choice to gather with others to think about what is truly important about Christmas, the gift of the savior of the world!

Open worship is a time to stop. To listen. To reflect and think. Maybe the one thing I’d say this morning is to stop having huge expectations and anxiety about that phrase, “listening to God”. Stop worrying about whether you’re getting it right, whether it’s just your thoughts or really God.

Pray a prayer that offers the open worship time to God. Give God permission to do whatever God wants. And then, don’t worry about where your mind goes. Don’t worry if it wanders. Trust that God is big enough to guide our thoughts. Trust that the places where your mind goes are probably important places for you, and invite God to have those thoughts and be in charge of them, too. If it needs to be corrected, God will do the correcting. If not, don’t worry about it.

Stop the expectations, and just make space for God.

 

I’ve sort of pictured our order of service today as an hourglass.

Our music and my words sort of funnel us to what is really important…a chance to stop and focus on Jesus as the gift of God to us. Then it sort of broadens back out into more singing, and leads us back into the world; not having forgotten God, but having made a space for God that is comfortable in the busyness. Taking time to stop today, that will help us take time to stop tomorrow and the next day and the next, to stop and focus on what is really important.