Week One
November 27, 2022
A Familiar Place
Psalm 122
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” Psalm 122:1
Familiar, from the Latin, “belonging to a family, of a household, intimate. Also, famulus, family; familia, household servant.
I like to attend worship. It is familiar and it always feels like home.
During seminary I served as the associate minister at First Christian Church of Stroud, Oklahoma. I worked with the youth groups and participated in Sunday worship. The kind and generous members of First Christian Church were tolerant of my youthful efforts and treated me as one of their ministers. However, I never understood myself to be a minister, not really.
I was ordained during Sunday morning worship at First Christian Church. Following worship, not one but several members said to me, “Congratulations, Reverend Ewing.” It was then, I knew I was a minister. I was home.
During Advent, we arrive at another familiar place. It is a place of arrival and coming. We recognize all those here, as we have been recognized. We are members of a common household, a gathering, in this place marked as a household of service and edged by the Lord’s Peace. In this familiar place, this Coming Place, I recognize home. I am recognized as being at home. It is a home welcoming each one, in this or any time, it is:
— the Great Family of Belonging,
—defined by acts of Service and Justice,
—and becomes the House of Hope.
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Dr. Terry Ewing
Vice President of Advancement
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