Cliff Loesch December 23, 2007 Up to Date      I've joined one of Carol Mullikin's prayer groups this year.  We've been meeting since September and it has been a really rich experience.  One of my assignments for this past week was to share my spiritual autobiography-so I had about fifteen minutes to tell about my personal journey with Christ.  For this presentation I focused more on the earlier parts of my life (and I think I gained some fresh insights into myself and my own journey that were helpful).  But I just mentioned almost in passing some other events that have shaped my spiritual life very significantly such as marriage, having children, and also attending Fuller Seminary and Drew University.  Most of the people in the group have only known me since September and they really don't know very much about me.  When my time was up for my presentation, someone looked at me and said that, wow, I am "really prepared."  She said she didn't realize how prepared I was (or something like that).  And I just kind of smiled.  But I was thinking, "Prepared?"  "Prepared-for what?"  It caught me off guard just a bit.  I always rush around a little at the last minute to finish things up.  I never feel fully prepared for anything.  I really wasn't sure what she meant.  But she was probably referring to my degrees and saying that I seem to be prepared for ministry.  Or it even occurred to me that maybe she was wondering why I was even in the prayer group?  Maybe with all my preparation, or because of my degrees, I wondered if she thought, perhaps, I might not really need yet another prayer group?  Surely that is not what she meant.  But I did reflect on the fact that if you start to count them all, I have been in a large number of classes in the past.  And I have attended more than a few seminars.  And if you start to talk about all the prayer groups that I've been part of over the years-it's countless.  There's no way I could even recall them all.      But when it comes to prayer, no one would ever say, "You know, my grandmother used to pray all the time, so I don't really need to pray myself."  And it would be equally ridiculous to say, "Well, back in the 80s, I used to pray a lot.  And with all the praying I did back then, I think I've got a lot of prayers stored up in the bank, so I think I'm covered."  No it doesn't work that way.  Prayer is a big part of our vital and active and ongoing relationship with God.  We have to be up to date in prayer.  And Carol's group has been a great experience for me.  It's brought some structure and accountability to my prayer life that I need.       I also related this whole line of thinking to the Christmas season.  Year after year we celebrate the birth of Jesus and listen to the story and sing lots of songs-and why do we do this?  Of course we do it all for lots of reasons: to remind ourselves of God's wonderful gift to us-the birth of his son, Jesus Christ; and to recall the meaning of Christ in our lives; and perhaps for many other reasons.      Several hundred years ago, Meister Eckhart, in a sermon, asked, "What good is it if Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and culture?"  His question is relevant for us, today, as well.  Jacqueline Bergan and Marie Schwan say of Eckhart: "A Dominican preacher as well as a theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart insisted that at every moment God is giving birth to Jesus in all of creation.  His question is our own: 'What good is it if Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and culture?"  [Birth: A Guide for Prayer, The Word Among Us Press, 2004, p.26]      To be up to date in this way (I would like to remind us all) is a big reason for our celebrations at this time of year: that Christ may be born anew in us; and that Christ may live through us in our day and in our culture. Philips Brooks, a minister in the 1800s, wrote the words to O Little Town of Bethlehem.  He mentions the idea of Christ being born anew in us.  The final verse says, O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel! There is another verse to this Christmas carol that is not included in most of our hymnals that I would like to share with you, in closing, this morning: Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child Where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild; Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door, The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.