Julian Davis Reid is a Chicago-based artist-theologian and the founder of Notes of Rest, a spiritual formation ministry grounded in scripture and Black music that invites the body of Christ to receive God’s gift of rest.
Posts By This Author
Trump Wanted Prayers for America. So Let’s Pray
What is your prayer for our nation as it celebrates 250 years? Here’s a place to start.
HOW CAN WE PRAY, with honesty and humility, for the United States of America? We asked ministers, writers, activists, and faith leaders to write prayers for our nation. Some have roots in this land that run deeper than the Declaration of Independence, others are more recent additions to the American tapestry. With words of confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, they wrote from their hearts. Some prayers ring with hope, others carry the weight of years of harm to the land and people. But all these prayers are written with love, a love willing to tell the truth, even when it hurts; a love that never fails. This is the truest form of patriotism. This is what it means to seek the peace and welfare of the land in which God has placed us (Jeremiah 29:7).
May you find in these words the power of remembrance in a culture of intentional forgetting, encouragement amid despair, and joyful connection with our Creator and with all creation beyond national boundaries.
As you read these words, what is your prayer for our nation? Email us at [email protected].
—The Editors
All Is Calm: Scripture’s Radical Call To Rest During Advent
Five suggestions for stillness despite the busyness of the season.
THE FERVOR AT church during the Advent season is a remarkable sight. Both clergy and laity work like the shepherds, tending to their flocks late into the night. And many move like the wise men, traveling to foreign places and spending extensive resources to celebrate Christ’s arrival with family.
This time of heightened activity makes sense given the story of scripture and the story of our current world. The shepherds could not help but tell others once they learned of the Savior’s birth. And as we now await his return, we shouldwork hard to share the riches of the nativity with a world that is a little more open to matters of faith at this time of year.
But if increased activity is the only melody we pick up from the nativity story told in Matthew and Luke, we neglect a needful counterpoint: the importance of rest. The nativity story is replete with theological, familial, and political lessons about rest that quietly proclaim God’s goodness to this weary world. With exhaustion rampant in the church — perhaps especially so at Christmastime — we would do well to hear notes of rest sounding from the manger.
1. Listen to your sleep
God uses sleep as a vehicle for saving Joseph’s family (Matthew 1:18-25). God instructs Joseph to honor his marriage to Mary because her pregnancy was not a sign of infidelity. To the contrary, it was a sign of immense devotion to God. Furthermore, this miracle child would save all his people, including his parents, from their actual sins, as opposed to their alleged ones. In obedience, Joseph listened to the message heard in his sleep and thus participated in God’s saving of his family.