In this final of four videos, Tripp Prince, Head of Product at Dwell, reminds us of the unfinished nature of life, where God draws near even when we are scattered and distracted. If this has been your experience this Advent, don’t lose heart! Advent is still for you, inviting you over these final few days to prepare to greet Christ at his birth.
In this third of four videos, Tripp Prince, Head of Product at Dwell, reminds us that the glitter and nostalgia of the holidays are fun, but it’s all a faint reflection of the radiance of Christ, who alone offers the joy our souls long for!
In this second of four videos, Tripp Prince, Head of Product at Dwell, reminds us that the darkness of this world is no match for the light of Christ. As Christmas draws nearer, reflect on how God did the impossible – saving the lost through a helpless infant – then trust him to plant new life in you.
In this first of four videos, Tripp Prince, Head of Product at Dwell, reminds us that when we are weary and exhausted, the Lord meets us in that place and refreshes our souls. This Advent, remember that we are not alone. Christ is with us, always drawing near as we choose to daily draw near to him.
Rich Villodas is the Brooklyn-born lead pastor of New Life Fellowship, a large multiracial church with more than seventy-five countries represented in Elmhurst, Queens. Rich holds a Master of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary. He enjoys reading widely, preaching and writing on contemplative spirituality, justice-related matters, and the art of preaching. He’s been married to Rosie since 2006 and they have two beautiful children, Karis and Nathan. His first book, The Deeply Formed Life, is now available wherever books are sold.
Visit him online at richvillodas.com.
Transcript: First of all, Titanic came out in 1997. And what was I doing in 1997? Well, I was an 18-year-old worker at the movie theater in Manhattan, what was called Sony Theaters at the time. And so I cannot tell you how many times I watched Titanic, as you know, I was supposed to working, but I would sneak into the back of the theater and watch and all that. And I watched it numerous times, but I would say a few years ago, as I watched it again, as it came on, like on TNT or something like that, as it does every other hour, again I was struck by the contrast, essentially, that it sets out to sail (the Titanic) and hits an iceberg. And what you see in the movie from that point on is this terrifying contrast, where on the upper decks of the ship, there is celebration and opulence and all the rest, and then the water started rushing in into the lower decks of the ship, and you start seeing all kinds of chaos and pain. And sooner or later, you know, as though as the movie progresses, the issues of the lower deck begin to rise until the entire Titanic is capsized.
And as I thought about it one day and watched it, I thought, Oh, this is this is really a core metaphor of life, and the spiritual life in particular, where there’s so much happening on the lower decks of our lives that we often don’t pay attention to, and sooner or later, if we don’t pay attention to what’s happening on the lower deck, we’re going to capsize and so ironically, the logo of our church is an iceberg, so it’s all coming together here. But yeah, Titanic, I think, is a wonderful metaphor, because it’s about the ways that the lower decks of our lives often rise to capsize us if we’re not paying attention.
Transcript: I do think there is hope, but I think the hope is contingent upon our ability to live in reality as it relates to technology.
You know, I think Dr. King said in one of his speeches, it might have been one of his sermons, that we have allowed our technology to outrun our theology, and that we’re not so good at weighing the price of technological progress. And I think to the degree that we are able to face the ways that technology, not just the gift, but the ways that it malforms us, I think, to the degree that we do that we can appropriately boundary it and see what it is and the gift that it brings, but not live in this illusion that we’re not being formed in some negative ways. So I think on one level, I think there’s great hope, but that hope is contingent upon our ability to live in reality.
But to your point, absolutely. I mean, so much of technology is based on this curated sense of self, this false self, really, that I’m trying to project out into the world. And I think so much of what we see with technology is it reveals all the ways that we don’t feel loved, and the ways that we’re trying to grasp that love.
There’s one quote from Aristotle, where he says that when people don’t feel loved, they seek to be admired. And I think that’s what we see a lot (with the) social media landscape, where people often don’t feel this deep abiding sense of love really coming from the heart of God. As a result, I have to figure out ways where I can earn admiration, which interestingly enough, I know we’re in the Advent season, but when you look at Jesus when he gets baptized, he gets baptized and the voice of the Father comes down, “This is my son in whom I’m well pleased,” and then he’s sent into the wilderness and the first thing that’s really tested is whether he believes in that word of affirmation. And the evil one says, “If you are the Son of God, turn this bread into stone. If you are the Son of God, jump from the temple and angels will catch you. If you are the Son of God, bow and I’ll give you all the powers, the kingdoms of the world.” In other words, do you truly believe in this message of your belovedness, or are you going to seek to figure out various ways to obtain it? And I think that is the struggle of social media. Am I living from the center of God’s love? Or am I working really hard to try to achieve something that truly is already mine?
Transcript: What silence does is, in some ways, it reveals to us all the ways that we have become subjected to stimulation, and a need for greater and more experience. And so I remember a quote from Brennan Manning some years ago, where he said, “Do I worship God, or do I worship my experience of God?” And we have to be very clear about how we respond to that, because it’s very clear that many of us are worshiping our experience, and how do you know you’re worshiping your experience? Well, when the experience, especially the good experience is gone, am I still showing up? And I think that’s at the core of Christian spirituality, am I really pursuing God or what I can get from God?
Marlena is a writer, deep thinker, and speaker who is passionate about the eternal implications of our life in God. She is a lover of beauty – especially the beauty of her family, others, and creation. Marlena is a justice seeker—trying to overcome evil with good. In addition, she seeks answers to these types of questions: What does abundant life look like (John 10:10)? If God is good and we are his deeply beloved children and safe in his kingdom, how then should we live? Marlena deeply believes that spiritual formation and justice should never be separated. She is most concerned with those who profess to follow Jesus but speak and behave so unlike him. She includes herself in the mix and therefore seeks to bridge the gap between what Christians profess to believe and how they live. She speaks regularly to congregations, university campuses, and to retreatants about the implications of following Jesus. Marlena loves to laugh and be around others and then recover in silence and solitude!
Visit her online at marlenagraves.com.
Transcript: As I read the Gospels, I compared and contrasted the life of Jesus with the way that the American church in particular presents itself to itself and to the world, primarily the evangelical church, because that’s where I’m most familiar, but I would say, I could see this in the three branches of Christianity. A lot of the times we present ourselves as seeking celebrity, how many people attend your church as being the most important thing, and a lot of what I would say is (it) mirrors the American culture, the American dream, like health and wealth, and the church seems to reflect our American culture. Of course, I’m not speaking for every church or every Christian, but what’s being communicated to the public. And I just never have seen that in the life of Jesus.
When his brothers (or maybe cousins depending what stream you come from in Christianity) said to him, no one who wants to make something of themselves stays in secret. Why don’t you go to the festival and make a name for yourself. And in Matthew 4, when Satan tempted Jesus to jump from the high pinnacle of the temple, do something magnificent, Henry Nouwen talks about this, do something magnificent, make a name for yourself. Jesus was never like that, he told the devil to flee from him and those temptations.
I think we have believed that fame is what makes us important: fame, wealth and power.
And Jesus, he totally, just absolutely dismissed those. He did not seek to be the most powerful religious figure. He was not born in a palace. He almost shunned anything that distracted from the message, repent for the kingdom of God is near. He’s near. Jesus is near. And so I just wonder, what’s the big contrast?
I think of Philippians 2. Jesus gave up everything, his power, and if you want to say fame, but his control of all things to become a human being. He divested himself of glory, so that he could say, “Not my will, but yours be done.” And I think that’s the way up is down. And the Bible talks over and over about how God will uplift the meek and the humble, but the arrogant, and the people that put their trust in riches or fame, he will not look to. And I don’t mean that God will ignore these people, but what I mean is the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and the humble, the people at the bottom of the societal hierarchy are the people that God is drawn to and spends time with.
Transcript: When I think of poverty, I’m thinking about several things: poverty of spirit, but also maybe it could be material poverty. But if we impoverish ourselves of everything in us that’s not of Christ, we make room for God to be in our lives, God bearers like Mary. If our life is too full of godless things, and godless postures and godless obsessions and orientations, there’s no room for God in our life.
We kind of chase after things that we know, but we keep falling for it, that don’t fill us. I love the Sermon on the Mount: the pure in heart will see God. Rich Mullins has a song where he said that too. And I heard this story by Fr. Henry Reardon in Chicago. He was driving somewhere, like a long journey, and his windshield wipers stop working in the winter and so he had to drive with his family and then wipe off by hand the windshield wipers because they kept getting mud from the snow and he couldn’t see. In the Bible, Matthew 6:22, another one of my favorites, Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is good, your whole body is good.” And so, when we fill ourselves and our lives with that which is not of Christ, that which is not good, true, and beautiful—the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, like the Bible says—when we dwell on things that are not of God, we get full of it.
Transcript: Whatever you spend your time on, whatever you focus on, you’ll become like that. I think it’s in Habakkuk, it says we become like the things we love. And our time, how we spend our time kind of tells us what we love, where our treasure is, Jesus said. So I see it as like, where does joy come from? I think when we are purified and cleansed of our sins, and again, I just say that which is not of Christ, that which leads to death, when we’re cleansed of those things we can see better, like Jesus talks about in Matthew 6:22. And I think it can give us joy, because we see that those things don’t satisfy, we see that as we practice the life of Christ in our lives, how it manifests itself in our lives, that we see that goodness.
This morning, I was driving back (I’m in a Ph. D. program), I was driving back from school. I had taught a class at the university, and last year at this time, I would call my mom and she would call me (“How did class go?”), and my mom just died on June 27 of 2021, and I was really sad. Like, I really missed my mom, I did this, like, a couple weeks ago, I was gonna call my mom, like, I can’t call my mom, I can talk to my dad, but I can’t call my mom. And then I saw a little butterfly a couple of times. The monarch butterfly, I saw it flying up by a light, when I was stopping at the light, then I was traveling down the highway. I’m like, “Some monarch butterflies are out.” And I was just thinking about all things being made new and that I’ll see my mom someday, that there’s pain right now, but I took joy in a little monarch butterfly, it was the grace of God to me today. And I think having eyes to see brings joy. Because if we just see the world from the world’s perspective, we’re gonna see everything we don’t have, or everything that’s wrong, we’re not going to be able to see the good and true and beautiful that is bursting all over, but we have to have eyes to see it.