Seeing the sacred reflected everywhere

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November 27, 2025

By Rev. Rick King

Advent begins this Sunday, and with it, the countdown to Christmas. Marcia McFee is a creative artist, and a big part of her work involves using the arts in planning worship. I want to share her take on Advent worship and our preparations for Christmas this time of year. (www.worshipdesignstudio.com/sacred)

“The Word became flesh and made a home among us.” –John 1: 1-14 (CEB)

The Christmas season is a time when the juxtaposition of the sacred and secular feels sometimes blatantly opposed, and sometimes quite blurred. The word “sacred” points to something dedicated as “holy” and “set apart.” This year, you are invited to a spiritual journey of seeing ALL things pregnant with the Holy. What could our experience of the Advent and Christmas season be like if we lived it imagining that everything is reflecting the sacred?

The busyness of the holiday season can overrun the sense of the sacred. The irony is that setting time apart for connection with the sacred gets pushed aside in order to create the trappings of what is supposed to be the season of celebrating the incarnation of the Holy! We will begin our Advent journey toward Christmas by emphasizing the gift of being awake to the “now”… the gift of sacred time with God, with each other, and with those in need of hope.

Those at Falcon Heights know that a contemplative approach to life is important for ALL of us who want to live fully and partake of the richness God offers. I learned to meditate at age 12, and that marked the first time I felt I had the ability to reach out to God; before then, church was more like something I observed, and God seemed distant.

My ministry as a spiritual director is something I do alongside my full-time pastoral work, on a very small scale right now because this job keeps me pretty well occupied. But I work with people on deepening their spiritual life one-on-one because I believe God wants ALL of us to have a close, intimate, deep relationship with the divine.

The worship series starting this Sunday is meant to be an invitation into a deeper life with God in Christ, as a way of entering more fully than ever before into the sacred mystery of the Incarnation—of God becoming flesh in Jesus Christ.

Where do YOU experience the presence of God most?