Stephen W. Hiemstra's Blog, page 234

Navidad con Amuerzo para el Alma, Herndon, Virginia (hoy)

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Breech Birth

[image error]“I lift up my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

My help comes from the LORD,

who made heaven and earth.”

(Psalm 121:1-2)

Breech Birth

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

When my oldest child, Christine, was born, Maryam became so attached to her that she refused to hire babysitters and refused to leave her alone with anyone. On rare occasions, Mama Bozorg and I were allowed to watch her, but we were among the chosen few. As she drew closer to delivering our second child, Marjolijn Narsis,[1] Maryam’s attachment to her daughter became an important concern.

The night before she was born, Maryam had trouble sleeping and went into labor early in the morning. Her labor was irregular, however, and did not make progress towards regular contractions every ten minutes, as parents are normally advised. By five o’clock in the morning, I became concerned that, after having labor pains all night, something was wrong and we started having a debate about calling our sister-in-law, Julie. But Maryam did not want to leave Christine with anyone! By five thirty, I was pulling my hair out and called Julie.

Julie came over promptly. Maryam and I called ahead to Inova Fairfax Hospital and drove over together. On arrival, we checked into the natal unit and, thinking that delivery was hours away like with Christine, we were shocked that the doctors whisked us immediately into the delivery room; Marjolijn was a breech baby and needed an emergency Cesarean delivery. The delivery went fine, but the emergency surprised us and Maryam enjoyed a longer stay in the hospital than planned. When Christine and I arrived at the hospital the next day to visit, Maryam was very unhappy to see that her daughter happily holding onto her Dad rather than running immediately to Mom!

In the months that followed, the division of labor in the family changed dramatically. With one child, you can almost maintain your lifestyle as a young couple; with two children, lifestyle adjustments are mandatory. This dilemma becomes really obvious because a single child gets a lot of attention—I call it the pet kid phenomena—which simply cannot be sustained when you have two. In my case, I bought a new single lens reflect (SLR) camera when Christine was born and filmed her every move. When Marjolijn was born, I took fewer photographs, not for lack of interest, but because with two children in play at least one is always in motion. If that weren’t bad enough, Marjolijn experienced even more colic than her sister and we were tired all the time.

Our battles with colic strained a lot of relationships because hardly anyone wants a colicky baby around or to care for one. I remember, for example, being told undiplomatically one Sunday morning to move to the back of the church, Cub Run Elementary School, because my daughter, Christine, was making too much noise. Churches today mostly lack a cry room[2] and expect parents to disappear during worship or to delegate care to someone else, which we never did. Caring for our two girls accordingly required teamwork, whether in church or in taking part in family gatherings.

The fact that the girls were only 16 months apart meant that they was always very close and very competitive. When Stephen Reza came along 16 months after Marjolijn, the pattern continued. Our kids were not only siblings, they were best friends, and they were inseparable. And anyone who tried to separate the troika (or treated any one of them badly) felt their wrath! They also all spoke Parsi making it possible to have private conversations out in front of most anyone, including Dad. And Maryam, who insisted that the kids use her first name, was the leader of the pack.

[1] Marjolijn is named for the daughter of close friends of ours, Map and Jan, from the Netherlands who also happened to attend Lewinsville Presbyterian Church where Maryam and I were married. When Maryam and I were engaged, Map and Jan rented Maryam a room. Map was a stay-at-home mom able and willing offer plenty of helpful advice while Jan was an agronomist with the World Bank able to talk shop with me. Needless to say, we hit it off immediately and remain close friends.

[2] A cry room was a glass encased room at the back of the sanctuary where parents both care for their own infants while hearing and seeing the worship service. The one that I remember best was at Central Reformed Church in Oskaloosa, Iowa.

Sacks: Why Stories Sell; Why We Care, Part 2

[image error]Jonah Sacks. 2012. Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell—and Live—the Best Stories Will Rule the Future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. (Got to Part 1)

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

If you believe that modern media is irrelevant to your religious life, then ask yourself a couple of questions.  For example, why are most sermons about 20 minutes? and where do you go when you get upset? Twenty minute is about the amount of time remaining in a 30 minutes television show after the time devoted to advertising is subtracted out. If you go shopping when you are upset, then consider what your grandmother might have done—50 years ago it was common to go to a chapel and pray on stressful occasions.  Today, if someone wanted to pray in a chapel, the door would likely be locked.

These changes did not happen overnight and they were not accidental.

In his book, Winning the Story Wars, Jonah Sacks talks about the contribution of dark art of marketing to cultural changes that we have seen. Borrowing from the work of Joseph Campbell, Sacks describes the purpose of myth is to help us grow up because we yearn for maturation (85). But mature adults (self-responsible, free agents) threaten marketers who typically prefer us to remain adolescents where we suspended in an immature state dwelling on emotions like greed, vanity, and insecurity. In this immature state, we are meant to feel inadequate and incomplete where consumption of product X, Y, Z can presumably make us complete again (86).

Inadequacy marketing directly assaults the spirit of most religious teaching, irrespective of theology, because most religions aid our maturation and help us to contribute to society. Hence, the phrase—the dark art of marketing—is truly dark.

Sacks writes:

“all story-based marketing campaigns contain an underlying moral of the story and supply a ritual that is suggested to react to that moral.” (89)

Inadequacy marketing accordingly has two basic steps. In step 1, the moral always begins with “You are not…and plays off of at least one negative emotion: greed…fear…lust.” (89) The purpose in step 1 is to create anxiety (93). In step 2, the ritual proposed is implicitly or explicitly to shop and buy a particular product—pictured as a magical experience.

One of the classic success stories of inadequacy marketing is the Listerine (an early mouth wash) ad campaign. In 1922, Listerine was sold as a “good surgical antiseptic” (91). Sales were pretty minimal. This ad campaign introduced a young woman, “Sad Edna”, who lacked attention, sex appeal, and was basically inadequate for reasons that no one would tell her—she had halitosis (bad breath) which was ruining her social life (the moral of the story; 142). That is, until she discovered Listerine (the magical solution). In this case, the Sad Edna campaign both raised the fear of inadequacy and successfully introduced Listerine as the hero of the story.

Sacks sees inadequacy marketing as pervasive and destructive because drives us to pursue culturally and environmentally destructive consumption. In place of inadequacy marketing, Sacks offers “empowerment advertising” which follows John Powers’ three basic principles (1875):  (1) Be interesting, (2) Tell the truth, and (3) Live the truth (or change so you can; 103-107). An example of an ad by John Powers for neckties read: “not as good as they look, but they’re good enough—25 cents.” The campaign was an instant success, in part, because people found an honest ad refreshing and the ties available sold promptly (105).

Sacks devotes the remainder of his book to outlying how to use empowerment advertising.

Two basic ingredients of empowerment advertising are Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” and Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”. Before I close, let me define what he means.

Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” starts with the proposition that people desire to obtain self-actualization as a life goal, this goal may not be obtained until more basic needs are met. Thus, he posits a pyramid of needs with the most basic needs at the bottom (physiological needs) and self-actualization at the top. Sacks pictures the five categories: physiological, safety, love and belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization (ordered from bottom to top; 130).  While inadequacy marketing focuses on the bottom of the pyramid, empowerment marketing focuses on the top.

Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” outlines the basic plot of many successful stories and films in a repeating circle: 1. The ordinary world, 2. A call to adventure, 3. Refusing the call, 4. Meeting a mentor, 5. Crossing the threshold, 6. Tests, allies, and Enemies, 7. Approaching the dragon’s den, 8. The ordeal, 9. Seizing the treasure, 10. The journey home, 11. Resurrection, 12. Return with the Treasure (148). While the hero’s journey may seem long and drawn out, numerous famous films follows this formula. For example, films that follow the hero’s journey include: Star Wars (1977), The Patriot (2000), and World War Z (2013).  So does the biblical story of Moses.

The hero’s journey is interesting in empowerment marketing because in order to succeed the hero has to grow at least enough to complete the journey—a type of self-actualization in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For Sacks, the hero in question is a “brand hero” who exemplifies your firm’s ideal customer and who is not, as in inadequacy marketing, a product. This brand hero is not a helpless consumer, but a mature and contributing citizen (149-150). The brand hero in the case of Apple, for example, is a creative employee who breaks out of the usual mold and may buy a Mac, but the Mac is not portrayed as a “magical solution”.

 Jonah Sacks’ book, Winning the Story Wars, is a great read and a helpful guide to understanding our recent culture wars as played out in film, online, and in our political campaigns. I read this book to improve my writing skills, but it is a must read for anyone who wants to understand what “all the shouting is about” in our society today.

Reference

Campbell, Joseph. 1968. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

http://WinningTheStoryWars.com. @JonahSachs. http://DrewBeam.com. @DrewBeam. @HarvardBiz.

Navidad con Amuerzo para el Alma, Herndon, Virginia

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Sacks: Why Stories Sell; Why We Care, Part 2

[image error]Jonah Sacks. 2012. Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell—and Live—the Best Stories Will Rule the Future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. (Got to Part 1)

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

If you believe that modern media is irrelevant to your religious life, then ask yourself a couple of questions, like, why are most sermons about 20 minutes? and where do you go when you get upset? Twenty minute is about the amount of time remaining in a 30 minutes television show after the time devoted to advertising is subtracted out. If you go shopping when you are upset, then consider what your grandmother might have done—50 years ago it was common to go to a chapel and pray on stressful occasions.  Today, if someone wanted to pray in a chapel, the door would likely be locked.

These changes did not happen overnight and they were not accidental.

In his book, Winning the Story Wars, Jonah Sacks talks about the contribution of dark art of marketing to cultural changes that we have seen. Borrowing from the work of Joseph Campbell, Sacks describes the purpose of myth is to help us grow up because we yearn for maturation (85). But mature adults (self-responsible, free agents) threaten marketers who typically prefer us to remain adolescents where we suspended in an immature state dwelling on emotions like greed, vanity, and insecurity. In this immature state, we are meant to feel inadequate and incomplete where consumption of product X, Y, Z can make us complete again (86).

Inadequacy marketing directly assaults the spirit of most religious teaching, irrespective of theology, because most religions aid our maturation and help us to contribute to society. Hence, the phrase—the dark art of marketing—is truly dark.

Sacks writes:

“all story-based marketing campaigns contain an underlying moral of the story and supply a ritual that is suggested to react to that moral.” (89)

Inadequacy marketing accordingly has two basic steps. In step 1, the moral always begins with “You are not…and plays off of at least one negative emotion: greed…fear…lust.” (89) The purpose in step 1 is to create anxiety (93). In step 2, the ritual proposed is implicitly or explicitly to shop and buy a particular product—pictured as a magical experience.

One of the classic success stories of inadequacy marketing is the Listerine (an early mouth wash) ad campaign. In 1922, Listerine was sold as a “good surgical antiseptic” (91). Sales were pretty minimal. This ad campaign introduced a young woman, “Sad Edna”, who lacked attention, sex appeal, and was basically inadequate for reasons that no one would tell her—she had halitosis (bad breath) which was ruining her social life (the moral of the story; 142). That is, until she discovered Listerine (the magical solution). In this case, the Sad Edna campaign both raised the fear of inadequacy and successfully introduced Listerine as the hero of the story.

Sacks sees inadequacy marketing as pervasive and destructive because drives us to pursue culturally and environmentally destructive consumption. In place of inadequacy marketing, Sacks offers “empowerment advertising” which follows John Powers’ three basic principles (1875):  (1) Be interesting, (2) Tell the truth, and (3) Live the truth (or change so you can); 103-107). An example of an ad by John Powers for neckties read: “not as good as they look, but they’re good enough—25 cents.” The campaign was an instant success, in part, because people found an honest ad refreshing and the ties available sold promptly (105).

Sacks devotes the remainder of his book to outlying how to use empowerment advertising.

Two basic ingredients of empowerment advertising are Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” and Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”. Before I close, let me define what he means.

Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” starts with the proposition that people desire to obtain self-actualization as a life goal, this goal may not be obtained until more basic needs are met. Thus, he posits a pyramid of needs with the most basic needs at the bottom (physiological needs) and self-actualization at the top. Sacks pictures the five categories: physiological, safety, love and belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization (ordered from bottom to top; 130).  While inadequacy marketing focuses on the bottom of the pyramid, empowerment marketing focuses on the top.

Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” outlines the basic plot of many successful stories and films in a repeating circle: 1. The ordinary world, 2. A call to adventure, 3. Refusing the call, 4. Meeting a mentor, 5. Crossing the threshold, 6. Tests, allies, and Enemies, 7. Approaching the dragon’s den, 8. The ordeal, 9. Seizing the treasure, 10. The journey home, 11. Resurrection, 12. Return with the Treasure (148). While the hero’s journey may seem long and drawn out, numerous famous films follows this formula. For example, films that follow the hero’s journey include: Star Wars (1977), The Patriot (2000), and World War Z (2013).  So is the biblical story of Moses.

The hero’s journey is interesting in empowerment marketing because in order to succeed the hero has to grow at least enough to complete the journey—a type of self-actualization in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For Sacks, the hero in question is a “brand hero” who exemplifies your firm’s ideal customer and who is not, like in inadequacy marketing, a product. This brand hero is not a helpless consumer, but a mature and contributing citizen (149-150).

 Jonah Sacks’ book, Winning the Story Wars, is a great read and a helpful guide to understanding our recent culture wars as played out in film, online, and in our political campaigns. I read this book to improve my writing skills, but it is a must read for anyone who wants to understand what “all the shouting is about” in our society today.

Reference

Campbell, Joseph. 1968. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

http://WinningTheStoryWars.com. @JonahSachs. http://DrewBeam.com. @DrewBeam. @HarvardBiz.

Prayer for Those in Pain

[image error]Heavenly Father,

Prepare our hearts, oh Lord, for the coming holidays when we

must face that empty chair,

must answer questions that intrude too much,

and much remember events from the past that refuse to be history.

Turn down the lights a bit,

Let the old music play bit more gently,

Give me some space when I seem a bit distant.

In the power of your Holy Spirit,

Remind me, oh Lord, of your love in Christmas lights.

Shelter me in your arms again.

In Jesus’ precious name, Amen.

 

 

More than Green Beer

[image error]“We put no obstacle in anyone’s way,

so that no fault may be found with our ministry…”

(2 Cor 6:3)

More than Green Beer

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

In the late fourth century, a sixteen year old boy named Patrick was kidnapped by Celtic pirates and sold into slavery where he worked for six years herding cattle in the Irish wilderness. Forced to depend on God, he learned to the Celtic language and learned to love the Celtic people. Patrick began to pray for the Irish to reconcile with God. In response to a dream, he escaped his master and returned to England where he studied to become a priest. He was later commissioned as bishop and returned to Ireland as an evangelist. Patrick and his colleagues were so successful in starting churches in Ireland that they later turned their attention to the continent of Europe and began the process of revitalizing the church on the continent (Hunter 2000, 13-25). When people say that Saint Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, it is not a clever tale but a biblical allusion:

“The LORD God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Gen 3:14-15 ESV)

The offspring of the woman, of course, refers to Christ to whom Patrick introduced the Irish. Patrick’s walk with the Lord, like that of Joseph (Gen 39), began in adversity and a life of hardship, but it also yielded a rich harvest.

The hardship of the Irish has a long history. In 1976 in graduate school at Cornell University, I had an Irish officemate whose wife was famous for her ability to play the harp. I loved to hear her play and would travel with him to see her perform whenever I could. When he learned that my mother’s maiden name was Deacon, he informed me that we were not really Irish, but Scots, who had been resettled by the English in Northern Ireland and together with the Irish encouraged to immigrate to the New World in the second half of the nineteenth century.[1]

The oldest Deacon that I knew was Richard Henry Deacon, my grandfather. Grandpa Deacon, as we called him, was born in 1895 and as a young man helped settle the Canadian west. Later on he was sent to Europe in the first World War, but thankfully arrived too late to be sent into combat. He later returned to Guelph, Ontario where he tended the boiler at the University of Guelph. In spite of his lack of education, he rescued textbooks from the boiler fires to read on his own and particularly enjoyed reading a good “murder book”, as he used to call them.

Grandpa Deacon was a live wire and a constant joker. He once told the story of visiting a graveyard only to find two men buried in the same grave—“the tombstone read: he lies a lawyer and an honest man.” He used to drink and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day until his doctor told him that his emphysema would kill him if he didn’t give it up—he quit that very day and never smoked again. Still, the rest of his life he wheezed constantly and walked with a limp, having fallen off a ladder out repairing a roof.

Grandpa was always handy and always visited us when dad had a big project to take on, like finishing a basement bedroom. He used to say that “if you don’t have a tool; make one”. In grade school, for example, he built me a small cross-bow using only the scraps of wood and metal that we had lying around the house. At that point in my life, I did not appreciate how uniquely talented he was, but later in my career as a financial engineer and was thrown only “scraps” to work with, I built a lot of such tools. Like Grandpa, I learned to work with the tools at hand.

Grandpa was also fun to visit because he shared my youthful passion for fishing. When I visited, he early on took me fishing and later on took me to visit in-laws who lived on the farm, knowing my fascination with farming. On one such visit, I remember walking in on a family sitting down to lunch which featured soup bones—potatoes and turnips were also in ample supply, but the bones stood out to my youthful eyes. The Deacons ate better than the farm folks, in part, because grandpa had a regular paying job, was an avid gardener and fisherman, and had fruit and nut trees out back—it also did not hurt having the corner store was just down the hill from the house at 123 Granger Street. Still, the threat of poverty was never far off, something I never forgot.

Grandpa died in 1980 following complications, likely sepsis, due to a prostate operation. The only time I ever saw my mom cry was when they lowered Richard Henry into the grave there in Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Guelph. His son, Dick, inherited the house; my aunt, Judy, took me aside that day and gave me his gold regimental ring, which Maryam wears to this day.

My grandmother, Marietta Salter Deacon, was a social butterfly and a devote Baptist who led my mother to get involved with mission work at a young age. When Marietta died in 1941 from stomach cancer and was buried in Wingham, my mother was left to take care of her younger siblings while she herself remained a teenager. My own “mission work” with Hispanic day workers is a tribute, in part, to Marietta.

Having a bit of Irish in me used to mean little more than green beer on Saint Patrick’s Day. The more I learned, however, about Saint Patrick—some credit him with saving the Christian faith from fourth century decadence—the more I realized that I inherited more than just a full head of hair from the Deacon family.

References

Freeman, Philip. 2004. Saint Patrick of Ireland: A Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Hunter III, George G. 2000. The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity can Reach the West…Again. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Marx, Karl. 1887. Capital A Critique of Political Economy: Volume I Book One: The Process of Production of Capital. Edited by Frederick Engels;Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Cited: 11 November 2016. Online: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1.

[1] Details of the Irish story are treated at great length in Karl Marx’s Capital, Vol 1.

CCW Hosts Self-Publishing Conference on January 28, 2017

[image error]Join Capital Christian Writers for a one-day self-publishing conference on Saturday, January 28, 2017.

9 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. The King’s Chapel, 12925 Braddock Road Clifton, VA 20124

Thinking about publishing your own book? Learn why self-publishing can be an effective way to get your book out to readers – and how the process works!

For program details, visit:

http://CapitalChristianWriters.org/index.php/2017-self-publishing-conference.

Sacks: Why Stories Sell; Why We Care, Part 1

[image error]Jonah Sacks. 2012. Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell—and Live—the Best Stories Will Rule the Future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. (Got to Part 2)

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

In the online world that surrounds us, we are bombarded with messages from morning to night: email, spam, pop-ups, video, print media, text-ads, robo-calls, and even old-fashioned, telephone solicitors. Because messages bombard us from morning to night, only the most sophisticated ads get and hold our attention. At the heart of these winning ads is usually a mythical story.

Against this backdrop, in his book, Winning the Story Wars, Jonah Sacks writes:

“We live in a world that has lost its connection to its traditional myths, and we are now trying to find new ones—we’re people and that’s what people without myths do.

These myths will shape our future, how we live, what we do, and what we buy. They will touch all of us. But not all of us get to write them. Those that do have tremendous power.” (6)

Among those competing to gain this power through telling such stories are authors, film-makers, advertisers, religious leaders, and politicians of all stripes. Because it is not clear whose stories will dominate our attention (17), the recent election is a reminder that a lot is at stake.

In this environment of competing myth-making, oral tradition has become increasingly important because social media facilitates immediate feedback between story tellers and their audience, reminiscent of a time when story tellers gathered with their audiences primarily around a campfire. Because “all wars are story wars” (29), Sacks sees story telling as critical, not only to marketers who can either lift us up or tear us down, but also to citizens who may find themselves manipulated into fighting real wars.

So who is Jonah Sacks? Sack describes himself as a: “story expert, filmmaker and entrepreneur”. His back cover and website includes this description:

“As the co-founder and CEO of Free Range Studios, Jonah has helped hundreds of major brands and causes break through the media din with unforgettable [ad] campaigns. His work on legendary viral videos like The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff series have brought key social issues to the attention of more than 65 million people online. A constant innovator, his studio’s websites and stories have taken top honors three times at the South by Southwest Film Festival.”

Sacks divides his book into two parts and eight chapters, preceded by a prologue and followed by an epilogue:

Part One: The Broken World of Storytelling

The Story Wars are All Around Us
The Five Deadly Sins
The Myth Gap
Marketing’s Dark Art

Part Two: Shaping the Future

Tell the Truth, Part I: The Art of Empowerment Marketing
Tell the Truth, Part II: The Hero’s Journey
Be Interesting: Freaks, Cheats, and Familiars
Live the Truth. (vii)

Once you buy into the idea that stories matter and matter a lot, Sacks starts by instructing us on what not to do—the five deadly sins—which are vanity, authority, insincerity, puffery, and gimmickry (35). Vanity arises as an early problem because “when you love what you’re selling” … “you assume everyone else will too” (36).  Sacks uses an unforgettable example when he compares the acceptance speeches of John Kerry and George W. Bush in 2004—Kerry talks mostly about John Kerry, while Bush talks about what “we” can do (37-38). The contrast could not be greater. The other four sins are equally hard to avoid and quick to kill the credibility of a story.

Sacks repeatedly returns to myth as an important component in story telling. He describes myth as neither true not false, but existing in a separate reality (59). He attributes three ingredients in myth: symbolic thinking, having three elements tied together—story, explanation, and meaning, and ritual (59-61). For example, in Genesis Sacks sees creation as a myth with these three elements:

“STORY:               God created the world in seven days and gave man dominion over it.

EXPLANATION: This is how everything we see around us came into existence.

MEANING:          So God deserves our gratitude and obedience.” (60)

An important observation drives much of Sacks’ own storyline:

“a myth gap arises when reality changes dramatically and our myths are not resilient enough to continue working in the face of that change.” (61)

In our “rationalist modern society” (62) where people refuse to think symbolically, the myth gap zaps meaning and leaves people in an intractable state of hopelessness. “Forward-thinking religious leaders, scientists, and entertainers” who attempt to “reunify story, explanation, and meaning in their work” are quickly pushed out of the mainstream (63). Thus, the myth gap remains and people suffer.

Jonah Sacks’ book “Winning the Story Wars” is a non-fiction, page turner. The hugely fascinating illustrations are by Drew Beam. [2] In part 2 of this review, I will examine in more depth Sacks’ exploration of modern advertising and why we care.

http://WinningTheStoryWars.com. @JonahSachs.

[2] http://DrewBeam.com. @DrewBeam.

Evangelist’s Prayer

Art by Stephen W. Hiemstra

Almighty Father, Beloved Son, Holy Spirit,

We give thanks that you bless us in so many ways—with your word and your presence, with family, good health, and our many needs. May we model your mercy by blessing those around us, that your love would indeed be multiplied over and over again. Go with us now as we speak into the lives of those around us in word and in deed, especially in this Advent season. Grant us strength for the day; grace for those we meet; and peace. In Jesus’ precious name, Amen.