“Dear God,
I am full of wishes,
full of desires,
full of expectations.
Some of them may be realized,
many may not,
but in the midst of all my satisfactions and disappointments,
I hope in you.
I know that you will never leave me alone
and will fulfill your divine promises.
Even when it seems that things are not going my way,
I know that they are going your way
and that in the end your way is the best way for me.
O Lord, strengthen my hope,
especially when my many wishes are not fulfilled.
Let me never forget that your name is Love. Amen” (Henri Nouwen).

I’m thankful for the times when God didn’t give me what I wanted at the time. It would have been my undoing. I’m still fairly certain that most of the time I think I know what I want and what I need, but I really have no clue. But God knows.

Ultimately, all that I desire in the created things can be found in the Creator. If only I could desire the heart of God as much as what’s in His hand. If I could only long for the Giver as much as I long for His gifts. Then I would be much more content.

I got a chance to see this year’s Christmas episode of The Chosen in an actual movie theater. It was fantastic. Most of it was music inspired by the series from well-known Christian artists in the setting where the series is currently filming.

The best part for me was the actual episode recounting how Joseph and Mary got to the place where she gave birth to Jesus. It was from the perspective of an older Mary remembering the journey and the delivery with a mix of joy and sadness, since Joseph was apparently no longer living at this point.

I love how The Chosen fleshes out these biblical characters to make them vivid and real and human. I think the term is “sanctified imagination” when it comes to taking words from the Gospels and making them come to life. I think it rivals any movie or TV series out there in terms of production values and acting quality.

I can’t recommend The Chosen highly enough. It stays true to the Bible while also giving a unique rendering of the life of Jesus in a way that satisfies the storyteller in me. I truly hope there will be a complete telling of the whole story so more people get to come and see more about Jesus. As the tag line in tonight’s episode goes, “People must know.”

I apologize for the small print. If you have old eyes, you can squint or get a magnifying glass, and you might be able to read these important facts. If you can read this without glasses, then you are probably not the target audience. I can relate to these a lot more than I could a few years ago. At least if you’re going to get old, you might as well have a sense of humor about it, right?

When I was reading the parable of the prodigal son, something struck me. Usually, all the emphasis is on the younger son who basically took his inheritance and ran away from home. But not much gets said about the long-suffering father who waits and watches down the road in hopes for the return of his son.

One aspect of the story really hit home. It’s the part where after the father sees his son coming down the road, he is overwhelmed with compassion and runs to meet his son. I think that part of the parable often gets lost in translation because these days, running is no big deal.

But back in the first century Middle East, running was considered undignified. I ran across a quote from Aristotle that said, “Great men never run in public.”

Get that? An older, well-to-do man would never ever dream of running to meet anyone. But this father chose to become undignified in his expression of his love for his wayward son who had just squandered a third of the family estate and shamed the family. By all accounts, this father should have held a funeral for the boy to show that he was no longer a son or an heir. But he ran to meet him.

This parable shows that God’s grace is scandalous. In order to win back his prodigal sons and daughters, God did something much more undignified than running. He took on the form of a servant in Jesus and endured the public spectacle of a humiliating death on a cross to pay for the sins of His children who had openly rebelled against Him.

Recently, I learned about a Hebrew word, hesed. It is just about untranslatable into English, but the King James Bible translators coined a new word to describe it — lovingkindness. Perhaps the best definition I’ve ever heard of what hesed means is when the person from whom I have a right to expect nothing gives me everything.

That’s what God did. I had no right to expect anything from God, but through His undignified death, He gave me everything. He gave me a clean slate from my sins, a right standing with God, and an eternal and abundant life. He made me a son and and heir to all that belongs to Him.

I’m forever thankful for that scandalous grace.

It is officially Advent season. This is where we enter into a time of waiting for the arrival of the Messiah. In our case, the Messiah has already come once. He showed up in Bethlehem on a cold December night, and the world has never been the same. We celebrate that first coming.

But we also anticipate the second coming. This time it won’t be in the dark. This time it won’t be known only to a few. The next time Jesus shows up, the whole world will know. He won’t arrive as a helpless infant but as a conquering King. He will once and for all put an end to all evil and injustice. All wars and sickness and pain will forever cease. He will bring the true peace that we have been longing for and singing about since that first incarnation almost 2,000 years ago.

We can look forward while at the same time looking back. We can see the manger and the cross because both led to the victory that Jesus won that will very soon be consummated. It will be like in The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis when Edmund, Susan, Peter, Lucy and the rest have that delicious feeling you get when the school term has ended and summer had begun. Only this time, this feeling will go on to infinity and the best part of the story won’t have ended but will only have just begun.

Advent is when we say, “Come, Lord Jesus. Come.”

So I suppose it’s time for another Peanut update. As you can tell, she’s living her best life these days. By her best life, I mean she basically takes naps and has snacks all day. That should probably be my goal for my best life.

She also managed to stay out of the way of any hard work involving putting up the annual Christmas decorations. If there’s anything that even hints of work and effort, she goes and hides until the feeling passes. Or until the work is done.

As you can tell, all the napping and snacking have helped her to maintain her girlish (or should I say kittenish?) figure. She gets plenty of belly rubs and head skritches, so I’d say she’s doing rather well for herself. Now I just have to figure out what kind of tuna to buy her for Christmas. Decisions, decisions.

So I did a thing today. Or technically, I did THE thing today. I got my Moderna vaccine booster shot. It’s something that I decided was right for me to do at the time. I don’t feel like I have the right to tell anybody else what they need to do regarding vaccines. Each person should be able to assess the facts and come up with a decision based on sound logic. Unfortunately, sound logic and common sense aren’t very common these days.

But I’m ready for this whole pandemic thing to be over. I’m praying for God to eradicate this coronavirus. I’m praying for no more new cases, no more hospitalizations, and absolutely no more deaths from this virus. I want the term COVID-19 to be a past tense thing.

Maybe I’m being naive and unrealistic. Still, I believe completely in the power of prayer. I believe that if God can cause a valley of dry bones to stand again as a living, breathing army, He can deal with a simple virus. If God can bring Lazarus back from the dead, then He can handle a pandemic. I’m trusting in the power of God way more than I’m trusting in any vaccines or boosters or shots. That’s where my true hope lies.

I didn’t exactly eat my weight in food this time, but I managed to put away a good bit of turkey and dressing, as well as the other usual Thanksgiving meal staples. I even left room for some strawberry rhubarb pie with ice cream. It was a good day.

The best part was that I got to experience all this culinary goodness with my family. Good company always makes food taste better, especially when it’s people that you love who love you back. A meal shared is much better than a meal eaten alone.

I remain supremely grateful for my life. I choose to look at the blessings I have rather than all that the world says I need to have before I can be truly happy. Do I have everything I want? No. Do I have everything I need? Yes. I choose to do the most counter-cultural thing in this current culture and say that I am completely content. I won’t need a bunch of Black Friday deals give me any more peace than I already have.

But you know what’s better than a good Thanksgiving meal? Thanksgiving leftovers the next day.

I’ve probably mentioned it before, but Thanksgiving isn’t what it used to be. I feel like Thanksgiving is kind of the Pluto of holidays. Remember how Pluto used to be a planet? Then some bigwigs decided that it wasn’t really a planet, but a dwarf planet. Like it didn’t count as much because it was smaller? I believe in you, Pluto. I still think you’re a real planet.

I think Thanksgiving has also been demoted a bit. Now it’s a day to eat a lot and watch football. It’s not even considered a real holiday anymore. It’s more of a gateway holiday to Christmas when people start getting all their decorations down from the attic and preparing to deck the halls and adorn the Christmas tree.

Thanksgiving as I see it is a celebration of the original Pilgrims who came over in 1622 with little more than hope and faith in God. They took a day as a way of saying thanks back to God for having delivered them to a new land full of promise. Whether or not you believe that story or not, it’s good to take a day to reflect and give thanks. It’s good to take 24 hours to be intentional in your gratitude.

Obviously, thanksgiving should be a mindset that we keep all year round. Gratitude should be not an occasional act but a constant mentality that comes from focusing on all that God has blessed us with rather than seeing only what we don’t have that we wish we did. Thankfulness keeps us from becoming entitled and keeps up humble.

Tomorrow, I do hope you get a lot of good food. I hope the football games are competitive this year. But I hope more than anything else that you will take time to be thankful and to express your gratitude to those you love with words and acts of kindness. Above all, I hope you include room in your day to show gratitude to God for another year of providential care and grace.

Tonight, Mike Harder spoke about what it looks like to live out our yes to God. He went to Abraham in Genesis 12 as the example of someone who left his home, family, and city without knowing the place to which God was calling him. Abraham said yes in faith to the first step of God’s plan without asking to see the rest of the journey.

God asks us to trust him in that first step of obedience. Often, we want to see the big picture before we commit to God’s plan, but God isn’t as much seeking our approval as He is our obedience.

I’m reminded of an episode of The Chosen where we see a man named Nathaniel sitting under a tree crying and yelling at God. He says, “Can you even see me? Do you even know I’m here?”

He doesn’t get a response in the moment, so the scene dissolves with him looking dejected and depressed, thinking God hasn’t heard him at all. Later, he gets invited by a friend to come and see a man who could be the Messiah. At first, Nathaniel is hesitant, but eventually he goes.

When Nathaniel meets the Messiah, Jesus says to him, “When you were sitting under that tree, I saw you.”

He was answering Nathaniel’s prayer. But Nathaniel would never have been in a position to hear the answer had he not made that first move to come and see. Nathaniel wouldn’t have known Jesus as the Messiah unless he was willing to literally and figuratively take that first step.

God doesn’t promise to tell us where we’re going, but He promises to be with us along the way. Abraham’s greatest joy was in the following as much as in the final destination. So it is with us. The goal is just as much about knowing and trusting God more and more as it is about reaching the place where God is calling you.