Christmas

An Advent Prayer from Henri Nouwen

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I realize that we are past Advent. If you follow the ancient ways, then you are aware that this is the third day of Christmas, so it still counts. Also, this time of the kingdom of God being now and not yet feels like an extended Advent season as we wait for Christ’s return:

“O Lord,

How hard it is to accept your way. You come to me as a small, powerless child born away from home. You live for me as a stranger in your own land. You die for me as a criminal outside the walls of the city, rejected by your own people, misunderstood by your friends, and feeling abandoned by your God.

As I prepare to celebrate your birth, I am trying to feel loved, accepted, and at home in this world, and I am trying to overcome the feelings of alienation and separation that continue to assail me. But I wonder now if my deep sense of homelessness does not bring me closer to you than my occasional feelings of belonging. Where do I truly celebrate your birth: in a cozy home or in an unfamiliar house, among welcoming friends or among unknown strangers, with feelings of well-being or with feelings of loneliness?

I do not have to run away from those experiences that are closest to yours. Just as you do not belong to this world, so I do not belong to this world. Every time I feel this way I have an occasion to be grateful and to embrace you better and taste more fully your joy and peace.

Come, Lord Jesus, and be with me where I feel poorest. I trust that this is the place where you will find your manger and bring your light. Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Amen” (Henri Nouwen).

Lessons Learned Slowly

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“‘A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.’

This tiny window when the world falls asleep (or attempts to) on Christmas Eve is my favorite. Anticipation. What a gift!

Yes, we will wake up in the morning and devour our presents. We will rip our wrapping paper to shreds and down our favorite Christmas fare at the table. And then, we will feel it. The air falls flat. The glow from the lights fails to warm us fully. What’s different? Time has betrayed us. Another thing we love just cannot last.

That’s when my favorite Christmas song kicks in. “The thrill of hope” doesn’t expire tomorrow afternoon. We can access it anytime, even on a random Tuesday in March. The promise lingers. The truth remains. His birth was an entry point into time and space. His life and death? A timeless revolution. When will we ever learn that our silly calendars hold no sway.

Let us come together tomorrow with the understanding that the joy that this world affords is always tinged with sorrow, an afterburn that leaves us unsettled. Even still, let us lift our eyes to the eternal and everlasting promise. Our world IS weary, but our ‘thrill of hope’ can never, ever die!” (Jennifer Whitwell Christensen).

I used to love and dread Christmas Day.

I loved seeing all the presents as a kid and feeling all the nostalgic emotions as I got older, but I dreaded the inevitable letdown of Christmas being over for another year. I knew all those festive decorations would be going back into boxes and back into storage for another 11 months.

I dreaded coming to the end of Christmas Day and hearing the words “Christmas is over” when I was not even close to being ready for it to be over. Especially lately, when the whole season seems to fly by as quickly as one of Santa’s sleighs in the night sky.

It’s like the magical part disappears and the humdrum reappears and life goes back to grey after bursting forth in green and silver and gold and a multitude of other colors for a while. No more Christmas for 364 more days.

But the older I get, I realize that what I love most in this world are merely shadows pointing to a truer form I will know in the next. Everything that brings me joy now is a foretaste of a greater joy that no sorrow can steal nor death destroy.

When all the packages are gone and decorations put away, the hope of the season remains. I can truly be like Scrooge and honor Christmas in my heart all the days of the year because Christmas means that God has come near, and that remains true into January and beyond.

That Third Stanza

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If you’re like me and grew up in Baptist churches, you probably remember those old Baptist hymnals. You might remember that we sang a select few out of those hymnals over and over. But if you’re above a certain age, you’ll certainly remember that we always sang the first, second, and fourth stanzas of any hymn. Never the third.

Today, most of us can still remember the words to any of the old standards. But if you want to stump a Baptist, request the third stanza of any hymn. Any. Hymn. It doesn’t matter. The younger ones will resort to Google while the older ones may have to dig up an old hymnal they saved when their churches went to digital and lyrics on a screen.

But every now and then, there’s a gem hiding in the third stanza. A friend posted one such from It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, a very familiar Christmas carol. But the third stanza hit me like it was brand new — probably because it WAS brand new to me:

“O ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow
Look now for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing
O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.”

I love the idea of Christmas Day as a time to rest and hear the angels singing. It may not be feasible for some, but I think we should all at least try to make room to sit and ponder the mystery of Christmas — God became a baby, born to a virgin in a barn, who grew up to be the Savior of the world.

Advent, Memories, and a Christmas Story

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I checked one off my list for required holiday movie viewing. I watched a Christmas Story tonight with all its round-faced kid glory. When I came to the part [spoiler alert ahead] where he finally got his long-sought Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, I knew exactly the joy he felt.

I remember getting that present I had wanted all year. For me, it was a Commodore 64. For those who aren’t old, that’s a personal computer that had as much memory in it as a calculator. You could probably take the combined memory of every Commodore computer ever manufactured and it still wouldn’t add up to the memory in one iPhone. But it was a dream present.

I remember the joy of opening up gifts of Christmas morning to find something I had wanted and waited for the whole year. But sooner or later, the magic faded. The joy that was so strong at first waned. A lot of those presents eventually got sold at garage sales or got donated to Goodwill.

That’s the kind of joy that comes when we make Christmas a one day event where the focus is on opening presents and consuming lots of food. Soon, the giddiness is replaced by a kind of letdown and a sadness of having to wait 364 days until the next Christmas.

But when we focus on the child in the manger born on Christmas Day, the joy carries over. This child became the Savior of the world who doesn’t just live in our hearts one day of the year but all the days of the year.

This kind of joy lasts beyond December 25, even past the 12 days of Christmas. This joy is based on a hope that does not disappoint or decay or die. This hope is the now and the not yet of the kingdom of God. Now we see partly and catch glimpses of God breaking into the world, but one day we will see and know fully and see God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

We can celebrate the gifts and the food but keep our eyes fixed on the true reason for Christmas, Jesus.

Who Is Jesus?

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Recently, I read a post that bothered me. It basically stated that Jesus was a bleeding heart liberal socialist whose sole purpose was to stand for everything that conservatives hate. To me, that’s just as wrong as reinventing Jesus as a middle-class white Republican who is all about capitalism and the American dream.

The problem with both is that they make Jesus too small. Way too small. To reduce Jesus to something that fits comfortably into your social and political worldview is to recreate Jesus into your own image the way God created us in His. It’s to pare the claws of the lion of Judah and make Him tame, as Dorothy Sayers put it.

But Jesus is far beyond and above our politics. He’s far beyond and above our likes and dislikes and our opinions. He’s fully part of the Godhead trinity just as He is 100% God and 100% man. You can’t take in the totality of His words and believe what He said without recognizing Him as no less than God incarnate in human flesh.

Jesus Himself stated that to get Him wrong is to get the Father wrong. Did you get that? To get Jesus wrong is to get God wrong. To get God wrong is to get life and eternity wrong.

Those in the Bible who met Jesus and understood who He was fell on their faces and worshipped Him as God. They left everything behind and followed Him, willing to take up their crosses and suffer the way He suffered. They were all willing to lay down their lives for Jesus rather than deny Him (even Peter who got it wrong the first time was willing to die for the sake of his Savior).

This is the Jesus of the Christmas story. Not a Democrat or a Republican, liberal or conservative, socialist or capitalist. This Jesus is the very God who made the heavens and the earth and who is Lord of lords and King of kings. This is the one who came to save us from our sins. This is Jesus.

The Incarnation Is Everything

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“… without the incarnation, Christianity isn’t even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. ‘Be nice to one another’ is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond brokenness, and break open the dark doors of death with the key of hope. The incarnation is an essential part of Jesus-shaped spirituality” (Michael Spencer).

These days, lots of people seem hell-bent on reinventing Christianity to be more socially acceptable. In the process, you end up losing everything that makes Christianity transformative and life-changing. Instead of being counter-cultural, this new version of faith ends up looking and sounding exactly like the culture it’s trying to influence. It ends up almost polar opposite to what Christianity and the Church looked like in the New Testament, particularly in the book of Acts.

Christianity is Christ. Christ is 100% man and 100% God. As a writer of old once said, Jesus is God spelling Himself out in a language humanity could understand. But when you take away the divinity and the incarnation, what you end up with is someone who meant well and tried very hard, not the Savior of the world.

This Advent season is all about how since we couldn’t get to God through religion or rules or right living, God came to us. God came near in the form of an infant born to a virgin teenager and a peasant carpenter. Jesus is the only one who lived the righteous live God requires that we couldn’t live and died the death that we deserved, taking the punishment our sins have earned upon Himself.

May the incarnation be the true reason for the season this Advent and Christmas season. The incarnation isn’t expendable. It’s essential. It’s everything.

Happy Last Day of April

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I sincerely repent of all the times as a kid when I laughed and made fun of old people for always talking about how fast time goes by. They were right. And now I’m old. Well, older.

Which brings me to the fact that tomorrow is officially May.

That means that we’re officially 1/3 of the way through 2018.

Not only will tomorrow be the first day of May, it will also be the 8th anniversary of the flooding that took place in Nashville on May 1-2, 2010.

Where did that 8 years go? Man, those old people were right again. At least I get to make fun of the funny clothes they wore back in the day, just like someone down the road will look at my fashion sense and roll on the floor laughing at me.

I can still remember seeing all the flood waters, especially in the downtown area. I recall hearing about how Opry Mills had being overrun with flood waters. I couldn’t even get out of my neighborhood to get to work that day. It was insane.

Looking back has given me a little perspective. Like the fact that I’m able to look back. The flood waters left and Nashville is still here. I still remember the words written on a garage door on a street where the flood waters had done the most damage: “Storms pass, love shines, we survive.” Those floods are in the past and you and I are still here.

Philip Yancey wrote, “Faith is believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”

You don’t get the benefit of all the hindsight and 20/20 vision from looking back on something until you’ve lived through it. Faith is believing God’s promises as though they had already come to pass. In fact, faith is knowing that God’s future is so certain that it can be spoken of in the present tense.

Speaking of time flying, there are only 239 days until Christmas, so you best get to shoppin’.

364 More Days

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Yes, it’s only 364 more days until Christmas 2018. Yes, I’m already counting.

I’m always a little sad when Christmas Day ends. I know that technically if you count the 12 days of Christmas, we have until January 6, the Day of Ascension.  But still, it feels like some of the magic has ended for another year.

Maybe this year, I’ll go crazy and watch Christmas movies in months other than December. I could always pick a few to watch on the 25th of each month.

Or maybe I could go even crazier and actually buy some of my Christmas gifts early, so I can actually enjoy the Advent and Christmas season without worrying about who will get what.

Best of all, I can always be like that old Ebenezer Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol and honor Christmas in my heart all the days of the year, especially the Child in the manger who doesn’t just live in the hearts of men and women one day of the year.

But you can rest assured that I WILL be counting down the days until December 25, 2018. Darn tootin’.

 

 

Happy Winter Solstice!

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Apparently, today is the Winter Solstice, a fact that almost slipped by. It’s 11:16 pm and I only just realized today is the shortest day of the year. After today, the amount of daylight starts increasing again with a view to Spring 2018. So, that means that it won’t be getting dark at 4 pm for much longer.

Today is also Short Girl Appreciation Day for any girl who’s 5’5″ or under. If you qualify, I definitely think you should celebrate. After all, some reach perfection earlier than others, right?

I confess that I don’t feel ready for Christmas. Not in the least. I have nearly all my presents bought and wrapped, but I don’t feel like my heart is prepared for the coming of the Child born in the manger.

I blinked and it was already Advent season. I blinked again and it’s 3 days until Christmas. I blink again and it will all be over until 2018.

I wish that it would all slow down for a little while. I want to take the time to relish and savor this Christmas season before it’s all over.

Today is also the first official day of winter. In the usual ironic twist of Tennessee weather, we’re having a bit of a warm spell. Not warm in the sense of breaking out the speedos, but in the sense of wearing lighter jackets. It could almost be spring (or early fall).

So, happy Winter Solstice/First Day of Winter/Advent!

May you truly come to the true heart of Christmas this season and celebrate the Child in the manger who still does not live in the hearts of men and women one day of the year but all the days of all the years.

 

 

Advent Sneaking Up

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Every year, I say that I will experience all the fullness of Advent and Christmas and not one little moment slip by, yet increasingly each year I find that the days in December slip by so quickly that I hardly have a chance to catch my breath before it’s all over.

I don’t feel ready or prepared, yet Christmas Eve is only 9 days away. Back when I was a kid, 9 days would last forever, but these days when I sneeze, 2 days go by.

The first Advent and Christmas snuck up on people. Those living in Israel were expecting a Messiah, but almost none of them were looking in the right place at the right moment when He arrived.

Few would have ever suspected tiny Bethlehem to be the birthplace of the King of the Universe. Fewer would have expected Him to be born in such a lowly place — whether it was a stable or a room for the animals attached to a house– and had His first crib be a feeding trough.

It seems we’re still missing Him today. He gets crowded out by lights, gift wrapping, tinsel, and all the hustle and bustle that comes with the season. These are all good and well, but not when we’ve forgotten the reason why.

It’s good to make time to be still and meditate on the true meaning of Christmas, remembering that the Child we celebrate lives in the hearts of people not just one day a year but in all the days of all the years (to semi-borrow a line from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol)

“Lord, sometimes You come quietly and with no disturbance. Babies threaten no one, and no memorials are raised to mark their significance. May my life bring Christ quietly into the circle of human need so that those who need You will not be frightened by Your presence but enveloped in it” (Calvin Miller, The Christ of Christmas).