love

New Year’s Day 2024

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

This is my favorite quote for the new year. It was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer while he was in a concentration camp after a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He penned these words, knowing they might be some of his very last and that he probably would not live to see the next new year.

These words are timeless and just as needed in 2024 as they were in 1945:

“With every power for good to stay and guide me,
comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
I’ll live these days with you in thought beside me,
and pass, with you, into the coming year.

While all the powers of Good aid and attend us,
boldly we’ll face the future, be it what may.
At even, and at morn, God will befriend us,
and oh, most surely on each new year’s day

The old year still torments our hearts, unhastening:
the long days of our sorrow still endure.
Father, grant to the soul thou hast been chastening
that Thou hast promised—the healing and the cure.

Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving
even to the dregs of pain, at thy command,
we will not falter, thankfully receiving
all that is given by thy loving hand.

But, should it be thy will once more to release us
to life’s enjoyment and its good sunshine,
that we’ve learned from sorrow shall increase us
and all our life be dedicate as thine.

To-day, let candles shed their radiant greeting:
lo, on our darkness are they not thy light,
leading us haply to our longed-for meeting?
Thou canst illumine e’en our darkest night.

When now the silence deepens for our harkening,
grant we may hear thy children’s voices raise
from all the unseen world around us darkening
their universal paean, in thy praise.

While all the powers of Good aid and attend us,
boldy we’ll face the future, be it what way.
At even, and at morn, God will befriend us,
And oh, most surely on each new year’s day!” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

Lessons Learned Slowly

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“‘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.

Advent, Memories, and a Christmas Story

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

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.

Trials and Tragedy into Gold

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I heard that the Middle Tennessee area got hit with some tornadoes today, some of which did significant damage. Six people lost their lives. It seems like such a random and senseless tragedy smack in the middle of the Advent season.

But then I remember that we live in a beautiful but broken world where nothing is as it should be and chaos seems to be the order of the day. But I’ve read the last chapter of the Bible and I know that the story doesn’t end in ashes. Hope wins. God wins. The best happy ending of all is coming.

I remember that God stepped into our world at its darkest and became a baby so that we who live in that darkness might have hope. That light of the world still shines, though all kinds of powers and people have done their best to put it out. All the darkness in all the world still can’t overcome even the smallest light.

The greatest gift of the Advent season is one that no wars or storms or pandemics or political unrest or anything else in the world can ever take away. We celebrate this season the coming of Emmanuel who can take the worst and turn it to good. Hope is born again.

Broken Crayons

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Have you heard the saying that broken crayons still color? It’s true.

It’s also true that God uses broken people to bring out the colors in the world. Those, and not the perfectly whole people, are the ones God favors to work in and to work through.

God uses wounded healers because He is a wounded healer. He still bears the scars from His wounds by which we were healed.

Those marks on His hands and feet are to remind us that we weren’t healed and saved to bask in our deliverance, but to turn around and help others find healing. We have been reconciled through shed blood in order to facilitate a ministry of reconciliation based on the Prince of Peace.

Love That Says No

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire” (George MacDonald).

I think as a society we’ve turned love into a vague kind of permissiveness that tolerates anything and has no will of its own, a thinly disguised kind of lust that puts self-gratification above all else.

Not so with the ruthless, radical, relentless love of God. Not so with the love that took Jesus to a bloody death on a cross.

I’m finding out in my own life that this love of God, while pure and perfect and good, won’t tolerate anything but God’s very best for me.

While I’ve received God’s YES in Jesus, often that YES means a No to lesser desires and wants in my life. Sometimes, they’re bad and harmful. Sometimes they’re good. But just as bad is an enemy of good, so can good be an enemy of the best.

I still believe that the times God has said no to my prayers have been great mercies, maybe even more so than when He says yes. He’s kept me from finding the end result of me getting my own way, which usually doesn’t turn out well. Especially since I’m not always certain that I actually know what I want.

God will burn away anything in me that’s not pure and lovely. The bad, the ugly, and yes, sometimes the good. That’s what hurts the most.

Maybe the best kind of love is that which seeks to bring out the best in others and won’t settle for anything less. That’s God’s kind of love. The kind that sometimes says no.

 

Velveteen Love

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“’Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’” (Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit).

I’ll just let this speak for itself. May each of us know Love like this that takes us where we are and makes us real and whole.

 

Thursday Smiles

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“We know what true love looks like because of Jesus. He gave His life for us, and He calls us to give our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16, The Voice).

Smile. God loves you. Not as you should be. Not as you wish you could be. Not as you see yourself on your best days when the skies are blue and all the traffic lights are green.

God loves you as you are. He loves you at your worst as well as your best. He loves you at your darkest and ugliest moments the same way He loves you when you’re living right.

You can’t cause God to love you less or make Him love you more.

When people walk away, God won’t.

When you don’t like yourself, God likes you.

Whether you drive a Maserati or a Ford Pinto, God loves you.

God’s love is as unchanging as God Himself, which means that His love for you is forever.

Take that thought with you as you drift off to sleep tonight.

Oh, by the way, tomorrow’s Friday!

 

 

Happy February 14!

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

It’s Valentine’s Day aka Single Awareness Day aka The Day Before Chocolate is 70% Off. In other words, this day is loaded with expectations. And chocolate.

For those of you in relationships, congratulations. Don’t take them for granted. The good relationships aren’t the ones where the two of you settle but where each of you is still trying to win the heart of the other and outdo each other with acts of love.

For those who are not, the temptation to cynicism and envy and anger is very real. Especially if you’ve reached the point on giving up for any kind of romance of your own.

The key is to get out of yourself. It’s to seek out the unlovable and serve them with acts of love. It’s to focus on the Author of all loves, the one who made us lovable when He set His love on us in the first place.

That’s how Valentine’s Day exists. We love at all because He first loved us.

It’s important to remember that love at its core is not an emotion. While love does involve the emotions, it is ultimately an act of the will. When you stop feeling in love, you still choose to act in loving ways. That’s real love.

No matter where you are on this Valentine’s Day, remember above all that you are loved. God demonstrated His love for us in that while you and I were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still enemies with God, Jesus chose those nails for us.

You are the beloved of God. That trumps every other identity and that’s the best way to define yourself and to see yourself on this February 14.

Plus, there’s always chocolate. Chocolate never judges. Chocolate understands. Chocolate will always be there for you.