Category Archives: Christmas

Splitting the difference 

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According to His most ardent biographers, when Jesus was born he got a star, an angel choir, multiple prophetic and celestial intros, a visit from some prominent foreign astronomers, and an animal feed tray for a bed.

It seems like the divine side of the birth announcement for this kid was legit–angel choirs and all.  But the human side was sub-par.  The innkeeper could have let the pregnant girl use his digs.  But he did not.

Easy, I suppose, to judge the inhospitable of Bethlehem for their general indifference to an infant King.  Harder to face our own.

The question for each so-called believer in this tiny bundle of Infinite Light is–do you see Him?  At the breakfast table or the DMV?  In the bad driver or the white-collar criminal?

It is hard to see Jesus in us. We are often a selfish, short-sighted, venal bunch of sheep.

Sheep on a hill somewhere in the night.

Beneath a star.

In the presence of angels, so close to our King.

The Day After Christmas

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The first question this morning: when will it be Christmas again?

365 days can seem like forever. A long time to wait for Christmas.

It has been about 736,570 days since the first Christmas. And it was about 1.46 million days of recorded history before the first Christmas.

Suddenly a single year doesn’t seem so long. To wait for a Savior? To wait for hope?

The good news of Christmas is the gift of a child–precious, poor, unlikely, who shed his light over us.

Every day Christmas when Jesus is with us.

How will you celebrate salvation?

The Story of an “Unplanned” Pregnancy

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I was in a barn the other day, marveling at the smell. I have given birth to all my babies in temperature and germ-controlled hospitals.

I am not going to lie, I would not want to have a baby in a barn then put him in a feeding trough to sleep.

I love animals, but the whole thing seems so desperate and impoverished.

Surely the Lord of the universe could have given the kid a motel room?!

The birth of Jesus was deeply inconvenient, fraught with the appearance of impropriety, and a life-long exile from paradise for the Baby in the manger.

To many people his life would look like a mistake, but they would be wrong. The birth of this child in the barn was the most important in history.

An event I take quite personally. My life and hope returned, my spiritual debt paid. My life sentence taken by Another.

What would I do without you, Jesus?

Stay close to Jesus

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It is the Sunday before Christmas and I am not in a church.

I am in a messy house watching over sleeping children.

But I know I have to stick close to Jesus.

I know because I am broken
The world is broken
And he is the only one who can fix it
Did fix it.

A while back I was talking to my daughter about Jesus’ pronouncement at the point of his own death–

It is finished.

She shook her head in surprise.

By the time she was five she had seen her world crumble. She has walked through incredible suffering, loss, and loneliness.

Nothing seems finished.

But it is.

When Jesus dies for us he pays a complete price for us. We have been given back our wasted lives.

If we wanted them.

Many of us don’t. We willingly hand our lives over to selfishness, pride, immorality, anger, fear….other gods.

Gods who in fact will happily consume our wasted eternities.

But not Jesus.

Jesus stripped himself down to a naked convict and took every ounce of the pain and wrath of this broken world.

He was and is and will be the Finisher, the hope and Judge of this broken world.

Don’t be fooled by substitutes. Seek Jesus. Don’t rest until you find him.

He is worth the search. He is our only hope.

Is. 53
Is. 11

No One Is that White

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I have clung to this verse rather feverishly through the last 4 years:

Isaiah 53:12 (NIV)
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Because I am a transgressor
And he was numbered with me

It really does not feel good being a transgressor. First there is the spiritual malaise of sin. Then there is the divide it creates between me and God. Next there is this fun fact: while all regular humans are sinners, we pretend we are not.

Jesus was no regular human.

He was poor, dark, and hated. His nickname was “bastard.”

He bore our shame.
He bore my shame.

Isaiah 53 is a chapter as hard as obsidian, so painful, so crucial. And it was written by a guy who walked around naked for 3 years just because God told him to do it.

I figure the naked walking was God’s writing seminar. Not fun or pretty, but soaring, redemptive, essential.

Do you know Jesus?

If you do, you know the only color that matters when describing him is blood red. Blood shed for me, one miserable transgressor.

And if you don’t? Walk that road, that narrow road he lights for us, to the Cross that sets us free.

Isaiah 1:18

Who Will Save Us?

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I drove by the outlet mall on Black Friday; people were parked on the grassy margins, everywhere.

I go to the store; the area by the checkout is bunkered with coffee makers and candy canes.

I see pictures of Santa Claus everywhere. Movies about with saccharine messages about the “Christmas spirit.”

Like that is a real thing.

The truth is a poor teenager in a barn laboring to bring forth a child. If Santa did not give Jesus a decent hotel room to be born in, who are we to expect xboxes and flat screen tvs?

We are defined by gods and idols or…we are defined by that little child in the manger.

Somethings are either/or propositions:

Life or death

Angels or demons

Truth or fiction

A small tribe on the outpost of history waited for thousands of years for news of their King, the God who saves.

And it has taken us a cool 50 years to forget he is the reason for this celebration–the only Christmas gift that will matter forever.

Treasure in the snow

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Cowboy and Honey Bunch trudged through the snow. They had a couple bags of groceries nestled in their arms. HB was still quite rotund with child and chafing for a delivery process that would be a bit more challenging than cable tv.

A bit of gold glinted in the driven snow. Cowboy pulled at the corner of a gilded manuscript. It said Nurturing Sunshine in ornate calligraphy on its cover.

Hey! This looks valuable, he said. I wonder if it got lost or stolen from the university library? Or maybe the Jesuits, mused Honey.

I bet it is valuable. They said together. Jinx! Shouted Honey. Cowboy squinted at her with annoyance until she laughingly said his name. Strange that the big rules of the universe were made to be broken, but jinx was sacrosanct.

Something about the book drew Honey. She knew they needed money, but she did not want to let this book go right away. It looked magical.

It’s so cold, she pouted. I want to go home. Let’s read it first, we can take it to E-Z Cash later.

Cowboy grudgingly agreed.

When they got home and began to unthaw Honey Bunch gingerly opened. The book. It’s lettering was ornate and there were a lot of cherub-y illustrations but the book seemed to be a book of lists interspersed with stories. The stories had intricate little illustrations. The lists seemed surprisingly bossy.

Grief and Christmas

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A few years ago my family had a nightmarish Christmas.

We found ourselves at a mall, just before closing. I felt a special connection with all the other down-to-the-wire last minute shoppers.

In fact, to this day I have a great fondness for those people–the outliers, the late-workers, the Walmart cashiers, health professionals who have to work during the one or two times a year our culture shuts down for “family.”

The “family” in the nativity story is a pretty bedraggled eleventh hour at the mall sort of tableau–teen mom, far from home, no room at the inn…

It is a lonely story. We are all safe in the stable. There may not be a rocking party in it’s quiet grubbiness, but it is the birth of hope.

Come in. There is room for us all…

Evidence and evolution

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I was in the 8th grade and was a very attentive student. My science teacher taught a lesson about evolution and I asked some question, asserted a dissenting opinion.

She got angry and made me stand in the hall for the rest of class. This was akin to office roulette–if the principal came by I would face discipline. If he did not then my punishment was just the public rebuke and humiliation.

Oddly enough I cherish this memory.

Jesus says if we are ashamed of him now, he will be ashamed of us later. If we stand for him now, he will stand for us later.

When I think of the “wasted” years of my life, years when people have taken my sacrifice without gratitude or worse, hurt my children, I think of this miracle Baby, this King made man.

We Christians understand the evidence for evolution. I teach it to my children. I want them to know it well.

But there is not a single soul on this planet who could ever convince me that Jesus is not

the Word made flesh.

I see Him in the most ordinary things.
I hear His voice in the stillness and the wind.

If you can believe that a single quiet failure of a carpenter can bring hope in the world through a thief’s death, well, the rest is easy.

We all have faith in something.
Someone.

Why not Jesus?
With his story so crazy it is true.

A Christmas Memory

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One year after we discovered that our adopted son Charles had abused our children and others we suffered additional blows. More loneliness. Less community.

We had already lost family and close friends, our children’s friends because people treated us as though we were contagious, people we had known for years. The second Christmas brought more loss–from our church.

I went to the grocery store and saw a dear friend from another church. We had a brief conversation in the bread aisle and she saw the pain in my eyes as I told her the short version of our story.

Later that week I was complaining to God–
Why so much pain and loneliness?

I gathered our family and we began to sing Christmas carols. A few minutes later it sounded as though we were not the only singers. We went to our front door to find a group of carolers from my friend’s church singing in front of our house.

My friend was there. She said that after our talk in the bread aisle she felt God telling her to add a stop to their scheduled houses.

I appreciated my friend
I appreciated each singer

But I marvel at this God of Christmas who is able to rebut my loneliness and despair with song. Songs of light in the world.