Have Fun at Christmas!!

It is the fashion about this time each year to begin Christmas shopping.  We may load our pockets with cash, and our hearts with guilt.  Some folks have been brought up on warnings and admonitions every time there is a time of fun. Some Christians don’t know how to have fun, unless it is sprinkled and spiced with guilt.  It is as if they must be more serious, thrifty, concerned about others.  As the Christmas season opens, writers and speakers in the Christian community say, in one way or another, like our parents did when we went out for an evening of fun, “Now be careful!”  So now it is  “Have a Merry Christmas, but not too merry, not too joyous, not too much fun.” 

Again we will hear about over-commercializing Christmas, putting Christ back into Christmas, the paganism of the Christmas tree, tinsel as the symbol of superficiality, cash registers as the symbol of what Christmas has become.  Necessary correctives perhaps, but we need more of the opposite. We need encouragement to have fun, let our joy bloom, even be foolishly full of fun, or extravagant.  Isn’t that what the heart of Christmas is, namely, “joy to the world”.

I will never forget an incident from our first year of marriage.  Linda and I were living in Ann Arbor and our lives became intertwined with a family of desperately poor people.  A mother, and four children all of school age.  They lived in abject poverty.  They had broken windows, very little money, a sickly mother, and a house that was hardly livable.  But when Christmas came the children had through odd jobs accumulated a little money and they invited us to come over on Christmas Day to see the gift they had bought for their mother.  They were very excited about it.

  So we went to their house, carrying in our minds some vague expectations of what kind of a gift they had bought for her.  Perhaps a warm coat, a new purse, or maybe an electric frying pan, or a toaster.  Instead we were knocked over with surprise and chagrin.  They had us close our eyes as they went into the next room to get the gift.  Then they brought from behind the curtain the gift.  It was a huge stuffed donkey about five feet tall!  It must have cost them $25 or $35 (1962).  They were thrilled.  We were stunned but acted like we were pleased.  In fact we thought it was a very “stupid” gift.  Of all the things she needed, that was the least.

Still, as we thought about it, there may have been something right in that kind of gift..  Here they were in their poverty hardly anything they could have bought of a practical nature would have changed their status significantly.  So why not buy something totally enjoyable just for the fun and excitement of giving it?

A little of that that has to go into the Christmas season. Instead of hand-wringing and furrowed brows about the fun we’re having when there are poor people dying on the other side of town, maybe a little reckless happiness is called for. Christians must be thoughtful and give to those other kind of concerns, but there is something bottomless about that pit.  There is a time for unrestrained Christmas foolishness, impractical fun.  Forget, the shaking fingers and historical surveys about the paganism of the Christmas tree.  Enjoy Christmas and have fun.  Christ lives! Relax and enjoy Christmas freely and fully, uncluttered by guilt.

Advent

The season of Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas.  It is the time we get ready for Jesus' birth.  A beautiful old hymn describes the ages-old sense of anticipation people embraced:

O come, O come Immanuel                                   

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice.  Rejoice.  Immanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

One of the most beautiful traditions of Advent is the lighting of the Advent Wreath.
The Advent Wreath is a continuous ciecle of evergreens representing the ceaseless flow of time and our unending hope.  The evergreens are a symbol of Christ who became man that we might have Everlasting Life, and of God who loves us endlessly.

The four candles spaced around the wreath designate the four eras during which the world waited for Christ.  Three purple candles symbolize humility.  The rose candle represents joy and hapiness.  All four symbolize hope whic fills the Advent season.  The pure white candle is the center of the wreath and symbolizes the Christ Child.

It is Sunday but Monday is aComin'

That is a very important line.  It describes what going to church is really about.  It isn't about getting things right with God, or once again focusing on our sins to get forgiveness.  Forgiveness is there.  It may help to go to church to get that reassurance but it isn't a way of earning credits with God so that he is sure to forgive us.  Jesus said on the cross as he came to the end of his suffering "It is finished."  The debt is totally paid.  No more sacrifices, rituals seeking forgiveness, crying out in desperation.  That kind of religion is finished.  Our sins, past, present, and future are forgiven. 

Going to church is mostly about getting re-directed for the week ahead.  The loving Jesus lives in every one of us.  The weekly assignment is to find ways to let the love of Jesus out of ourselves into the lives of those around us and into our work as well. It happens through friendliness, encouragement, appreciative words, compliments, showing interest, caring touches, smiles, helping hands, "showing up".   Even if our work is not centered on people we can organize, systematize, improve and strengthen things, and the use of processes, all of which are basically here to make life better for the human race.  In doing that we are indeed making the world a better place.  That is what we are here for.

These processes and helps are what Sunday and church are about----refocusing, recovering, restoring, rethinking, being refreshed and healed.  Then it is Monday and we are back renewed in order to be  brightening the world.  Everyone can do it.  And everyone needs it.  "Brighten the world where you are."

Thanksgiving Means Gratitude

Thanksgiving Means Gratitude

After many months of silence it is time to talk again.  This is a new beginning for which I am very grateful..Speaking of being grateful, I have learned in the last couple of years that gratitude (remember it is Thanksgiving time) is not a religious activity in the old fashioned sense.  Gratitude is more like exercise, eating properly, getting enough sleep.  That is, it is a health benefit.

When we realize that steady, consistent, grateful thoughts and remembrances are like taking vitamins, or maybe even antibiotics, we then know the idea is a gift of God.  Thankfulness is a central Christian theme.  But it is not something we do to please a stern and watchful God.  No, we please God with thankfulness because God is pleased when we take care of ourselves.

The primary research about gratitude has been done at a State University, not a Christian College or University.  Dr. Robert Emmons at California State University -Davis has written a book entitle Thanks  .  It is based on the research his graduate students have engaged in measuring the effects of grateful activities.  To put it briefly the results are basically--the more you are grateful the better you will be in your daily life.

Thanks equals Gratitude

God Heals. We Walk Along Side

God Heals

(But God sincerely requests your gracious assistance)

It should be engraved on the mind and in the heart of every warmhearted and softhearted follower of Jesus that God heals the broken hearted and we do not have to try to do it.  If there is healing needed God will take care of it.  All we have to do is “show up.”

We all know those who have come back to life after being “hit by a freight train”.  Some have come through the most dreadful tragedies imaginable and now years later once again smile, laugh, dance, and sing.  It is never right away, and it shouldn’t be.  There is never singing without a deep pain in one corner of their heart.  But they do come back to sing once more.

Our place, when people are hurt, devastated, troubled or heart-broken, is to be there.  We must be with them.  There at their sides we confidently and patiently allow God to work.  God is healing while we walk along side---listening, mingling our tears with theirs, praying, hugging.  This means we must resist our impulses to try to fix them.  It means resisting our logical explanations and theological perspectives that say why this happened or how it can be softened.  We mostly help ourselves with such endeavors, not them.  We just walk along side while God heals them.      

Faith is not an Army Tank

                    FAITH IS NOT AN ARMY TANK

Helen's faith has failed.  Her husband, still young, once a successful physician, is now confined to a nursing home.  He has Alzheimer's Disease.  Over the months since his diagnosis he has grown progressively out of touch.  Today he hardly knows Helen.

She has sold their home to help cover her deepening financial crisis and is looking into selling some of her jewelry.  Her friends have distanced themselves, they feel helpless and unable to handle their own dismay.  Helen herself, wounded in spirit, is pulling back from social contacts.

Her lament to me today, however, is not about her troubles but about her lack of faith through all this.  Sorrow, anger, and frustration batter her soul.  Depression lurks at the door and threatens to take up total and permanent residence in her spirit.

God seems to be nowhere around, she sighs.  Her prayers, mere cries, feel empty and directionless.  Ordinarily a spirited, vivacious woman with an expressive faith, she appears wan and defeated.  Helen is disappointed in herself that she is so crippled by, and heartsick over, what is happening.  A person of faith should do better, she believes.  A good Christian should, she says, find her faith giving her courage, hope, and even cheer in times like this.

No Army Tank.  I talk to Helen about her faith.  I tell her that having faith is not like riding in an Army tank, protected on every side from the onslaughts of life, rolling smoothly over every pothole and obstacle in the path.

Faith is, rather, like walking with little protection into a war zone.  You're hit from all sides and wounded, but you continue on with a Companion at your side who is injured every time you are, but still holds you. Like many people, Helen seems to believe that faith is separate from the person. The individual may be bludgeoned, but faith should keep thriving, untouched..

Reality teaches something different.  When life hammers it’s inevitably harsh and sometimes savage blows, we are knocked down--faith and all.  Staggered and bloodied, we and our faith, struggle to get up again, to go on, to endure, to recover.

Helen can't possibly expect her faith to be healthy and robust; she's been "run over by a freight train."  She is wounded, deeply wounded.  Her world has collapsed.  She has lost her security, her dreams, and her husband.  He is like a stranger, and years of worsening distress lie ahead for them both.  How could she go through this any differently than she is?  How can she expect of herself resilient, normal, wonderful faithfulness in a time like this?

No Guarantee.  Helen is suffering.  Suffering brings serious pressure on a person and her faith.  That is what suffering is, a painful disruption of one's whole life--physical, social, emotional, spiritual.

There is no easy solution to Helen's pain.  The healing capacity put within her by her Creator can eventually restore her.  Nevertheless, she has no guarantee she will emerge from her struggle better instead of bitter, deeper instead of more shallow.  The support of the community of faith around her is her greatest hope.

Perhaps we can inoculate future Helens against the same kind of spiritual despair over faith's failure.  We can do so by modifying the conventional image of faith we pass on to our children--by dismantling the Army-tank model.  This model sets everyone up for disillusionment--or it prepares them to see faith as the denial that anything hurts.

Faith, we need to see--and to teach--is not the capacity to eliminate pain.  It is not a spiritual strength that makes life's heartaches hurt less.  Faith is not a spiritual superiority that lifts one above the ordinary tears and grief of life.  It is not immunity from disease, failure, or loss, and it is not armor against the perplexity, despair, and confusion these troubles usually bring with them.

Quite the opposite--faith is freedom to enter pain, to feel it for what it is.  Faith is the capacity to experience life at full strength, to mourn personal and global threats and losses, to enter--as raw-nervedly as mere people can--into our own and others' diseases and agonies.  Faith, at it's core, is essentially the ability to suffer.

Rather than a power model of faith that makes us think we can and should be super-persons, we need a weakness model.  God has revealed himself to us as one who has the courage to hurt, not as a hero who shrugs blows off.  God, in Jesus, entered our condition, our pain, our humanness.  He did not stride valiantly above it all, he agonized.

Faith is an awareness that God is alongside us in all circumstances.  God has been there, and God is there with us, all the way, come what may.  "If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there...even there your hand will guide me."  (Ps. 139:8-10).

We need to equip ourselves and our children with this more biblically realistic teaching.  Otherwise we promote and practice Christian faith as another self-help technique that denies the actualities of life in this broken world.

Life is difficult.  The storms will be there.  We will be knocked about.  Christian faith grants no immunities.  We have only the knowledge of the presence with us of He who accepted no immunity.

We may not feel His presence when earthquakes shake, tornados destroy; or when we're ripped with sorrow, anger, or fear.  We will only be able to remember it.  He hurts with us and weeps with us.  He is taking every blow we get.  He is with us, holding us.

God seems to stress far more his suffering with us, his entering into our circumstances, than he does his power over everything.  "The weakness of God is stronger than man's strength," says Paul,  stressing this point (2Cor. 1:25).  And God says, "My power is made perfect in weakness." (2Cor. 12:9).

The Christian life of faith is thus an invitation to humanness, an invitation to walk accompanied by our suffering Lord, unprotected, feeling the pain that life brings.  Then, and then only, do we gain the potential for abundant living.