Category Archive

“Mary’s Boy Child”

Long time ago in Bethlehem,
So the Holy Bible say,
Mary’s boy child, Jesus Christ,
Was born on Christmas Day.

Hark, now hear the angels sing,
A new king born today,
And man will live forever more,
Because of Christmas Day.

While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
Them see a bright new shining star,
Them hear a choir sing,
The music seemed to come from afar.

Now Joseph and his wife Mary,
Come to Bethlehem that night,
Them find no place to born she child,
Not a single room was in sight.

Hark, now hear the angels sing,
A new king born today,
And man will live forever more,
Because of Christmas Day.

By and by they find a little nook
In a stable all forlorn,
And in a manger cold and dark,
Mary’s little boy was born.

Hark, now hear the angels sing,
A new king born today,
And man will live forever more,
Because of Christmas Day.

Trumpets sound and angels sing,
Listen to what they say,
That man will live forever more,
Because of Christmas Day.

~ Jester Hairston
arranged by Frank Gallagher

In wondering what to write today, I was listening to Charlotte Church’s Christmas CD Dream a Dream, and the above song began to play. And God put the pieces in place for me. I knew what to write.

Christmas is the holiday we spend with my dad’s side of the family. We used to see them more often when I was little–we would see them in the summer as well as at Christmas. Now, it’s primarily at Christmas. This year we will be going to Michigan to be with my grandmother and my dad’s two sisters. Grandma is getting too old to travel, so we make sure we go visit her (rather than making her come see us if she wants to see us!). As she grows older, tiredness has settled into her body, making it harder for her to do the things she has always loved to do when the family is around. Gradually she stopped doing things: cooking for the family meals is left to my aunt, now; buying gifts for us “kids” is my mother’s job now. But one thing that Grandma still does is make cookies. Chocolate Chip cookies.

Being at Grandma’s house has always meant having cookies. I can picture the two of us at bedtime one night when I was staying alone with her at her apartment: in our pj’s and eating a cookie apiece with a cold glass of milk before bedtime. This November, at her apartment, I raided her box of cookies again, tasting the taste that will forever be associated in my mind with her and her home. And even though she makes other cookies, even though she keeps other cookies on hand (Danish butter cookies–yum!), nothing compares with her chocolate chip cookies.

We have tried to duplicate them at our house. We use no other recipe. They’re Dad’s favorite cookie, and he loves it when we make them. But somehow they never match Grandma’s cookies. And it’s not just Dad remembering “the good old days,” either: one look at Grandma’s cookies, one taste, and I realize just how good they are and how unique. Mom has tried to make them match Grandma’s cookies, people have raved about the cookies coming from that recipe; blue ribbons have been won with it (well, at least one). The cookies we make from the recipe are not bad–in fact, they’re pretty good; but no one makes Grandma’s cookies quite like Grandma does. They’re almost crunchy, but not quite. They’re almost chewy, but not really. They’re thick and have the right proportion of chocolate chips in them–just enough to be wonderful. They’re small enough to dunk in a glass of milk without having to break them, but big enough to eat in more than one bite. And they beg you to eat more! An unseen conversation goes on in my brain when I open the box to get one out:
me: I think I’ll have a cookie.
brain: With milk?
me: Naw. I’m not really hungry; I’m not going to make a big production out of it. I’ll have milk and another one later, maybe.
I take out a cookie and eat it.
brain: Wow! That’s good.
me: Hmmm. It was better than I expected. I think I’m going to have one more.
brain: Great idea! With a glass of milk this time, ok?
me: Ok!
And there I am standing with a glass of milk and a couple more cookies, having made a big production of it after all!

Yes, they’re that good.

So what does this have to do with Christmas? What does this have to do with the song “Mary’s Boy Child” (that contains such bad grammar–yes, I’m aware of the grammatical errors, and the slight factual error, too)? That’s what I was asking myself this morning. And that’s the missing piece that fell into place for me. Uniqueness. The Christmas story is unique. No religion in the world can boast a God who gives Himself to His creation in the way Jesus Christ has given Himself. No other person in history has the power to change lives as He does. No other story in the world gives such hope and such peace, warming cold hearts the world over.

Oh, the story has often been imitated: in fact, Dickens, one of my favorite authors, models his themes off of the themes in the Christmas story. But no sacrifice nor generosity in any story can completely match the real Christmas story. It is unique. It is hard and real–cold, bare facts of a factual story. It is soft and gentle–warm, pleasant thoughts of God’s love to the world. It is thick with suspense and has just enough mystery in it to make it wonderful.  It is concise enough to read in a night (unlike my blog posts!), yet it’s big enough to spend an entire lifetime pondering. And I find that I keep coming back for more. More than I ever expect each year–I wonder if there’s anything I can possibly get out of it this year as Christmas approaches, and each year I see it in a new way. It’s just as good as I remembered. No, better! Like Grandma’s cookies.

And like Grandma’s cookies, it’s not really satisfying to think about eating them or to read about how good they are. Only the real thing satisfies. Other re-tellings and comment may help us see the story in a new light, but they are not the story. There is no substitute for reading the words–God’s words, His telling of what happened from His point of view–and hearing the way He connects it with the hopes and fears and questions I bring with me to the reading of the story.

May you find yourself devouring more of His word this Christmas than you expected to. May you sample again the “real thing” and find it more satisfying than you remembered.

I learned a new word last week: “gangrel.” It sounds like it ought to be a cookie. But it’s not. In fact, I must begin by apologizing for cheating with this post. This post is not about a cookie at all–it’s about cookie dough. I am fully aware of the fact that “cookie dough” is not its own type of cookie. I can offer no excuses for writing about cookie dough this time. But I can humbly beg your patience with me as I write about this rather sticky subject (pun intended).

When did cookie dough become off limits? I think I remember eating cookie dough as a child. I am sure my mother “scolded” me every now and then for eating too much; however, she would let me lick the beaters for just about every sweet dessert she made, so I know she did not mind my sampling the wares before they were cooked. So when did cookie dough and any raw batter with eggs in it become off limits? Now it is a threat for salmonella because it contains raw eggs. I used to get after my brother and sister for eating cookie dough, and I stopped eating it myself. That is, I managed to hold to my principles of not eating it until I moved in with my cousins. At their house, everyone eats cookie dough, it seems. And eventually I, too, fell victim to the batter for Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies. I realize that it is still as dangerous as it was before, but I go ahead and eat it anyway, figuring that the odds are against me getting salmonella every time I take a bite of that dangerous, uncooked concoction.

What is it about cookie dough that attracts us? It’s sticky. It’s goopy. It sometimes has a little bite to it from the vanilla flavoring that has not been cooked into submission yet (at least, I am speculating that it’s the vanilla which creates that slight tingling sensation on my tongue when I eat cookie dough). What is it about cookie dough that has made it one of the leading flavors of ice cream? Maybe it’s all of the above. I honestly do not know.

But I do know what a gangrel is now. And it is the opposite of cookie dough: cookie dough is popular–gangrels are not; cookie dough is tasty–gangrels are usually rather unsavory; cookie dough has immediate potential for happiness–gangrels often seem to have passed their expiration date. In fact, about the only visible connection between the two (besides the word itself sounding like some sort of Scandinavian sweet) is that both of them look like a mess. What’s a gangrel? Maybe you should ask “WHO is a gangrel?” A gangrel is a vagabond, a homeless person, a vagrant. When I read the words “homeless person,” I picture the people on the streets and in the parks of San Francisco, some of them sleeping in boxes, some of them pushing shopping carts of tattered junk down the street. They’re unsightly and generally considered a problem. And the most annoying thing about them is that many of them do not truly have to live that way; they want to. Only God knows what it is in them that makes them want to live lives of homelessness. But they are hard to help and hard to love (as another author has pointed out). They’re a mess!

But we all are sometimes. I certainly feel like one sometimes. Sometimes it’s when I am sick, nursing a cold like I am as I type this tonight: everything seems out-of-sorts, and as much as I want people to help me, I also want them to leave me alone. That happens sometimes when I am heart-sick, too. I feel tattered and worn and dumpy–sticky and gooey, too.  And there is an instinct within me that makes me want to hide away from the world and those that love me, especially when I seem to have forgotten how to be lovable.

But I think that God must look at us like we look at cookie dough: irresitible. Even when we are a mess, He comes after us (not to eat us, of course). If we look at His dealings with the nation of Israel, we see that He has a special place in his heart for gangrels–the nation of Israel certainly acted like that at various times throughout their long history–they needed help, but they made themselves helplessly un-helpable and unlovable. They wanted God and they didn’t want Him all at the same time. By the time Christ came on the scene, the nation was longing for their Messiah–their deliverer. An old Latin hymn captures their longing. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”: its words and music sounds like the mourning of someone who is inconsolable.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
O drive away the shades of night
And pierce the clouds and bring us light.

Rejoice! rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

~ Latin hymn trans. by John M. Neale 

After a while, we lose patience with those who are inconsolable–we can’t help them, so we fade away. But God does not. He even came to live the life of a gangrel Himself–homeless and poor–for a little while in order to Help His people. And when He came, they rejectied Him–crucified Him, in fact, and rejected Him and the fact of His resurrection later. But He still has not rejected them. He will still fulfil the promises He made to them.

And God did not just do this for the nation of Israel; He came for the whole world, too. He ignores the mess and the goop and the danger that He knows we human beings contain. And the Bible promises that He will continue to do that for us our whole lives through, following us with the most love we will allow Him to pour on us–even if we will only let Him get close enough to bless us in those unseen ways He blesses everyone. But if we let Him, He will be to us as He has been to His people through all the years: “a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” He might get His hands sticky (but c’mon! isn’t getting a little sticky part of the fun of cookie dough?); I think He must kinda like being sticky like that. Even when we are gangrels.

Next time you sneak a bite of cookie dough–or next time you don’t because of possible salmonella problems–think about gangrels (even though they’re not cookies).

everthing was going fine until reality hit–literally. or maybe he was the one hitting reality–hard. suddenly the smooth exhilaration, the feeling of the wind on his face and the speed of motion end abruptly with his bicycle skidding to a halt on the rocks, grinding his elbow, knee, hands into the gravel. and suddenly bicycles are not exciting anymore. or maybe they’re too exciting. and everything is swallowed up in pain and anguish and humiliation. and all he wants to do is to go home. he wants mom to make everything all better.

everything was fun until it wasn’t. then suddenly the slumber party took a turn for the worse. someone suggests a game that involves humiliating each other, and, fearful for herself as well as for the humiliation of others, she finds herself wanting out. now. dares she call home this late at night? will dad still be up? will he come get her? maybe she’s just being stupid. after all, no one else seems to object to being made fun of. but all she wants is home. at home it will be easier to sort things out. and at home it won’t matter if she was being stupid or not.

Home. It’s not a reasoning thing. If we reasoned it out we would realize that Mom and bandaids can’t really stem the throbbing and hurting. If we reasoned it out we would realize that it’s just for one night, and eventually it will go away and be only dim memory. But for that moment–that long, unreasoning moment–we want home. “Just let me go home!” our whole being cries.

We grow up. Bandaids no longer work their magic. Mom and Dad are no longer the cure-all. We begin to see that sometimes there are things bigger than anything they can cure. But that cry doesn’t go away. Sometimes even at home I have felt it screaming out inside of me: “I want to go hooooome!” It’s as though the bigger we grow the larger the longing becomes. Even after we no longer cry from scraped knees. Even after we learn how to handle the peer pressure. We still want HOME. A home that will cure the big problems of reality when we hit it in the real world. The presence of that cry indicates that somewhere there is a real home that will satisfy that very real and ever bigger longing. As thirst testifies to the existence of water, our longings testify to the existence of HOME.

tonight, I want to go home. i have that unreasoning sick-to-my-stomach feel like you get when something is really really hurting but you don’t exactly know what. maybe everything hurts and your stomach is having sympathy pains–stomachs are very sympathetic organs, you know! i wish I could go back to my parents’ house right now. i’d give almost anything to curl up next to Mom and feel her arms around me and know that in this place at this moment everything is fine.

But even though that’s home to me. Even though it would feel wonderful just to be with her right now, it’s not enough to fix the “owies” or “booboos” of life. There’s only one home that can do that. Ultimately it’s Heaven where God the Father will, like a mom or dad that’s just bandaged up a wound, take a heavenly tissue (guarenteed not to rip) and wipe away the tears from our faces. But John 15 dares to say that Jesus Christ–God Himself in full humanity–will make His home in us. I don’t really understand how it all works. And it seems too good to be true.

Maybe I’m already home.