Category Archive

Hoping.
Waiting.
The Spanish verb “esperar” means two things: “to hope” and “to wait.”
I wonder how they translate this verse:
Psalm 130:5-5
5. I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.

A few months ago, our pastor did a series on the seven Hebrew verbs translated “wait on the LORD” in the Old Testament and the things they teach us about waiting for God. Waiting is not something that is easy to do. We grow tired. We become discouraged. We think that perhaps we missed the bus and there’s really no point in waiting anymore. We give up and throw in the towel and go away–if you were waiting for any activity on this blog, you probably gave up a long time ago!

But Pastor pointed out that waiting on someone shows how valuable they are to us. And it’s true. Think of how a parents waits for his baby to be born or how a gardener puts in seedlings in hopes of a good harvest at the end of the summer. But I know it’s true even more from my own life as people often end up waiting for me. I have heard over and over that being on time shows a regard for the valuable time of those I am meeting; true, but being waited for has showed how much those waiting for me regard me. Not that I am making them wait as a test to see how much I am loved! God forbid! No, the tardiness is an attribute I am both learning to accept about myself and working on changing. But I know sense of value that comes from being waited for without a mention of the sacrifice the person waiting for me has made , and I know the sense of worthlessness that comes from being berated for my slowness. I want to say, “If it was so difficult to wait, then why in the world did you do it? If you didn’t want my company, why did you bother waiting for me?” On the other hand, I feel safe, accepted and loved just as I am when someone has waited for me and hasn’t complained (much).

Today, another message from another pastor reminded me about waiting on God. When we wait, we wait because there is hope. And even when we cannot understand what God is doing, we can wait for Him because we know that when He is finally ready to unveil his work of art, it truly will be a masterpiece. Today’s message reminded me that to wait on Him, I need to commit to Him the issue I am having trouble understanding and then carry on with my life, trusting Him to take care of things. The message I am sending to Him as I wait for Him is “I know that you can’t fit things into my timetable right now, but I trust that You are working things out so that they will be the best. I’m willing to wait till You’re ready to show me.”

My sister and I waited up for my parents to get home from their trip tonight. It’s late, but waiting up for them was worth it. They are worth it. [seeing their reactions to the changes we made in the living room was worth it, too]

Hoping.
Waiting.
Because He is worth waiting for.

Estoy esperando para El.

Salmos 130:5
5 Esperé yo a Jehová, esperó mi alma;
En su palabra he esperado.

“If we cannot believe God when circumstances seem be against us, we do not believe Him at all.” – Charles Spurgeon
qtd in NBBC Alumni Update: January 28, 2008 

I’ve been studying the life of Job lately. (Actually, the whole church was, and the children’s class got behind: we’re still studying that book along with the Psalms that the rest of the church is studying. We’re having a great time figuring out what each of the characters in Job is saying and getting quite an education on the behavior of people discussing things!)

If anyone had a hard time with circumstances, Job was the one. And he had so many questions for God. Questions I find that I have–sometimes even without knowing I’m wondering them.

“God, why are you punishing me? I’ve been doing my best to serve you!”

“God, if things are really truly ok between us, why these circumstances?”

“How is it considered punishment when it happens to others but not to me? It appears the same!”

“How can you still be ok with me when everyone else seems not to be? and when my world seems to be falling apart? and when I can’t tell up from down?”

 Yet, before we begin the series of discussions between Job and his friends, we know the answers to some of the questions. As I say to my kids, God was really bragging on Job.

God: “Satan, see Job down there? He’s my friend. He’s such a great guy!”

Satan: “Yeah, he’s just your friend because you’ve given him everything he wants and needs and even some things he didn’t know he wanted or needed. Take all that away, and you’ll lose his friendship.”

So God let it be tested. And He had something more to brag about when Satan returned from carrying out the terrible deed of stripping from Job everything that he had.

 God: “See, I told you he was my friend! You took away everything, and he’s still my friend! What a great guy!”

Satan: “Yeah, but he’s still healthy. Make him sick, put him into some real, physical pain, and he will start to curse you.”

So God allowed that, too. And still Job didn’t stop being God’s friend. And then (as an added “bonus”) Job’s friends misunderstood him. And they added misunderstanding to misunderstanding. And Job didn’t stop being God’s friend.

But He began to wonder if God was still his friend.

And I guess that when I’m under the circumstances, I begin to wonder that, too. I’m looking forward to the end of the book, looking forward to seeing how God answers some of these questions.

When I was a kid, rosettes were my favorite cookie to make. Mom made them especially at Christmastime. It’s been more years than I can count since I made them, but I can still recall the fascination they always held for me. Mom heated oil in a frying pan and mixed up the thin, sweet batter; then she dipped the rosette mold (a flower-shaped piece of iron on a long handle) into the batter to coat its lower half and quickly inserted the mold–batter and all–into the oil. The hot oil immediately fried the batter in the shape of the mold, allowing Mom to lift the mold entirely out of the flower-shaped cookie and leave it to cook, floating in the hot oil until it was a beautiful golden-brown. We would lift the cookies out onto a stack of paper towels in order to remove the ecxess grease before dusting them with powdered sugar. They were the prettiest and most delicate cookies I had ever seen. I loved them!

Like rosettes, peace seems brittle. Sweet, beautiful, fascinating, but delicate. Breathe on it and it is gone like the miniature snowflake on your sleeve. Try to preserve it and it becomes rancid like old french fries (or old resettes, for that matter). So God’s gift that Christmas night of peace on earth seems not only rather unrealistic, but also a bit impractical. Yet it is definitely not a white-elephant gift. Everyone wants it.

One of the most famous Christmas songs of all time is the most peaceful: “Silent Night” by Joseph Mohr, given its perfect musical setting by Franz Gruber. The song’s story goes that it was composed and performed upon the grand occasion of the church’s organ being out of commission. Now, anyone familiar with Christmas programs and Christmas services knows how stressful losing the church’s main instrument can be–how stressful any glitch can be! Yet from that rather inconvenient situation has come a song capturing the peace of Christmas like no other song does. Listen:

Silent night! holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and Child,
Holy Infant, so tender and mild–
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night! holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight;
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heav’nly hosts sing aleluia–
Christ the Savior is born!
Christ the Savior is born!

Silent night! holy night!
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace–
Jesus, Lord at Thy birth,
Jesus, Lord at Thy birth.

The songs is so gentle, lulling us to restful contemplation. But as I ponder that first Christmas, as I ponder the Christmas story, I see that not everything was still, not everything was hushed. The city being so crowded, how could it be still and at peace? Tensions must have been higher than normal. How could Joseph’s mind not have been churning with the problem of where in the world they would live until the census was over? Childbirth being so full of anguish and pain, how could Mary have been silent? A sky full of angels, how could it have been peaceful? How could one’s heart not have beat wildly after being surprised in such a manner as the shepherds were? Silent night? Did I miss what Mohr and Gruber saw?

“All is calm, all is bright/ Round yon virgin mother and Child.” I remember walking into my mother’s hospital room shortly after my sister was born. I had skipped school and spent all morning in the waiting room of the hospital until finally Dad came to get me: my sister had been born. There was a stillness, a wonder to that hospital room when I entered it (almost on tiptoe). The pain was over, Mom was exhausted but happy. And she moved gently as she let me see my sister for the first time and then allowed me to hold her. In fact, each time I visited them in the hospital a peacefulness pervaded the room, a peacefulness because all was well . . . and because the baby might be sleeping. All was calm and bright. How could it have been otherwise for that tiny baby and his exhausted mother that night? As the new mother showed her newborn infant to his wondering father and later to the curious shepherds, it could not have been other than peaceful–the peace of happy and successful exhaustion, the peace of proud mother-hood, the peace of infancy.

“Shepherds quake at the sight;/ Glories stream from heaven afar,/ Heav’nly hosts sing aleluia.” What a concert that must have been! I’ve been to good concerts, and I have also been on various stages myself a time or two. While applause is nice to receive, a good performer soon learns to crave silence from his audience, and not just any silence. An attentive silence is so concentrated that a performer can feel the audience frozen in time and place, lost in the story he is weaving. I have heard that silence from audiences, and I have felt that expectant stillness myself. I, too, have had my times of sitting silent after the house lights come back on, awed and overwhelmed by the power of the performance I have just seen or heard, pondering the thoughts it has placed in my grasp. Picture the hillside after the heavenly curtain has fallen again and the aerial show is over: wouldn’t you have sat in silence, not wanting to break the wonderful stillness of the moment?

But those moments seem so fragile. The stillness must be broken eventually: the shepherds have to speak, have to move, have to go check out this amazing news the angels gave them; the baby Jesus, like other babies the world over, will cry for the various reasons babies cry. The peace can’t last. Was God’s gift of peace to the world as insubstantial as the rosettes we used to make at Christmas time–beautiful to look at but certainly not known for longevity?

“Love’s pure light/ Radiant beams from Thy holy face/ With the dawn of redeeming grace.” Perhaps beyond the ordinary stillnesses, a different kind of peace was embedded in that night, a peace more beautiful, more realistic, more substantial, more satisfying than those natural yet fragile ones described in the first two stanzas; a peace I have glimpsed like a hummingbird out my window; a peace I have tasted but not grasped; a peace I want more of. It’s the peace that comes from God Himself, from seeing His face and knowing that everything is as it should be between us.

God’s Word, in Philippians 4:7, aptly dubs it the peace “which passeth all understanding.” I heard it described at a New Year service in which people were given the opportunity to give testimonies of how God had helped them through the year. One couple spoke of living life after a devastating house fire. The wife spoke of the first night after the fire and of the peace inside which, in the face of loss and devastation, whispered to her, “Let’s see what God is going to do with this.” And I recognized something about this incomprehensible peace, something I have been learning but having trouble putting into words: this peace comes with a built-in sense of adventure! Somehow it can look trouble in the face and see it as a ride at an amusement park. This peace is not a fragile flower; it’s tough as rope. It makes absolutely no sense at all as it grins in the face of adversity. No, it’s not a bitter grimace nor a starry-eyed smile. It’s a grin, an infectious grin that’s like a rainbow through the tears. And it enables the possessor to rest–to “sleep in heavenly peace,” something that seems impossible at first.

So, how does one get it? And how does one keep it? Well, to answer the second question, we don’t keep it–it keeps us. Philippians 4:7 goes on to promise that it will “keep [or guard] our hearts and minds.” It’s an active, strong peace, stronger than we are. How do we get it? That one is just as easy and yet infinitely more difficult to answer. We get it from God. We get it, Philippians tells us, by pouring out our hearts to Him, letting Him have all the things that we are worried over or concerned by or angry about or longing for. John 13-15 says that as we do this we must allow Christ’s words to become part of us, expecting that He will answer those longings. That part isn’t so easy. In fact, it seems almost an impossibility that we will ever have enough of His words within us to purchase His gift of peace. Bother! So much for that thought, nice though it was.

That’s the difficulty: peace involves trust. And trust comes from love. I have been re-reading The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. And the marvel to me is that my favorite chapter, the chapter that moves me most, is the one about her time in a German extermination camp. As she and her sister lived through those days of hell on earth, their confidence in the love of God shines, beams out in defiance of all horror, radiates in the face of evil itself. There’s a peace on those pages that I want in my life. A beautiful, yet unbreakable peace.

It comes from knowing God, from knowing His love. Not from loving Him–oh, no! How many people have we loved and yet feared that our love was unrequited? How many times have our hearts been broken by insensitivity, ingratitude, betrayal? No, loving God cannot bring us peace. Only being loved by Him can. Just as we rest and relax the best in the places we feel safe, just as we feel safe in the presence of those who love us, we will only have heavenly peace when we know the love of Christ, a love “which passeth knowledge.”

How can we know something that’s too big to fit into our minds? Can a child fully understand his father’s love? Can he completely grasp the arms that encircle him? Does he really care that the arms are bigger than he is? Of course not! That’s what makes him feel so safe. We never outgrow that need for love. God’s love is the only love that will always satisfy that child we carry within us forever. That’s why He calls us His children.

Hungry for some peace? It starts here: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

“Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us.”

“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

My Grandma (the one I live with) has a wonderful theory about cinnamon: she heard somewhere that it is very beneficial to our health, so she tries to find things that contain cinnamon to eat or drink or else she adds a little extra cinnamon to thing that already have cinnamon in them. It’s a joke at our house that we can eat sweet things (such as pie or cookies or candy) because they have cinnamon in them and cinnamon is good for us.

One of the things that cinnamon is supposed to do for us it to stop the sniffles. My first reaction to this news was one of slight disbelief; but if Grandma’s theory is correct, I have the “cure for the common sniffles”: snickerdoodles, lots and lots of snickerdoodles! Snickerdoodles are such fun cookies! Even the name sounds fun. And making them is fun: take small balls of dough (containing cinnamon, of course), roll them around in a cinnamon and sugar mixture to coat them really well, and then put them in the oven to bake. When they come out and are done to perfection, these cookies are a little crunchy on the outside and a little soft on the inside. So good! They REALLY keep me coming back for more. And if Grandma’s theory is correct, they will keep away the sniffles, too. Grandma has tried taking extra cinnamon when she has the sniffles, and she has found that it works. Why not give cinnamon cookies a try when the common cold comes your way? (I know, the sugar content would probably conflict with the medicinal properties of the cinnamon, but still . . . )

There are few things more annoying that getting the sniffles: being in the middle of something and suddenly needing to dive for the box of tissues does not help productivity very much. Looking at life, it seems that sniffles plague us more than just in the cold season. O. Henry, the famous short-story writer, made this comment about life in his story “The Gift of the Magi” when his female character collapses into tears over something: “Which [action] instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.” I agree that life seems to bring sniffles up an awful lot; sometimes even when we are laughing, we are hiding a sniffle or two. Not that we spend our lives blubbering about the hard lot we have been given; no, we try to face things as bravely as we can, knowing that life is not fair and that we should not expect it to be. Still, we can’t really help the sniffles.

But what is there for solving the sniffles of everyday life? If–as O. Henry suggests–sniffles lead the statistics of our lives, eating cinnamon cookies for such a frequent amount of sniffles will add weight problems to the woes of the heart. Is there a balm for them?

There is. It’s an unlikely one–as unlikely as eating cinnamon for common sniffles. But it gives promise of truly working.

A King.

Now THAT sounds preposterous. Any American can tell you that a king is not necessary for a nation to work properly. And gone are the days of Britain’s autocratic kings. Who needs a king? Not us. We don’t need a dictator to run our lives, and we don’t need a figurehead to take all the credit. So the words of this Christmas carol have a hard time making sense to us.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders of His love.

~Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts is not describing a weak figurehead king here. His king has power–power to bring about changes. Look at the things He can do: send His blessings on everyone, reverse the effects of the curse, rule the entire world (notice there’s no mention of bureaucracy here–He is the One ruling, not His government), and prove His love to the world through the way He treats the nations. That’s power! And, to be honest, sometimes we long for that power to be seen in our lives. Having the curse reversed would be wonderful; and if blessings are being served out, pass me a generous helping! Also, I agree that it would be nice for the world to be full of love rather than hatred. Maybe I do need a king. I certainly wish for someone sometimes who will step in and make the decisions that seem impossible for me to make, someone who will pull out the necessary resources when mine are running dry, someone who has influence over others when I am getting a raw deal or do not know how to communicate with them. Yes, a king would be nice. A king looking out for my interests would definitely cure the sniffles.

But does it have to be a king? Giving someone else the reins of power is more than a little disconcerting! Put this thought in everyday shoes: we want advice from people, but we hate it when they step in to try to run our lives–we want to make the ultimate decisions (esp. since we are responsible to live with those decisions once they’re made); we want others to listen to our troubles, but we are terrified of what they might do about those problems–we want their help and we don’t want their intereference all at the same time. We have a relative amount of control over our own lives; we know what we are thinking before we do it; we know how we hope that things turn out. We don’t know these things about others. We have no control over them, well, very little. We may do our best to manipulate others or dominate them in order to get what we think we want, but those who refuse to be dominated or manipulated scare us. In our experience, a loss of personal control can lead to MORE sniffling rather than less. Is it worth giving up control just to have what a king can do for us? ummmm . . . pass the Kleenex, please!

But the price is joy.

And we don’t really have much of it. We find our hearts getting hardened and numb, and we walk through life in a half-fog, just trying to survive. We are more than fully aware of the curse, seeing its blight on our lives everywhere we look, especially when we look inside. It’s scary to realize the evil we are capable of and overwhelming to see the wounds we suffer from. And the worst part is knowing that really there’s little we can do about the problems within us anymore than we can control the circumstances around us. Our small measure of control is just that: small. Maybe we do need a king after all. We don’t want one, but we need one. We need one badly.

And to have Him, we are going to have to trust Him. Even though we don’t know what He’s going to do, even though we can’t control Him, we are going to have to open our hearts to allow Him to come in. As Watts wrote, we must “prepare Him room” in our hearts. We can’t keep Him relegated to the stable of our hearts, we have to allow Him to have the throne if He is going to do us the good we so long for Him to do. Watts was writing this song not about the first coming of Jesus–when He came as a baby to be born obscurely, live humbly, and die sacrificially–but about the second coming when He will come to rule the world and to make all things right. The Bible contains many prophesies of what He will do when He rules. All wonderful, all badly longed for, all in the future. But His rule in our hearts does not have to wait that long: it can begin now. And what He wil do for the world someday He promises to do within our hearts today: weed out the thorns and weeds of sin, heal the wounds, make us new. We find it easier to trust someone when we know towards what goal he is heading; has the King not showed us enough of His goal to inspire our trust?

Interesting thing about snickerdoodles: they get hard after a while. As they sit in the cookie jar, the moisture leaves them and they lose their softness. They’re still tasty, but not quite as addicting. Unless they’re dunked in milk. Dipped and held there until the milk has soaked into them through and through. Then they’re delicious. A joyful taste if ever there was one. Preparing our hard hearts for receiving the King is as simple as milk and cookies: it involves soaking in Him, bringing our hearts to His moisture and soaking in it until our hearts are saturated with it. Just soaking.

Happy soaking this holiday season!

It’s morning. I can tell it by the amount of light in the room. I can tell it by the way my body feels. I can tell it by the sounds coming from outside and from other parts of the house. But I can’t get up. Traces of a dream linger in my fuzzy consciousness, blurring the line between reality and unreality, dreams of going somewhere I can’t reach, struggling to be someone I can’t be, stuck between crushing stresses–not pleasant dreams at all. But I can’t wake up either. I dread the reality of the expectations and needs of my day: they resemble my dreams more than a little–trying hard to meet needs I can’t meet, be someone I can’t be, stuck between crushing forces I don’t belong between. At this point in the morning, it’s sometimes hard to tell which is the dream and which the reality. And sometimes it’s hard to tell which is worse.

So there I lie, eyes tightly closed, curled up into a little warm ball to shut out the morning, knowing that all that precious time is slipping away and making things worse by making life more hurried. And as consciousness begins to drown out my dreams, I realize that I am praying: “God, please! Please, I can’t do this! I can’t, I just can’t. It’s not possible. I’m too small, I’m too . . . I’m not . . . I don’t have . . . I just can’t face today, God. Please help me. Where is Your strength? Aren’t You going to help me? Please, I can’t do this.” The track plays over and over again as I lie there waiting for something–a divine power-surge, perhaps? Finally there comes, not an adrenaline rush, but a tiny modicum of readiness, and I plunge head-first into the icy water of the day. My morning has begun.

I have been pondering and dreading this post all day. Pondering it because I knew that it was ready to be written. Dreading it because, as much as I have wanted to write it, I also do not want to write it. I have too many questions about the subject matter. It seems improbable and impossible. I don’t want to type. I don’t want to ponder. And I apologize for the rambling that is sure to result from pondering of this type (pun not originally intended–this is what happens when I post and ponder at night).

I think I’ll go get a cookie. A Mint Meltaway. This Christmas season is the first time I have ever had one of Grandma’s Mint Meltaway cookies. I am currently living with my Mom’s mother, and this means I benefit from her wonderful culinary abilities. Mint Meltaways are her favorite Christmas cookie, and I now understand why. They are small short-bread-like cookies, firm and buttery, but not too crunchy. On the top, Grandma spreads a generous layer of icing–icing the pink color of peppermint candy when it is mixed in ice-cream and starting to dissolve. And the icing itself contains pieces of crushed peppermint sticks. The combination is fresh and invigorating and . . . addicting. The funny thing about this addiction is that rather than wanting these cookies in great quantities, I find I crave them one at a time, but frequently. Leave out a plate of these cookies, and I will snatch one as I walk past then snitch another on my return trip. This cookie is the most cheerful cookie I have ever met. It is excited to meet the day; even melting away in someone’s mouth is a great adventure to this little treat.

That little cookie is everything I don’t want to be in the morning . . . or at other times during the day. I do not want to view life as a great adventure–adventures are unpleasant and uncomfortable long before they sound great in storybooks. I do not want to be excited about being where I feel so inadequate or so unwanted or so helpless (depending on the day and the moment, of course). I want my life to be perfect, I know it is not going to be, so I will not be cheerful about it. I will curl up in a little ball somewhere inside myself, if possible, and beg God to end the storm.

To be perfectly honest, I know that I should be able to view life as cheerfully as the little Mint Meltaway seems to. I know that the Bible commands it of me. But, in the spirit of honesty, I confess that I think this command impossible and unreasonable. Unreasonable because it is impossible. Impossible because I cannot do it. I have tried. I do not want to try anymore. It takes too much energy, energy I need to conserve if I am to survive the challenges life sends me. I have lived long enough to know that life is one big bundle of sorrows. It is not a video game where you can fall down many times and come away with a body un-bruised. Its sorrows are real, and they cut deep into our souls. Some of them burrow so deeply into us that we do not realize they exist until something brushes them, sending throbs of pain throughout our whole beings. Life is real, life is hard, life is pain. (To quote from the movie The Princess Bride: “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling you something.”)

And sometimes the “Christmas spirit” seems to ask that we forget the pain of life in order to have beautiful moments that will be remembered for years to come. And sometimes Christmas brings with it the most painful moments in the entire year. In spite of all its “Christmas cheer,” Christmas can be a very difficult time. And the rejoicing of the people recorded in the Bible seems far removed from the real life struggles of the present moment. “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly,” one of my favorite Christmas carols has presented this seeming unreality to me this Chrismas in glaring words.

Infant holy, Infant lowly,
For His bed a cattle stall;
Oxen lowing, little knowing
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.
Swift are winging, angels singing,
Noels ringing, tidings bringing:
Christ the Babe is Lord of all,
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.

Flocks were sleeping, shepherds keeping
Vigil till the morning new
Saw the glory, heard the story,
Tidings of a gospel true.
Thus rejoicing, free from sorrow,
Praises voicing, greet the morrow:
Christ the Babe was born for you.
Christ the Babe was born for you.

~ Polish carol; tr. Edith M. G. Reed

It’s the end of the second verse that really catches at the tatters of my heart: “Thus rejoicing, free from sorrow,/ Praises voicing, greet the morrow”! I’m supposed to wake up and greet the morning with praises, rejoicing and somehow free from sorrow? Right! Like that’s going to happen! But that’s what the song says; in plain English it tells me that I am supposed to meet the morning as the shepherds did in Luke 2: “and the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told unto them.” How could such a thing be possible?

Central to this issue is the word “sorrow.” At least the song does not ignore its place of importance in our lives. To rejoice as the shepherds did, we have to somehow be free from sorrow. And how, pray tell, is this supposed to happen? What magic potion is supposed to free me from sorrow, giving me the ability to greet the morning with eagerness and joy rather than dread and fear?

I’ve been pondering this for many days, almost two weeks since our church’s Christmas program in which my quartet sang this piece. A punctuation mark may hold the inconceivable answer. A colon. Observe with me: ” Thus rejoicing, free from sorrow,/ Praises voicing, greet the morrow:/ Christ the Babe was born for you.” There is a colon between the injunction to greet the morning with sorrow-free rejoicing and the next statement. A colon alerts the reader to either a list or an explanation. Since the last line of the song is very clearly not a list, we must take the colon to mean that an explanation will follow. How can we manage this impossible feat of cheerfulness in the face of a cold and sorrowful world? We can manage it by knowing that we have been given a gift. And by knowing that the gift truly is ours to open and own and cherish and keep.

But is it possible that a gift can outweigh sadness enough to make me able to greet rather than rue the morning? I’ve been wondering this, and I have come up with some examples from real life of outlook-changing gifts. I will try to briefly cite some: 1) What child does not look forward to Christmas and to the day after Christmas? Those days involve getting gifts and then playing with those gifts. The anticipation and excitement can last for days, especially as the novelty of the gifts continues: “tomorrow I get to . . . ride my bike . . . play with my new game . . . .” 2) How much easier it is to get up and face a long-awaited day off from work than to face the demands of the workplace! 3) Facing strangers and acquaintances at a party is much easier to do when I know that I have a companion with me who enjoys my company. 4) Last February, my dad was in critical condition with a blood clot in his lung and another in his leg. A friend of mine paid for me to fly out for a week to be with him. Being with him was wonderful–I was getting first-hand knowledge of what was going on, and I was watching him mend. But as the week drew to a close, I dreaded going home; a week seemed like far too little. And so I called another friend, a friend who had also offered to help me out with my ticket if I needed her help. I asked this friend if she would pay for an extension to my ticket for another week. Getting that extension to my ticket, having that extra week made life much easier to face. I could hardly believe it was happening to me, truly being given to me like that. I went from dreading the morning to relaxing in the morning. That gift made all the difference between sorrow and rejoicing.

What is this gift that made the difference for the shepherds? “Christ the babe was born for you.” There is a gift. It has your name on it. Mine, too. As simple as that.

Maybe it is possible that the knowledge of the great gift we have received will enable us to face the day and the sorrows it holds with rejoicing and excitement. Maybe it will make the difference between trumped-up cheerfulness and true joy. A small, cheerful little voice inside me is eager to find out if such knowledge and such a gift does have that kind of power. Part of me wants to be that joyful, that refreshed, that refreshing. “Try it,” the little hopeful voice inside suggests. “Try it and see if it truly works.”

So I am trying it, trying to accept that Christ’s gift for me has my name on it, wondering if it will produce in me the same rejoicing that it produced in the shepherds. Will you dare to test it out with me this Christmas season? If it works (and it HAS to!), it promises to be even more refreshing than a Mint Meltaway cookie. And it promises to last longer, too. The Mint Meltaway cookies don’t last long around my house.

“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).

Family resemblances can be fun. We watch for them in movies or plays that we go to see (do the “family members” really look like they could be from the same family?). Computer programs have been made to try to predict what the babies of a couple will look like. And when we see newborn babies, we try to tell from which parent the various features come. And in each child, the blend is different. At my parents’ 30th anniversary party, someone asked my mother where I got my blonde hair, correctly deducing that Mom used to have blonde hair when she was younger.

We are not always proud of our inherited features. We may be embarassed at inheriting the big nose from our dad’s side or the strangely long middle toe. And it’s no fun to realize that you gain weight in the same places your other family members gain it! Sometimes a family resemblance can be painful, too, especially when there’s fear and heartache attached with it: a history of heart disease; a battered and abused woman fears she will look at her child and see the man who abused her; other examples could be given. There’s one family resemblance that is rarely talked about. No one is proud of it. Everyone would rather forget it, but everyone has it. I look like you in this way; you look like me. We have a common ancestor, and we look just like him. Not sure who I am talking about? The Bible gives us his name, and genetics reveals that we all have descended from him. His name is Adam. No last name. Just Adam. The father of all human beings.

The resemblance? Well, like noses and ear lobes, it comes in different shapes and sizes, but everyone has it. Its official name is “sin,” and it trips us up, discourages us, and fascinates us all. It is that desire to look out for oneself over others; it is that tendency to do lie to ourselves and others; and it is responsible for ALL the pain and suffering going on around us. Although it’s far easier to spot in others than to spot it in ourselves, it devastates us when we find it within us and realize that no power on earth can tear it from our hearts. We can get plastic surgery or liposuction to change our physical inheritance, but our spiritual one will haunt us to our graves. Within our souls, we resemble all the evil ever to have plagued the planet.

“Adam’s Family Album”

Are those dark spots
Real? or is something
Wrong with my eyes
As I look through the
Family photos?
So many sad eyes behind
Merry faces;
So many sin-discolored
Pictures, the tell-tale
Color of iniquity soaking
Through the pasted smiles.
Do You have an almighty pen
That will remove
The spots?
Sponge away
The tears behind sad eyes?
What white-out can erase
The captions I see
As I view these people?
How can I look
At those around me
With love-colored glasses,
Unafraid to find the sin behind
All the pretty faces?
How can I dare
To look at my own portrait
In the mirror?
Has Black Death disfigured us all?

~JMC

It has. Unmistakably. Go ahead. Look around. Uncover your eyes, and see the disfigurement. We match. We are related. What a family to be a part of!

All but one.

He had only one biological parent. No scientist will ever be able to explain the virgin birth of Christ, but Jesus Christ was born fully human, yet fully divine. And because God is His father, He did not inherit that evil we are all heirs to. Here begins the strangest exchange in all of history: God became a part of the human race so that humans could become part of His family. The Bible calls Jesus Christ the “second Adam” because He came to reverse the damage done by Adam’s sin. No power on earth could remove that tell-tale resemblance, but Jesus brings power from Heaven to do it. John 1:12 says “As many as received Him [Jesus], to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on His name.” Belief in Christ and in His power to save us from our sins re-births us into a new family. A new family with different features. Charles Wesley’s familiar Christmas carol puts it this way:

Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild–
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic hosts proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem.”
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Christ, by highest heav’n adored,
Christ, the everlasting Lord:
Late in time behold Him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Hail th’incarnate Deity!
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris’n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Come, Desire of Naitons, come!
Fix in us Thy humble home:
Rise the woman’s conq’ring seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Adam’s likeness now efface,
Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

~ Charles Wesley

Did you catch that last line? “Adam’s likeness now efface,/ Stamp Thine image in its place:/ Second Adam from above,/ Reinstate us in Thy love.” The idea of stamping reminds me of my favorite cookie of all time–Scottish Shortbread Cookies. My mother got the recipe from an old Scottish lady in the church I grew up in. The recipe is relatively simple and oh! so good and buttery and sweet! The last part of the process before baking involves molding the cookies with a special cookie mold. Mom has a wooden mold for “stamping” large cakes of shortbread, and she has several smaller molds for “stamping” shortbread cookies. Shortbread is funny, though: it holds the shape stamped onto it in a quiet, almost subtle way. As the shortbread bakes, the sharp edges smooth out a little as the cookie spreads. But when the cookies are done, the image is still visible, just softer. When we are born again into God’s family, He stamps the image on us of Himself. This stamp is not like a cookie-cutter making everyone exactly the same and boring; no, it’s a softer image that looks a little different on each individual. Still, we all bear that same family resemblance, a better one than the one we come into this world bearing. And, like a baked shortbread cookie, the image cannot be changed. Once we have His image stamped onto us, it is permanently ours. Because Jesus was born into Humanity’s family, because He died to pay for Humanity’s sin, any human being who chooses to may be born into His family. And with that birth comes a new family resemblance: His. The miracle is that God can take us and re-bake us. With His power, the old image of Adam does not have to be permanent. It’s a miracle beyond our total comprehension. But isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

When I was at home in California for Thanksgiving this year, I ate a gingerbread cookie at my friends’ house. Mamie showed me pictures of her husband Stephen making them. I was impressed. The cookie was good, too.

Somehow I don’t usually reach for the gingerbread cookies right away when I am hungry for something sweet. Perhaps it has something to do with the stigma of the title “gingerbread man” in my mind: I think of the story of the arrogant little guy who led everyone on a merry chase until he trusted the wrong person and was caught anyway. “Run! Run, as fast as you can! You can’t catch me! I’m the Gingerbread Man!” More likely, I just don’t reach for gingerbread because ginger is not my favorite spice (Grandma, on the other hand, would rank gingery cookies among her favorites).

The Gingerbread Man gets me thinking, though: I usually enjoy irony, but the story of the Gingerbread Man has always bothered me a little. At an age when obedience to parents and other adults was stressed, the defiance of the little cookie shocked me (so did Tom Sawyer when I first read his adventures). But inside me I see a little of his desire to do his own thing–who wants to be eaten anyway, even if that was the purpose for which one was made? I never knew with whom to sympathize: the old lady who made him for eating and was so rudely disobeyed and deprived of her treat? or the disobedient cookie who ran out of a sense of gleeful self-preservation and ended up being eaten for his troubles?

I suspect that deep down inside, my disobedience stems from my lack of trust. In my sophomore year of college, the knowledge of God’s sovereignty began to frighten me, especially as the terrible meaning of the fact that He does all things for His own glory began to sink into my soul. God began to seem like the lady who made the Gingerbread Man: He seemed to care about me merely as a means to further His own ends. And, like the main character in the story, I found myself stuck between a God who would consume me for His own glory and a dreaded enemy who would pretend to help me and then devour me mercilessly. We learn early that anyone who is out to get his own glory really does not care about us. A God like that is frightening. How could a God who made us–like gingerbread men–for His own pleasure still have our best interests in mind? Could God’s best interests and our best interests really be one and the same thing? Life usually feels more like a frantic dash away from everything and everyone that would devour us, that would take from us what they want and then fling out the unusable parts of us. And I have found it easy to “fear” God as my Creator and Master, running from Him rather than to Him when I feel the predators of life at my heels. I don’t want to be eaten!

And that’s why Christmas is so important: God did create us for His pleasure, yet He loves us completely, through and through, intimately. He will not devour us, smack His lips, and pat Himself on the back for having made such a delicious cookie. And so He came at Christmas to show us that He wants us for us. A little song from a children’s Christmas musical says it far better than I will ever be able to:

“Close to Him”
by Kathie Hill and Janet McMahan [punctuation and some other mechanics my own]

He wants to be close to His children,
So He’ll become a child–
A helpless little baby,
A Savior meek and mild.
He’ll leave His home in Heaven
To prove His love is real,
And be born as a baby
Just so man can feel

Close to Him, close to Him,
And now all of His children can feel so close to Him.
Close to Him, close to Him,
And now all of His children can feel so close to Him.

He’ll know what it’s like to be lonely
And how it feels to cry,
To love His friends and family
Then have to say goodbye.
This baby in a manger
Will be God’s pure love revealed:
Love living among them
Just so man can feel

Close to Him, close to Him,
And now all of His children can feel so close to Him.
Close to Him, close to Him,
And now all of His children can feel so close to Him.

He came to earth to be like us. He came to earth to show us that He loves us. He came to earth to be closer to us so that we could understand Him better and dare to draw near to Him. Unafraid to be His.

“We love Him because He first loved us.” I John 4:19

Every year at Christmas when I was a kid, Mom and Dad or Grandpa and Grandma would get my family an advent calendar. Starting on the first of December, we would open one box or door each day, revealing either a piece of the Christmas story or a piece of candy. Since moving out of the house, I no longer take part with them in this Christmas tradition, but the wonder of it still fascinates me.

This year, I wanted to send everyone an advent calendar of sorts. Of course, December 1st is long gone. And I don’t have any candy to send–at least, not very easily and not to everyone. So I came up with this half-baked idea: twelve sets of thoughts about Christmas that have occur to me this year. I will post them on Facebook and also on this blog. I would love to read your comments on them in either spot (or via e-mail!).

These notes truly will be “half-baked,” merely the beginnings of thoughts about Christmas, but things that have blessed me and will hopefully bless you. Mix them with your own thoughts about Christmas, and giving them a decent baking. And may they be as refreshing and fun as Christmas candy or Christmas cookies . . . minus the fat content.

Merry Christmas everyone. May you be more aware of God’s love for you this Christmas than you were last Christmas. I love you all!

Live long and prosper!
~Joy =)

From Max Lucado’s book Traveling Light (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2001):

“Do you feel a need for affirmation? Does your self-esteem need attention? You don’t need to drop names or show off. You need only pause at the base of the cross and be reminded of this: The maker of the stars would rather die for you than live without you. And that is a fact. So if you need to brag, brag about that.”

Lucado echoes the apostle Paul in Galatians 6:14 where he says “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”

To be honest, such boasting is totally and completely unthinkable! How dare I boast that the God who made the stars should love me so very much? That’s akin to saying that Bill Gates is my best friend or that the king of Spain chats with me online every day. Yes, the Bible makes it very very clear that God’s love really is that big, but it’s really not something I can believe easily, especially since human love can’t and won’t and doesn’t fill every need.

It seems audacious to boast of God loving me so much He didn’t want to live without me. So much He would give up His very life for me. It really seems much more humble to boast about my own petty accomplishments. Deep in my heart, I realize they’re petty. In fact, that’s part of why we boast, isn’t it: to raise ourselves off of the dirt floor where the superiority of others has cast us? And so we boast, feeling that others view us as inferior, trying to give ourselves an “ego boost” (sounds like an add-in at a smoothie shop: “I’ll take an immunity boost, an energy boost, and an ego boost in mine, please.”).

Reading Lucado’s words, I realize that I’ve never really understood Paul’s ability to boast in the cross before. What kind of boasting is that? Doesn’t it sound a bit heartless to the rest of the world to tell about something that they don’t have and might never be able to obtain–a love like that? And if they could obtain it, wouldn’t it make my possession of such love less significant? I’ve wondered about how in the world the apostle John could have the presumption to call himself “the disciple Jesus loved”–didn’t that cheapen the relationship the others had with Jesus? Wasn’t that a slap in the face to them and their relationships with Him? And if I were to boast in such love, I would be sure to find out very quickly that someone else has more of His love to boast about.

And so I boast about everything else but the one true possession I have that gives value to my little life, the thing that God has reiterated over and over that no one will ever be able to take from me, the thing that He has promised is mine forever, the one thing that He has given me permission to boast about. Why don’t I boast about it?

I have to believe it first.

Some old thoughts that it’s time to post now:

You met me, and we talked. You started to see that here was a shoulder for you, an ear for you. And maybe some of the things I said made good sense. But it wasn’t enough. It never is. At some point, marginal utility began to decrease. Somewhere in our friendship journey, you began to realize I can’t solve all of your problems–not that you really expected me to, but we all do to some extent. I don’t have that magic wand I need to grant the deepest wishes of your heart. My status went from “fairy godmother” to “normal human” and might be proceeding on to “annoying nag” (if it hasn’t gotten there yet) or “basketcase” or “mindless drudge” or . . . *shudder* “nemesis.” You got tired of me. And you met someone else. Someone else with a shoulder and an ear.

Maybe that’s all part of moving on. Yes, I’m sure it is. I know it is because I’ve done it, too. But no one is ever enough. No one has the magic wand. Magic went out of the world with the elves, Tolkien says. Magic never existed, logic says. Only God works miracles, the Bible says. And somehow I want to move past trying to find my “fairy godmother” and figure out what this thing called friendship really is. Because I have had friends–a special few–who have shed their Superman costumes and become mere humans, but they didn’t leave. They didn’t take their shoulders and go home since I stopped seeming to need them. In fact, they remained themselves. They stayed. When I went back, tired of looking for fairy godmothers, they were still there. I’m wondering now how they did it. How they managed to stay the same and treat me the same all that time. That’s how I want to be. I want to learn that skill because somehow we moved from being merely ears and shoulders to being friends.

I have no wand. I’m sorry. I fervently wish I did. I have no solutions manual. I’m sorry. I almost wish I did (but solutions manuals are not half as much fun as magic wands would be, and solutions manuals are very real and must be dealt with periodically, and no one really seems to like to deal with them very much, esp. since you’re usually only allowed to look at the solutions AFTER the problems have been figured out!). I just have the same things I’ve always had: a shoulder and an ear and an offer of friendship.
And right now you’re getting tired of me always being there, never leaving. You might be feeling like there’s more of me in your life than there is of you anymore. I’m so sorry. I don’t want that! I don’t want another me–there’s more than enough of me as it is. I spend time with you because I enjoy your company. I ask how you’re doing because I care. I ask what you’re doing and thinking about things because what you do and think matters to me, makes a difference in my life, helps me understand who YOU are, not who I want you to be. I don’t want you to be anything else but you. I don’t want you to stop being you–EVER!!!!! I don’t want you to like music just because I like it. I don’t want you to laugh at things just because I laugh at them. I don’t want you to say things just because you think that’s what I want to hear. I want to hear you. And yeah, I ask questions trying to help you refine what it is you really think and maybe to find out what else could be thought. And yeah, I sound like a broken record as I continually point you to the only answer I know and to the One Who knows the answers to the things we are really asking. And yeah, I’m tired and sad that I’ve cramped your style so very badly. I’m sorry.

But I know Someone (yeah, you knew it would get around to Him) Who dares to assert that He IS enough. He has said it so many times and in so many ways that a lifetime is not sufficient to catalogue them all. And, I confess, I would rather you had a magic wand to solve all my troubles because He seems to insist that I go through them much more often than I want to and usually when I am not feeling at all brave nor energetic. Still He insists. And I find that I want to be near Him–but sometimes I am afraid that He will think I’m around too much or too nosey or too demanding or too childish . . . . Then I get up close enough to touch Him and find that He hasn’t changed and seems to like me for exactly who I am (whoever that may be!). And more than I want to be your friend, more than I want you to be my friend, I want you to be near Him and know His friendship–that safe, gentle, fun friendship that is always glad to see you and accepts you for who you are–that friendship that makes it easy for you to be yourself in that place. I want to know His friendship that way, and I want you to know it, too.

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.

It’s late. I should be in bed. But before I go to bed, I need to touch base with HIM, and I don’t feel ready to talk to HIM just yet.

[On a side note, talking with Jesus is just like talking with others who know and love me in that sometimes I don't want to do it because I'm trying to be ok and don't want to deal with not really being ok at the moment because then I won't be ok. On the other hand, talking with Jesus is not like talking with anyone else because He already knows that and already knows what is bothering me and knows exactly what to do or say to make me comfortable in His presence.]

So here I sit at my computer, hoping for something . . . hopeful? Not that everything is depressing, just a drab shade of dreary.

And then I run across her blog and her account of nannying her “small fry” as she calls them. She writes so simply that it’s like being there and like being part of a children’s story–you know the kind? the ones that tell about a day at the park or a day of shopping. And suddenly, I remember just a little of the wonder of being a little kid. I smile. The sun comes out (yes, even at midnight). That was part of my something.

And I can thank Him for things again: thanking Him is like re-enjoying the things that have happened today; it’s like going back to exclaim over the gifts He gave me that I already unwrapped and got excited over. It’s a little like having Christmas or a birthday party in a quiet way.

“Thanks,” my heart says, “for a foot massage today–I didn’t know how much I needed it.
“for Langston Hughes’ poem about rainbows.
“for a piano and the desire to play it.
“for getting things done.
“for the chance to discuss literature–to actually TALK about it and about what it says and means and about the people in it and what we learn from them . . . I love literature!
“for giving me a love for literature. =)
“for extra hours at work and the chance to learn more job skills.
“for the chance to discuss my grading policy–sorta. and for someone taking the time to give and take reasons rather than getting frustrated and not wanting to listen. and for the clarity that came because of the discussion.
“for my car.
“for a tank of gas.
“for another time of sorta getting lost to smile about.
“for someone carrying my HEAVY backpack.
“for someone else remembering that we’d talked about exercising together.
“for blessing someone I have prayed for.
“for replies to e-mails sent long ago and forgotten about.
“for Charles Dickens and A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“for Grandma’s wonderful cooking.
“for family Bible-sharing time.
“for working unseen by me to do wonderful things that You will show me later.
“for stories about small fry and how much fun they are.
Thanks.”

Now I think I can finish getting ready for bed.

Oh, God of dust and rainbows, help us see
That without dust the rainbow would not be.

by Langston Hughes

Abba is the dad you can go to for anything at any time. That’s God’s Father name to remind us to be little kids as we come to Him rather than the big complicated adults we try to be for those that come to rely on us. And I am learning to come to Him as a little child–with everything, for everything.
But someone, a dear friend who considers himself “crusty” and “bizarre” and “peculiar” [which, by the way, has a good connotation to my Sunday School kids!] and a host of other words I need to look up before I try to use them: this dear friend reminded me of another side of God–the nKoko side. Apparently “nKoko” is a word from an African tribal language that means “gentle grandfather.” And, for as much as I need an Abba Father, I need a nKoko, too.
What is a nKoko like? well, he’s gentle–he somehow manages to speak truth in a way that’s not at all harsh but makes you think to yourself “yes, that’s what I have known all along but was on the verge of forgetting.” And he’s a grandfather–taking outrageous delight in His grandchildren. To Him they are celebrities, though not in a “show-them-off” paparazzi kind of way. He’s just delighted to see them when they arrive. And they like to see Him because they feel comfortable around Him, even though they couldn’t explain why if they tried. But somehow He gives them the feeling that everything is going to be ok and that they are ok just as they are.
Now, I know that no earthly grandfather is exactly this way anymore than any earthly father is the perfect Abba. But every once in a while someone or something makes us feel this way, reminding us that it is possible to feel this way. And it makes us long for God down deep in our soul.
No, I don’t know the Hebrew or Greek name for God that corresponds to this simple African name, but I know that anything good has its roots in God’s nature, so someday I’ll find where in the Bible this term has its equivalent. Until then, I’ll think of God as my Heavenly nKoko as well as my Abba Father.
And I’ll thank God for the “crusty, peculiar, bug-loving German” who reminded me of this side of God.

I’m currently reading Isaac Asimov’s I, ROBOT (the book upon which Will Smith’s sci-fi thriller was loosely based). It’s a frame-tale of robot stories held together by the reminisces of aging robot psychologist Susan Calvin. I do find it funny to read of things that have dates on them such as 2008 and to think of all that Asimov predicted that hasn’t happened–nor is likely to happen. Still, I have to applaud him for his ability to weave a story and for the fact that many of the ideas he came up with still exist in modern science fiction: “positronic brains,” for example, are still part of many sci-fi stories, movies, and television shows.

The stories he tells are easy to connect with. I am moved as I read about Robbie, an early nurserymaid robot that could not talk but served his young charge Gloria with a dedication that looked more like love and friendship than enforced servitude. Speedy amuses me as he responds to situations he can’t handle by quoting snatches of Gilbert and Sullivan operas–now there’s a robot I could like! (maybe I should try his technique!) Then there’s QT-1, or “Cutie” for short, the robot whose dedication to reason begins where Descartes began (”I think, therefore I am”) and develops an entire religious cult based on false presuppositions. Wow! What a comment on pre-suppositions and the way we interpret facts through their lenses (reminds me of my college class with Mr. Janke in which we examined presuppositions and the way that they make us see the facts!). I love the two scientists that end up field-testing the newest robot models and finding themselves the victims of the major quirks each robot has–they make me laugh! But Herbie is the one that I pity the most: Herbie the mind-reading robot.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS A RESPONSE TO THE STORY AND WILL UNDOUBTEDLY GIVE AWAY ITS MORE SURPRISING ASPECTS. SHOULD YOU WISH TO READ THE STORY UN-SPOILED, STOP READING NOW, GET A COPY OF I, ROBOT AND READ “LIAR” BEFORE CONTINUING TO READ THIS POST!!!

The First Law of Robotics ingrained into each robot states “a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow him to come to harm.” But what is the definition of “harm”? Such a small word! Since Herbie can read minds, he can see the things that will hurt the humans around him at an emotional level, so he does his best to protect them from being hurt. The clues are all there, and as I read, I begin to piece together what he is doing: telling them what they want to hear. The trouble is that they do not want to hear the truth in its entirety, and when two people with conflicting desires about the truth of one item are asking him for an answer, he can say nothing without hurting one or the other. Caught, stuck, pinned between conflicting desires of humanity, he lies to them. He is betrayed by his very purpose–serving humanity–and by his very attempts to protect the humans around him. And I can empathize. There come times when I know that I can’t win. No, I do not lie; I try so very hard to recognize the truth and to speak it in the right time and the right way. But which is better: to speak what I know will hurt when I could swallow it even though it’s true? or to swallow it even if it hurts? Perhaps I am setting up a false dilemma. All I know is that I saw myself in Herbie’s pretending that he could not do math well so as to allow the brilliant human mathematician to continue to believe in his own superiority; I saw myself in Herbie’s willingness to be the confidante of the humans around him; and I see myself caught in the same net he was caught in.

My empathy raises a very good question, a question I have had without knowing exactly how to name it: how are we to be “harmless as doves” to those around us? Each day, with each action, I have the potential to hurt someone around me. Sometimes an action that helps one person seems to mortally wound another. As a Christian, how am I to navigate these waters? How can I lead my life as the person I am to be when who I am might stifle who another person is?

I guess the obvious answer is that I was not put here on this earth to please everyone, just One–Jesus Christ my Maker, Master, and Savior. But how am I to judge success at this task without seeing it through the eyes of others? I guess I am seeing that, as Donovan and Powell (the field-test scientists) learned, field tests don’t usually go the way that the laboratory tests did–things look different in real life than they do in theory. I guess I can see myself in other robots, too: like Speedy, I don’t know how to function when duty and self-preservation balance each other out, neither being more important than the other (maybe I ought to start quoting English comic opera more often!); like Dave I short out under pressure and revert to something a little less stressful (like typing on the computer at odd hours of the night–*sheepish grin*); and like Herbie I can’t handle the thought of hurting those around me–and someone is always getting hurt.

Robbie had it easy: he lived to please just one person, and it worked out just fine for him. Cutie reasoned through the facts and came to some very wrong conclusions, then just lived by the rules and procedures, quite willing to not have to under