Advent Week 4 - Magic

 

December always seems to fly by. All of the work and effort to make the holidays special and it’s here and over. No wonder we get so stressed, especially those of us who are working and then adding all the Christmas preparations. I always say it is like having two jobs, maybe more, in December. Add to all the preparations, there is a general anxiety that can set in (can I get it all done in time, have I forgotten anything, will they like it?) And for many of us, depression becomes part of the picture as well. In our case another empty chair at the table this year. 

Is it any wonder we lose sight of what all this bustle is about?  How did it become so busy, so full of stuff that probably doesn’t really matter? 

I have always loved the magic that surrounds Christmas. As a child it was Santa and presents suddenly appearing. As I grew older the magic came from Mom and Dad’s secrets, and the beauty of decorations and warmth on the inside, snow on the outside. As an adult I loved the romance of it all, carols, lights, anticipated gifts. When I was single I’d decorate my place even though I wasn’t there for the actual holiday. I had cast off ornaments from grandparents and parents, and began to collect ornaments when I traveled. The magic intensified when I became engaged during the holiday season, perfectly romantic.

I began entertaining at Christmas when I worked in a church. I’d invite my co-workers over and we’d celebrate together, a time for me to thank and honor them. This turned into an open house, an opportunity to get together with friends and family, some for just this one time in the year.

Sometimes I’d find the magic waning, just wanting to stay home and get some presents wrapped or cookies baked. The busyness could sap the joy right out of me. Over time, I’ve learned to focus on people, not the things, but it’s been a hard earned lesson. “These are not interruptions, they are opportunities.”

Centuries before the first Advent, prophets foretold the coming of Jesus, to be born of a virgin in the town of Bethlehem, named “Wonderful Counselor, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ There is magic in shepherds alone in the dark suddenly being interrupted by a choir of angels. Imagine that. “For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord.” And the shepherds believed and left their flocks to go and see this baby, in a manger, in a stable, in Bethlehem. The Magi saw a star and connected it with the long awaited Jewish Messiah in those ancient prophecies. They followed the star to find that baby, offering him gifts fit for a king.

That magic still exists today whenever we open our heats to let the Christ-child in. He came to dwell among us for a little while, walk and talk and eat – God with us, Emmanuel. He came to offer himself up as a sacrifice in our place so we could have a relationship with the Creator of the Universe.

Of course, it isn’t traditional magic. It isn’t even metaphorical magic. It’s all miraculous truth. And all we need do is open our hearts to accept the truth. To discover what the shepherds and the magi found that first Christmas – God so loved He gave.  So much of the magic of Christmas for children are the mysterious packages under the tree. And for adults, it’s watching others open treasures specially curated for the ones we love. And the greatest gift ever given is this child in a manger we honor on Christmas day. A gift of unconditional love and acceptance. A gift of life and joy and peace.  A far cry from the gift most people expected, but so much more than we deserve or even knew we needed.

Christmas carols are full of repeated themes, one of which is “coming”. Jesus came. Shepherds came. Wise men came. We are invited to come – “O Come O Come Emmanuel”, “O Come Let Us Adore Him”, “Come into my heart Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for Thee.”

Is there room in your heart? Among all the craziness of Christmas, have you made room for Jesus? Is it easier for you to believe the Santa story than it is to believe that the baby in a manger is God, come to save us? Is it easier to believe nothing at all, to put Christ and Santa and the Easter Bunny all in one box, magical, fanciful, stories? How can we know if this Jesus’ story is true?

We just need to open our heart and mind to the possibility. Perhaps the baby in the manger really did come to save us from ourselves, to offer a way back to God – a way of love and hope and peace. Just like any present, we’ll never know if we don’t open up and see. Is there room in your heart for Him?

May you have a blessed Christmas, finding amidst all the hoopla the peace and joy the Christ-child came to bring us.

Third Week of Advent - Celebrating the God-Man

 

Christmas celebrates the “first Advent”, the first coming of the Christ, Jesus. He came as the helpless, human baby we see in the manger scenes. I have a friend who doesn’t believe Jesus is God because she thinks any God who becomes human is a weaker God, and why would the Creator of the Universe, the One True God, ever seek to diminish his power?

Why indeed? But what if the Creator of the Universe had enough greatness to be both all-powerful and become human? I mean, if He’s big enough to be the Creator of all things, surely nothing is impossible. So becoming human needn’t be an issue of diminishing his power.

The bigger question is why do it at all? Why would God decide to walk among us as a human? Surely he could see all he wanted of us without becoming one of us.  The reason isn’t a secret. From the Old Testament through the New, the reason why God became man is clearly stated. He came to save us from ourselves.

We need saving? Apparently so. Even if you are a stranger to Christian theology, it’s pretty clear we are a mess. Humankind is broken – from bigotry, racism, bullying, and greed (to name a few things) to all-out war, we are broken. We can’t get along. We are at any given time jealous of, frightened of, or angry at our neighbors, friends and family. You can just start with the 10 Commandments – ever broken one? I haven’t murdered anyone, but I have certainly been jealous, and I was often disobedient and disrespectful of my parents. God’s standard is the 10 Commandments. Jesus summarized the ten as “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” I’ve messed up on both sides of that. We all have. Even the best of us. 

The Bible teaches that all of us fall short of what God demands. We cannot possibly live up to His standard (which, as standards go, isn’t that unreasonable).  The Bible also teaches God demands perfect obedience to his standard in order to have a relationship with him. And we all fail, so relationship with God seems unreachable. Even my best is not good enough.

How could a loving God (and we are told God is Love) set up such an impossible standard and hold it against us?  For one thing, because he is God, our Creator. As Creator, he made the rules. He has absolute right to set the standard. His rightness demands our meeting his standard, with justice to follow if we fail. Yet, God is at the same time love, so he set about a plan to save us from ourselves. That plan entailed coming as a human to live among us, and eventually to take our place in answering God’s righteous demands. Only another human could do so for us.

And why bother at all? Why not create us to love him unconditionally and not mess up? He desired us to love him freely, to choose or not choose him, rather than be his puppets. And when our first parents chose themselves over him, why didn’t he just end it all? Because he wanted relationship with us, he loves humans, for some reason, enough to create a plan to save us from our selves.

The baby in the manger was God become flesh, human. Most unexpected, most difficult to believe. That baby grew into a man, who few doubt actually lived, Jesus the carpenter’s son. Jesus the good teacher. But few accept Jesus the God-man. But that’s the Christmas story. God became human to live among us. He did so to ultimately take God’s consequence for our brokenness. He was born to die. For us.

The Bible also tells us that Jesus chose to live just like us, setting aside his prerogatives and powers to walk among us. He had the great advantage of being sinless, however. A perfect sacrifice can’t have the same broken issues we have. That is the entire point of the virgin birth – not just to be a cutesy miracle, but to create a sinless human, since our sin-nature, our brokenness, is inherited from our fathers, beginning with Adam and Eve. It was part of the penalty for choosing to disobey God, and live life their own way. Our history of brokenness began, and we continue today to go our own way, and that continues to get us nowhere. We need someone to break the chain, and that was Jesus, coming as the God-man, sinless, to take our place before God’s justice.

It is so easy to forget all of this (or never learn it at all) among the beautiful decorations and music, not to mention the added lore of Santa and his elves.  The magic of Christmas seems to have very little to do with sacrifice or punishment. Besides, who wants to think of that? But we should. We need a savior. This world needs saving. Jesus came to save us. That is the good news the Angels sang, and we continue to sing in Christmas carols today. We give gifts because the Greatest Gift came on that first Christmas day.

I love the song, “Welcome to our World” by Chris Rice. The lyrics are set to remind us what Christmas truly is about.

 

“Tears are falling, hearts are breaking
How we need to hear from God
You've been promised, we've been waiting
Welcome Holy Child

Hope that You don't mind our manger
How I wish we could have known
But long-awaited Holy Stranger
Make Yourself at home
Please make Yourself at home

Bring Your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be filled
Word now breaking Heaven's silence
Welcome to our world

Fragile finger sent to heal us
Tender brow prepared for thorn
Tiny heart whose blood will save us
Unto us is born

So wrap our injured flesh around You
Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sins and make us holy
Perfect Son of God
Welcome to our world”

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Chris Rice / Christopher M. Rice

Welcome to Our World lyrics © Downtown Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

 

Second Week of Advent - Expectant Christmas

 

I spent over 40 years of Christmas celebrating at my parent’s home. Even with three moves, my mom still made it the place of magic for the holidays. She loved Christmas. She loved to entertain, and opened her decorated home up for guests every year. She also filled the house with music. We sang carols and listened to records and played the chimes at midnight on Christmas Eve. Until I was 15 I lived up on Mt. Hood, and always had a white Christmas. As kids you don’t think how that cost the adults. My grandparents traveled to us from Portland every year. I was more bothered by the wait for them to arrive.

So many of the traditions I’ve incorporated into Christmas began in my early years, breakfast first, then stockings (occasionally the other way around, if there was a hold up somewhere), devotions before presents, best china and crystal. One treasured memory as a married adult, mom serving us coffee and hot chocolate while we were still in bed and saying, “I always wanted to do that.” No explanation why, just because she could. I’ve never tried that on overnight guests, but love having warm, delicious liquids available for my family and friends, hugs in a mug.

The Christmas after my mother died was a hard one. In addition to losing mom, my husband lost both his parents, and my last grandparent also died, all by early November of that year. I volunteered to host Christmas, and I was terrified. We were emotional basket cases. I felt the weight of every tradition on my shoulders, the need to make Christmas perfect, for everyone to feel loved and comforted.  There were a lot of tears. But we also laughed and ate and shared gifts. Everyone came for breakfast and we opened stockings after. We had devotions. Dad gave a prayer. We opened presents and ate a traditional dinner. We somehow made it through the day, and my husband and I sat on the stairs after everyone had left and cried, not out of sadness, but out of gratefulness and relief that we could still celebrate after so difficult a year. It wasn’t perfect. I was nervous and grumpy and probably snapped at someone. But it was still Christmas, and that first began many years of new and old traditions as I continued to host the family.

We’ve had other gains and losses through the years. My dad remarried and we gained my stepmother and her mother. My brother married and we gained his wife and her brother. Our nephew was the best gift one year. One sister married. We’ve lost our step-mother and grandmother, my dad, my sister-in-law’s brother, and my youngest sister. Our chosen son moved to Australia to start his family. The numbers around the table diminished. This year we lost my other sister. She was my biggest cheerleader for Christmas, and helped create new traditions to make Christmas at my house its own experience. Now she has joined the others, and we have gone from 12 around the table to 6.

Again we face a Christmas with a major change. My sister’s absence is huge, and fairly new. I’ve wondered again how we can celebrate. But that first Christmas hosting taught me a lot, lessons I’ve continued to learn through the years since. The biggest lesson is that expectations can really sap the joy.

For years I’ve hosted an open house at in December. I invite friends and family, have lots of food and decorations to the max. I thought people returned each year for the food and decorations I had so carefully stressed over. Then I began hearing what our guests said about why they come – the people. Somehow we stumbled on the right mix of people who actually enjoy one another, if only once a year. Our house is full of conversations, laughter. My kitchen is always full of people. Sure, they eat and drink and occasionally mention a decoration – but they are really here for each other. And, that is how it should be. I have imperfectly learned how to simplify (a bit) the preparations and just enjoy the crowd. Again, expectations of a perfect experience saps the joy.

I just read an essay on the difference between expectations and being expectant. The holidays are full of expectations, from receiving (or giving) the long sought gift, making the best meals to satisfy everyone, making sure everyone leaves happy. Year after year we see how we fall short of the expectations. We keep trying to make the season magical with the right stuff. We want things to be perfect. We forget we don’t have that much control over ourselves, let alone others. We can’t be responsible for their happiness or contentment. My mother made Christmas magical because she was magical. It was the gift of coffee in bed, a warm hug, the promise of surprise. She had no control how we’d react, but she gave. I’m sure many of her expectations were crushed.

To be expectant, to look for the magical, the surprise (rather than trying to create it), that’s a whole other experience. To come to a party for the people, open for the serendipity a diverse group of people can bring. To set the table and decorate the tree looking forward to serving that cup of coffee, looking for the unexpected.

With expectations we have a plan, a goal. On its own, that’s not bad. We need to plan. But when we expect things to go as we planned, and when we hitch our happiness and contentment on those expectations, that’s when things go wrong. It’s normal to have expectations, and, unfortunately, normal to let them take control. It’s when we expect our all our expectations to become our reality, exactly as we expected – well that just isn’t realistic. But to be expectant, looking forward to what’s around the corner, open to the unexpected, maybe even embracing the challenge when a plan falls apart – that’s a whole different way of living.

Most of Israel had expectations regarding their promised Messiah. He would be the king to save them from oppressors, and kings are born in palaces, not stables. Kings don’t come from a carpenter’s shop. Kings have money and power. But Jesus didn’t fit their expectations, so they missed Him at every point. The shepherds, the Magi, they were more open, expectant, and as a result they were able to see the miracle. Luke, in Chapter 2, shares the story of Simeon and Anna, two elderly people who regularly visited the temple in expectation of meeting the Messiah. They expected the promised Messiah, but obviously had no expectations about how that Messiah would appear. Or at very least didn’t let their expectations rule over them. Their expectant waiting was rewarded by getting to meet the Christ – a baby brought by poor parents to the temple for dedication. Because they didn’t have expectations, but instead were expectant to what God would bring, Simeon and Anna were blessed by recognizing this baby as their long expected Messiah.

We too can have expectations that keep us from seeing what God really has in store for us. I expected my sister to be with me this Christmas. I expected her to be with me for many more years. But God had other plans for my sister and for me. I need to seek those plans expectantly rather than setting up my own. 

My hope is to be more expectant this season, and curb my expectations. I’m excited to see what surprises are in store.

First Week of Advent - Light in the Darkness

 

The Advent season is upon us, and just in time. One of my favorite preparations for celebrating Christmas is the hanging of the lights. Christmas lights are the perfect anecdote for the penetrating darkness of the season.

My need for light has been heightened this year by recently experiencing a powerful windstorm, a “cyclone bomb” event. We lost power for 15 hours. Many people lost power for days. I have a friend in her 5^th day without power. It’s one thing to lose power in the lighter months. But a power outage in November in the Pacific Northwest is psychologically devastating for many of us. 

I am a bit of a hypocrite regarding darkness.  When power is available, I have been known to walk upstairs and wait until I am across a room before turning on a light.  I’m often the last one to turn on lights as the sunlight fades. But take away my option for turning on lights and I become an anxious mess.

My fear of power outages goes back to a multi-day outage several years ago. We knew a storm was coming, and so I left school and ran to the store to grab some last minute items. When I left the store the rain was flooding the parking lot. I made it home just before the power went out. This was right as school was letting out for the Christmas break. My home was decorated, and all the houses around us were lit up, only to go black and stay that way for 9 days. The power came back on Christmas Eve, after I’d roasted a turkey at a friend’s apartment who had regained her power.

Mind you, we have a gas stove top and hot water heater, as well as a wood stove. We could cook on the wood stove and the gas top. We could take hot, though dark, showers. But the darkness wore on me day after day. And it was amplified by the season, and the loss of all the Christmas lights. It didn’t help that our neighbor had a generator and was all lit up (plus the droning engine noise only reprieved when he ran out of gas).

So in a very real sense, I am afraid of the dark, even though when power is available, I might not even turn it on.  There is something about just the availability of light that makes my world safer. Take away the power and darkness is no longer my friend.

The Apostle John writing about the First Advent said that The Light came into the world. The Light – Jesus.  Light and Jesus are synonymous, as are the world and darkness. Without Jesus, there is no light. Problem is, we are used to darkness. Our “eyes” have adjusted so we hardly notice, until something goes terribly wrong and we find ourselves looking for a light switch that works.

Jesus called his followers “light”, and encouraged us to be lights in this world. The light we have comes from his light in us, and it can make a powerful difference. Like lighting a candle in a dark room.

As I enter into this Advent season I am thankful for my brief power outage. It made me reflect on the importance of light in the world. It made the extra Christmas sparkle and light all the more beautiful. It reminded me that, as a Believer, I am to be light in this dark world.

John, speaking of Jesus, said “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world, and though the world was made through him, it did not receive him…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:4-5 9-10, 14.