No, I am sorry, but you cannot have my Christmas. It is not available for comment or optional changes. Somewhere in the last 40 years of my life my Christmas has been slowly taken away, piece by piece.
I want it back.
My Christmas is a deeply spiritual experience. It is a time to stop and reflect on the stillness and silence of winter nights. To breathe certain scents and listen to particular types of music. It may come wrapped in cold snow or the clear midnight sky of the tropics. It is warm, homey and totally mine. I share it freely with family and friends, but it is not for sale.
It’s not about nostalgia or traditions though both are part of Christmas, but about the stark realization that God wrapped His only Son in flesh and laid him in the arms of a common peasant couple in Bethlehem. And because of that birth, Christmas exists, and I am able to see God face to face in the person of Jesus Christ. The wood of the manger was a shadow of the cross to come; salvation was wrapped in cloth, enveloped in the tender softness of a little child.
I will not be sending Happy Holiday cards, or Seasons Greetings, because they cheapen and diminish the intense wonder of why Christmas was or is ever celebrated. Santa is welcome to enrich the festivities, as long as he too bows at the manger, worships the Child and remembers his roots in St. Nicholas.
Excuse me if the crèche and angels and shepherds and wise men offend you. I am more offended by a general malaise in society that tells me none of these are or should be part of the “holidays.” If you take away the foundation of Christmas, there simply is nothing left to celebrate.
If I took away Hanukkah or Kwanza or Ramadan, I would be severely chastised for not being pluralistically sensitive. Fine, anyone who wants to celebrate those holidays is welcome to do so. In fact, I will celebrate with them, but don’t tell me I cannot celebrate Christmas as I choose.
I will continue to put out my various creches and touch the wooden pieces with warm memories and wonder. I will sing and play carols that speak, not of holidays, Santa and elves, but of the Christ child. I will read the Christmas story again and again from Matthew and Luke, Isaiah and Micah. The words of scripture will echo back into my corporate memory of candlelit services and bells and organ. I will meditate on the drama and glory of it all. I will bask in the blaze of angel brightness. My Christmas will be flagrantly Christian.
I will sit in solitude beside my tree and reflect on the deep green of life, the red of blood shed for my salvation and the pure white light of a soul cleansed from sin.
Don’t even think about taking my Christmas. This is not a once a year celebration. I do not put Christ back into Christmas. I simply recognize that if I deeply love my Lord, He is the foundation of every day of the year. Christmas is not a holiday. It is my life.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Tuesdays with Don
The book is called “Tuesdays with Morrie.” Morrie had ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Mitch Albom wrote a powerful story about his visits with Morrie on Tuesdays. It’s Tuesday, but I’m with Don.
Don has ALS too. That’s about where the similarity begins and ends.
Tuesday before Christmas Don has arranged a visit to the office staff. He wants to talk to us. Some say he wants to say goodbye and there’s a sense of finality to this visit. There’s a sniff of apprehension in the air.
The snow begins to fall heavily in the morning and by 11 o’clock it’s coming at a rate of an inch an hour. Still the staff gather to await Don’s arrival. His daughter Deb is driving him in from Lansing with four of her children. Other friends from the community show up, as well as retired staff who have shared life with Don for decades.
The weather delays the family’s arrival so we sing Christmas carols. Appropriate since Don’s granddaughters are coming to sing to us too. The van arrives on Angels We Have Heard on High, and Don rolls his wheelchair into the room as we finish O Come All Ye Faithful. One of the faithful has just come.
This is supposed to be about us sharing Don’s burden of impending death, isn’t it? Evidently not. Don reminds us that in his early life he was a counselor. He still is. Now he counsels the staff. He fills us in on how his ALS is progressing, what he can do, what he can’t do. How he’s learning to accept help. How the support group is pitching in. He bares his soul in his struggles, but with laughter and a twinkle that keeps us hovering between a smile and tears.
“I’m a man of action, and I’m learning to be still. I’m a man of crowds, and I am learning solitude. I’m a man of risk, and I am learning to be cautious. I’m asking God to keep me alive long enough to learn all the lessons I need to learn.”
At the end we gather around him, forty or fifty of us, hands on his shrunken shoulders. We pray over him and shoot some pictures. Maybe this will be the last time he comes in from Lansing, maybe not. But it’s Tuesday, and it’s Don’s day.
As he prepares to go back into the snow I watch his granddaughters help him with his coat, his hat, his gloves, and my mind races back a quarter century to my daughters doing the same thing for their own grandfather. Children learning to live with death. Children full of life giving their all to a man who is frail.
Yes, I need to spend another Tuesday with Don. There are more lessons to learn from the man who counsels his friends from a wheelchair.
Don has ALS too. That’s about where the similarity begins and ends.
Tuesday before Christmas Don has arranged a visit to the office staff. He wants to talk to us. Some say he wants to say goodbye and there’s a sense of finality to this visit. There’s a sniff of apprehension in the air.
The snow begins to fall heavily in the morning and by 11 o’clock it’s coming at a rate of an inch an hour. Still the staff gather to await Don’s arrival. His daughter Deb is driving him in from Lansing with four of her children. Other friends from the community show up, as well as retired staff who have shared life with Don for decades.
The weather delays the family’s arrival so we sing Christmas carols. Appropriate since Don’s granddaughters are coming to sing to us too. The van arrives on Angels We Have Heard on High, and Don rolls his wheelchair into the room as we finish O Come All Ye Faithful. One of the faithful has just come.
This is supposed to be about us sharing Don’s burden of impending death, isn’t it? Evidently not. Don reminds us that in his early life he was a counselor. He still is. Now he counsels the staff. He fills us in on how his ALS is progressing, what he can do, what he can’t do. How he’s learning to accept help. How the support group is pitching in. He bares his soul in his struggles, but with laughter and a twinkle that keeps us hovering between a smile and tears.
“I’m a man of action, and I’m learning to be still. I’m a man of crowds, and I am learning solitude. I’m a man of risk, and I am learning to be cautious. I’m asking God to keep me alive long enough to learn all the lessons I need to learn.”
At the end we gather around him, forty or fifty of us, hands on his shrunken shoulders. We pray over him and shoot some pictures. Maybe this will be the last time he comes in from Lansing, maybe not. But it’s Tuesday, and it’s Don’s day.
As he prepares to go back into the snow I watch his granddaughters help him with his coat, his hat, his gloves, and my mind races back a quarter century to my daughters doing the same thing for their own grandfather. Children learning to live with death. Children full of life giving their all to a man who is frail.
Yes, I need to spend another Tuesday with Don. There are more lessons to learn from the man who counsels his friends from a wheelchair.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Grace and truth
It’s Christmas week, God. You know about Christmas. It was your idea in the first place. Whether it was actually December 25, or even December when you put your son on earth is incidental to the deeper meaning of Christmas.
John puts it rather well: “The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us, and we saw his glory, the glory of the only son of God, full of grace and truth.”
I am quite aware of the truth side. It’s the grace I’d like to discuss. Sometimes your grace seems rather random.
I heard someone say recently that the sovereignty of God is easy to believe when it goes our direction, but not easy when it makes no sense to us. See, I understand your grace when I read about Charity’s SUV swirling like a snowflake the other day across the highway, in and out of trucks and vans, totally encased in your grace so that she landed on the other side of the highway, facing oncoming traffic, totally unscathed, with no damage to the car. That grace is palpable.
I’m having a harder time with Sarah who lies dying, surrounded by her parents, her siblings, her husband and her little children. It’s been just weeks since she learned she was ill, and now death. At Christmas? This is grace?
I don’t think they understand either. Equally palpable.
Then I step back a pace and try to look it life from your perspective. A day is like a thousand years. A thousand years is like a day. My life is just a preface to eternity. Sarah’s life, Charity’s life, mere decimal dust in comparison to the way you see time.
If the God who created the universe chose to encase himself in the confines of humanity and walk a dirty earth, does he not understand human suffering? You wept when Lazarus died. Then you raised him from the dead. That was grace and truth side by side. And glory, not to forget glory.
This Christmas I will ponder eternity again. And in the midst of sorrow and joy, pain and gladness, I will remember that eternal God became finite man so that finite man may taste eternity.
John puts it rather well: “The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us, and we saw his glory, the glory of the only son of God, full of grace and truth.”
I am quite aware of the truth side. It’s the grace I’d like to discuss. Sometimes your grace seems rather random.
I heard someone say recently that the sovereignty of God is easy to believe when it goes our direction, but not easy when it makes no sense to us. See, I understand your grace when I read about Charity’s SUV swirling like a snowflake the other day across the highway, in and out of trucks and vans, totally encased in your grace so that she landed on the other side of the highway, facing oncoming traffic, totally unscathed, with no damage to the car. That grace is palpable.
I’m having a harder time with Sarah who lies dying, surrounded by her parents, her siblings, her husband and her little children. It’s been just weeks since she learned she was ill, and now death. At Christmas? This is grace?
I don’t think they understand either. Equally palpable.
Then I step back a pace and try to look it life from your perspective. A day is like a thousand years. A thousand years is like a day. My life is just a preface to eternity. Sarah’s life, Charity’s life, mere decimal dust in comparison to the way you see time.
If the God who created the universe chose to encase himself in the confines of humanity and walk a dirty earth, does he not understand human suffering? You wept when Lazarus died. Then you raised him from the dead. That was grace and truth side by side. And glory, not to forget glory.
This Christmas I will ponder eternity again. And in the midst of sorrow and joy, pain and gladness, I will remember that eternal God became finite man so that finite man may taste eternity.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Black ice
I was flat on my back before I knew what had happened. Black ice under a light dusting of snow caught me just as I reached for a cart outside the local Meijer. Phone, purse, gloves, glasses, scattered. Not seriously hurt but the old bad knee twisted.
On a busy Saturday morning, in a crowded parking lot, one would think there would be someone near but the landscape was curiously devoid of other humans. Another person would have been a welcome sight, but there was no one to help.
I sat up, gathered my things, assessed the damage, and gingerly pulled up on the heavy bars holding the carts till I was upright. Grabbing a cart, I used it like a walker to hobble inside and do my quick run of marketing. Once home, I slapped on the never-far-away knee brace and went on with the day. A day later, I’m almost back to normal.
Almost.
I’m seeing a lot of black ice in the lives of those around me. Sudden death of someone near and dear. Jobs that disappear faster than snow in the sunshine. Unexpected surgeries. Deadly cancer in people too young to be thinking cancer. Change. Black ice that takes our feet out from under us and lands us on our backs.
Some people just seem to stay there in the parking lot waiting for rescue. Others gingerly climb up whatever bars are nearby, assess the damage, and work at moving on. Not an easy process, not comfortable.
In my own life, I need all the bars, carts, and braces I can find. Friends to share pain and rejoicing, family to join in tears and laughter, and a God who knows where the black ice is and is the only one watching the parking lot.
Jacob limped after he wrestled with God, and it reminded him he wasn’t the one in control. I’m limping a bit. Probably a good reminder.
On a busy Saturday morning, in a crowded parking lot, one would think there would be someone near but the landscape was curiously devoid of other humans. Another person would have been a welcome sight, but there was no one to help.
I sat up, gathered my things, assessed the damage, and gingerly pulled up on the heavy bars holding the carts till I was upright. Grabbing a cart, I used it like a walker to hobble inside and do my quick run of marketing. Once home, I slapped on the never-far-away knee brace and went on with the day. A day later, I’m almost back to normal.
Almost.
I’m seeing a lot of black ice in the lives of those around me. Sudden death of someone near and dear. Jobs that disappear faster than snow in the sunshine. Unexpected surgeries. Deadly cancer in people too young to be thinking cancer. Change. Black ice that takes our feet out from under us and lands us on our backs.
Some people just seem to stay there in the parking lot waiting for rescue. Others gingerly climb up whatever bars are nearby, assess the damage, and work at moving on. Not an easy process, not comfortable.
In my own life, I need all the bars, carts, and braces I can find. Friends to share pain and rejoicing, family to join in tears and laughter, and a God who knows where the black ice is and is the only one watching the parking lot.
Jacob limped after he wrestled with God, and it reminded him he wasn’t the one in control. I’m limping a bit. Probably a good reminder.
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