The Christmas Gift

The season has officially arrived. Time to bring out the holiday decorations collected over the years, along with new ones purchased at half price after Christmas last year—the special trappings that announce the season of celebration. Trees are trimmed, candles lit, carols sung, lists made, gifts purchased and wrapped, parties planned, church plays produced, turkeys roasted, and every tradition of every family is carefully observed for the sake of memories.

It would be tempting to write a critique about the increasing secularization of our “holy days” traditions. But the deepening layers of fluff that threaten to obscure Christ are a legitimate concern I’ll save for another essay. Truthfully, the whole season with its traditions can produce a warm feeling in me, a kind of rosy glow that makes me want to stuff cash into the red pots of bell ringers, hug strangers, and maybe even “teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.” That’s a good thing—or is it?

I’ve heard many Christmas sermons over the years, but none has enlightened nor disturbed me more than the words of an unsaved woman I knew some years ago. While helping decorate an AA hall for a holiday party, she made the off-handed remark, “I just love Christmas. You know, the baby Jesus thing and all that stuff. It gives me a warm feeling.”

I had forgotten that conversation until today. At the time, I didn’t think much about her comment, except that she needed to know baby Jesus grew up and died for her. Maybe I even said that, I really don’t remember. Now I find her words unsettling in a different way. She had expressed sentimental feelings that are uncomfortably close to what I, and probably other Christians feel.

Sentimentality isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when it masquerades as spirituality, it satisfies merely at a surface level, distorting love and grace by diminishing them. The deep ocean of God’s love and grace becomes a wading pool. Instead of being immersed in His great love, we slosh around, accepting shallow spirituality and risk missing the awesome waves of His passion that can only be experienced when we venture out into waters over our heads.

The memory of that comment resurfaced today in the form of a question God posed to me: Do you understand the cost of the Incarnation?

Christians are (or should be) familiar with the basic theology of the Incarnation: Christ was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. God became fully human. We recite it in our creeds, we read it in the Bible, and hear it from the pulpit. We proclaim Christ’s divinity and humanity based on the doctrine of the Incarnation. But do we really understand the price the Son of God paid when He became the Son of Man?

I must confess, this morning during my prayer time, it occurred to me I did not. As I prayed, I wondered if indeed it was even possible in this life to fully comprehend the depth of sacrifice Jesus made when He stepped out of eternity and into time.

In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis wrote, “… the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend—man can sympathize with a horse but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat.” I believe it was also C. S. Lewis who observed that it is barely within the capacity of humans to understand how amazing an act of condescension it would be for a man to become a lower creature. It is one to thing to have a level of consciousness that enables one to sympathize with a lesser creature, such as a rat, it is entirely another to actually become one and experience all that rats experience, having left the lofty realm of humanness and all that entails.

We can only imagine the possibility, since no man has ever emptied himself of all his natural attributes, retaining only the knowledge that he is still in essence a man, and taken the likeness and consciousness of a lower creature—to be both that lower life form and man. Even though the chasm between man and rat is incredibly broad, the analogy falls short because humans and rats still share a common bond: they are both created beings. The analogy cannot begin to express the magnitude of the condescension of the Creator in becoming the creature.

It is the mystery of the Incarnation: God becoming one of His creatures, yet still being God in essence. What Jesus left behind when He condescended to the level of a dividing cell in Mary’s womb is what I have never fully appreciated, and I say that to my sorrow, because the sacrifice of Jesus on my behalf began long before the cross.

The entire seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John records the last time Jesus prayed with His disciples before His crucifixion. Next to the anguished prayer in Gethsemane, it is probably the most passionate prayer ever uttered, and He prayed it not only for the small band of men gathered around Him, but also for us:

“And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was… Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may also be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world (v. 5, 24).”

The inclusion of that request in His prayer reveals His desire that we understand the level from which He had descended to walk among humanity. He had willingly left the Father’s presence in a place of grandeur and glory beyond human imagining, and emptied Himself of the attributes that made Him God.

In Philippians 2:6-11, Paul attempts to describe the depth Jesus’ sacrifice through the Incarnation:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore, God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

He made Himself nothing. The All in All, the Alpha and Omega, the Almighty became a creature, a lowly servant, and willingly bore the cross—our cross, our sin, our shame. The question still reverberates: do I understand the cost of the Incarnation?

I will enjoy the Christmas season. I will probably overeat, spend a little too much, and observe all the traditions, sacred and silly. But there will be a silent prayer offered continually from my heart: that I would grow beyond sentimentality and press deeper into the heart of God where emotions are transformed and become holy.

Moses prayed to see God’s glory, and God granted his request, but only gave him a glimpse. He covered Moses’ eyes with His hand as He passed telling him, “you cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me and live.” But Jesus is the face of God, and we are commanded to focus our attention on and our hope in Him. The hand of God no longer blocks our view, only our own hands cast up in fear, shame, or ignorance.

It may well be that before “the mortal is clothed with immortality,” my vision will be obscured for countless reasons. But His prayer will ultimately be answered. Until that day, like Paul, I will seek to grasp the width and length and depth and height of His love—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, the love that compelled the Incarnation—and to truly understand His incredible Christmas gift.

The Testing of Faith

Recently I had to deal with something that no one wants to face: cancer. I had a large mole on my calf for years. It was a part of my anatomy and I just accepted its presence. But over the past year it had been growing larger. Still, I didn’t think much about it. But then it began to darken in the middle and develop an irregular shape. I thought it was odd, but that was all. But when I felt a lump, something started niggling in my mind to go see a dermatologist. Still, I let it go a couple months while the thought persisted.

Finally, I thought maybe I shouldn’t ignore it and went to see a dermatologist who took one look and said he was 80-90% sure it was Melanoma. He removed it and sent it in for analysis, and yes, it was Melanoma, the number one skin cancer killer. After a tense week the pathology report came back and said it was shallow enough that it had not reached my lymph system and all that would be required was the removal of more surrounding tissue, which because I let it go so long was a lot.

When he said the word Melanoma, I had no questions for him. I was too stunned. I know how dangerous it is. I was numb. But soon the numbness wore off and two things happened. I became very anxious and very depressed. I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. And I definitely didn’t want to go to work and be around people which my job is all about. I was sinking into a deep hole. The only prayer I prayed about it was, “God, I don’t want to have cancer.” It was all I could muster.

My psychiatrist increased my antidepressant and I got mental health time off work. I was also taking anti-anxiety medication. In short, I was a mess. All because of the thought of having cancer. To get straight to the point, I was not being a model Christian. Where was my faith? Looking back, I am amazed because I have been through some pretty difficult trials in my life and faith has carried me. So why would I falter now?

In his letter to the various churches, Peter said that trials are to prove the genuineness of our faith which is more precious than gold. But what kind of faith was he referring to? I believe he was referring to the faith that results in our salvation and in that sense, I never wavered. Never once did I doubt that. The faith I failed in was that of believing I would be okay. I forgot the promise that God would never leave me nor forsake me, that he is goodness personified.

The trial was not intended to deliberately trip me up, or to make me look bad or feel bad about myself. It was intended to help me see what I need to work on in order to grow deeper in faith. We all have a breaking point and I think God leads us there to help us grow and mature in faith. I praise God that things turned out as they did and that I listened to what was obviously the Holy Spirit nudging me to go to the doctor. I have every confidence that I have learned from this and with God’s help will grow from it.

When you are lead to that place, and you will be, I pray when you come out on the other side, your faith will be deeper and stronger because of it, that you will not be dismayed, but determined and find the peace that passes all understanding. 

God's Care

Outside my home I have a hanging plant. Don’t ask me what it is, because I don’t remember, but save for one week, I faithfully go out every other day and water it. It isn’t out where it can get rain and even if it were, we have been living with drought-like conditions for weeks now. It would dry up and die if I did not tend to it continually.

Recently, I discovered a nest and four bird’s eggs in it. I have been very careful to not get it wet when I water, but I have not seen the mother at any time and I am beginning to believe she has abandoned the nest and her four potential babies. They are no longer under her care and because of that will die.

Our lives are like that. Our souls and our bodies need care. In John 15, Jesus said He is the vine and His Father is the vine grower. We are the branches and that apart from Him we can do nothing, but if we abide in Him we will bear fruit. God tends to us. Matthew 6:25-34 tells us that if God cares for His creation, He cares even more for us. “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?...Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat? Or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’…indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

We are God’s handiwork and He will never fail to care for us. Even in our darkest times, God is with us, upholding us, nurturing, comforting, and yes, sometimes correcting, but that is always done in love to produce, in the end, Christ-like qualities in us. God’s love for us compels Him to keep us from all that would separate us from Him, even to the point of death on a cross.

We will never be abandoned like that nest of eggs. In Psalm 27:10, David said, “If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.” In Hebrews 13:5b, God says, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” These are sure promises in which we can hope. He will never founder in His ability to carry and sustain us. We will never be bereft of His presence in our hearts. We can take comfort in that knowing He has us in the palm of His hand where no one can snatch us away. (John 10:28).

Regardless of circumstances or emotions, God is caring for us. Every breath we take, we take because He wills it. Every mountain, every valley, in all places and at all times, God’s care is constant. Psalm 139 says that there is nowhere we can go that God cannot keep hold of us. Let that thought go with you each day and be assured you are cared for. God is watching over you, even now. 

A Different Commission

This has been a week of wonder. I would say it’s been a magical week, but there’s been nothing magical about it. It’s been a week resulting from years of labor and love. Desire and dreams. Effort and even agony at times. All culminating in one exceptional week and one very special day: The day of graduation and commissioning of 1,032 West Point Cadets. And I was there to see my son become an officer in the United States Army.

My son dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot at an early age and so we talked to him about the Air Force Academy. Even took him there to visit. My father was a career Air Force officer, so for me a military career didn’t seem a bad option for him. But as he got a little older, the fighter pilot dream faded and soon was replaced by wanting to be a soldier. The watershed event for my son’s generation was September 11, 2001. It is their Dec. 4, 1941. I saw how deeply it affected him. He was in fifth grade at the time and the school turned on the TVs so they could watch it happening as it unfolded on the news. No censorship. At the time I was upset by the school’s decision, but in hindsight, they did the right thing. My son’s love of country is amazing.

It’s not that he just wants to go shoot people. He is following two career paths. One, his degree is in international relations, to understand others and to try and be a part of bringing others to the table to talk things out. And to teach others about other cultures, primarily those of the pacific-rim.

Second, has chosen to go into Ordnance, not to just blow up things, but primarily bomb disposal, to destroy IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) that kill and maim ours and our allies’ troops daily. He will be competing for only a few slots for the school when he reports to his first assignment and it is his goal to get one. For him, it is a means of saving lives.

The teen I sent to West Point has come back to me a man, one I am so proud of. A man who is becoming who I truly believe God has created him to be. I cannot believe how blessed our family has been by the Lord. I look at our son and wonder what I did to deserve such a gift. I would be lying if I said I did not fear what the future could hold. The military life means danger. And I cannot begin to express what grief I would feel were the worst to happen. But God has led him to this point for reasons unknown to me and He has a purpose for his life. For now I will rejoice in and with him. And God will have to keep him. He is now no longer under my care. 

Making time for Prayer

It’s amazing how much I depend on the internet. I go online daily to chat with people in far flung places, to research, to pay bills, check my work email and personal email. Today, my internet provider went down and I suddenly found myself cut off from the rest of the world. It was frustrating to not be able to just sit down with my laptop and be instantly connected to the places I go and the people I love.

I am reminded of how easily communication can be disrupted in other areas of my life as well, most notably the communication between God and me. Prayer is connecting with God in a tangible way. We can be casual, earnest, angry, humble. There are many postures we can take in prayer, but we first have to pray and do so often. I am willing to spend time daily on the internet communicating with others, how willing am I to spend time communicating with God? I admit, I don’t pray as much as I should, at least not in my estimation. I pray daily, don’t get me wrong, but I am sometimes on the run and breathing out prayers as I go instead of sitting down and making sure I have time when it’s just God and me. I always have his ear, but he doesn’t always have mine.

Sometimes it’s a matter of something getting between God and me. I allow attitudes or unconfessed sins to block the way to an effective prayer life. There is a disconnect that takes place and it’s on my end not his. Unlike the unreliable internet service, God is always there with the channels open between us, but I fail to do what I need to do at my end to make sure there is no disruption. I need to check my heart for those things that would interfere with my prayer life and confess them, asking for forgiveness. God hears and answers always and I am aware of that when I keep my side of communications open.

Hopefully, my service will be up soon and I will be able to do what I need to do today. In the meantime, I think I will spend some of that time in prayer. God is waiting for me and I don’t need an internet search engine to find my way to him. He is already here. 

Loving God's Way

Of all the emotions God gifted us with, the most complex is love. For us it runs the gamut from “I love pizza” love to “I love my husband” love. It can be as shallow as loving a color or as deep and intense as a mother’s love for her children. We can feel patriotic fervor as a result of love of country and sentimental warmth for love of the holiday season. Love is complex and is expressed in a variety of ways by humans.

But how does God see love? Scripture says, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). His definition of love is given to us in the very life and death of Jesus. More than words from a Webster’s dictionary, he clearly demonstrates the meaning what love is all about. There is no ambiguity or confusion when you look at Jesus’ life among us and his death on the cross. God’s love revealed to humankind in the most radical way possible.

The passage from 1 John goes on to say, “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” God’s kind of love is exemplified in Jesus and that is the kind of love we are to show one another. The well-known verses from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a pictures love as Jesus lived it: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

And God’s love is strong. It does not waver in the face of adversity or pain. It is a constant. It doesn’t depend on our good days or bad, whether we’ve stumbled and failed or if we are doing just fantastic. In fact, it doesn’t depend on us at all. God’s love is wholly based on his heart’s desire to love us no matter what may come. He calls us to love the same, to set our hearts to love sacrificially just as he does.

There is a song from years ago that had a chorus line, “Love is not a feeling it is an act of your will.” There is truth to that, but I would add that God’s love is a fierce love. There is nothing passionless about it. There will always be times when to do the right thing in love may not be accompanied with great emotion or at least not joyfulness, but keep following the example of Jesus and don’t be surprised if passion eventually follows actions. The Bible says Jesus endured the cross for the joy that was set before him (Hebrews 12:2).

I try to love God’s way, but I know I fall short too often. The good news is that the Holy Spirit resides in me and his presence produces the fruit of love. If I press onward and closer to God, if I continue to practice love in all I do, the fruit will grow. So it is for all God’s people: God’s love, for us and through us, reaching into the lives of the deserving and undeserving alike, touching lost, broken hearted, beaten down weary travelers in this life.

If we can love with God’s love, we can change lives, and not just the lives of others. We’ll find we ourselves are being transformed with every act of love. Dare to love with God’s kind of love and see what happens when you do. I promise you won’t be disappointed. 

Thoughts Matter

Right now I have an old Rolling Stones song stuck in my head. I frequently have songs get stuck in my head and drive me to distraction. They’re called earworms and they crawl inside my mind and take up residence sometimes and will not move out all day. Sometimes it can be a pleasant song or it can be a maddening commercial ditty. Either way, though, they can invade my thought life and make me miserable. But I do have ways of fighting back.

 Our thought life is important to God. What transpires inside our minds matters very much because what we think orders our steps. If I allow certain thoughts to go unchecked in my mind, I find myself being careless with my words. Thoughts that encourage feelings we should be rejecting put us on a path leading away from God’s presence. If I feel anger and begin meditating on it rather than dealing with it properly, I drive a wedge between God and myself and the person with whom I am angry and open up the real possibility of acting on the emotion because I have stirred it up by my thoughts.

 In Philippians 4:8, Paul writes, “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (NRSV) He went on to say that the God of peace would be with them. In other words, they would experience His presence as they practiced thinking this way. Scripture also encourages us to meditate on God’s word.

 In the Psalms, David exclaimed, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long…I have more understanding than all my teachers for your decrees are my meditation.” (119:97, 100) “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (119:105)

 We do well to corral our thoughts and remember God is Lord over them as well. We can’t always control what pops into our heads but we can replace those thoughts and deliberately choose to meditate on those things that please God and that will help lead to Godly living.

Times of Testing

We have had an unusually warm winter with little precipitation. It’s as though the heavens have closed up leaving the ground parched for water. No appreciable snow, little rain, and it has been this way for several months.

There are times in the spiritual life when the heavens appear to be closed, too, and no responses to prayer seem to come. Or, the Spirit of God seems to be in another universe altogether and we feel bereft of His presence, times when God almost seems to not be listening to us for some reason. When that happens, we’ll take inventory: do I have unconfessed sin? Am I angry at someone? Do I owe someone an apology? We come up with all kinds of reasons why God has seemingly left us alone and on our own.

But God’s silence isn’t necessarily due to anything on our part at all. Scripture says His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. In the Gospel of Luke, the Holy Spirit led Jesus out to the wilderness after He had heard God’s voice from heaven declare, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with You I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:22) It was in wilderness wandering, a place of silence and aloneness that Jesus was tempted by Satan. It was a time of trial and testing for him. This, after a moment of glory.

It is not comfortable to talk about God testing His people, but scripture says He does so. Not so He can see if we will fail. No, the good news is that even when He seems far away, the abiding truth is that we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. And His power and presence means that just like Jesus, we can be victorious in the times we feel the weakest. Whatever we may face, God will never truly leave us alone and without sufficient strength.

We may feel like God isn’t hearing us or that He is nowhere to be found, but He is near. Scripture says God will never leave us nor forsake us, and that remains true in times of trials. Whatever we are going through, God is there, giving strength and grace so we might move on to greater things in life. So, do not be discouraged if facing difficulties and in the wilderness. Jesus went through the same and is alongside you even now. Faith is the assurance of things not yet seen. It is our hope of coming through stronger and closer to God.