Trappings

I find myself gushing with tears often this time of year. It happens at the oddest of moments. From Santa at North Pole City telling the true story of Christmas to standing in line at some store hearing a sweet Christmas song come over the speaker system.

It's a bittersweet time for me and my family.

But what's causing most of the moisture, however, is the simple fact that God, Himself, came to Earth, put on the trappings of His creation and walked among us.

I've taken some time to study other religions on my own over the last few years. Mostly because I just felt a little shattered by life and because well, I really needed to do it. I should have done it long ago.

I still clung to my beliefs and felt inherently that I was a follower of Christ and that His works in me from the tender age of seven, were most definitely true.

However, I needed to see what all was offered and what those offerings entailed.

While my search or journey was not exhaustive, it was very valuable indeed. I firmly hold that every Believer should not follow blindly. I subscribe to the idea that for myself, a relationship with God unexamined is not a true relationship at all. All believers should know what they believe and why they believe it over everything else and all other choices.

Everyone should be schooled on what the world has to offer in alternatives so that they can defend the truth from a truly educated perspective. I think you see a lot of this in the New Testament as Paul does his best to speak to all peoples.

But I won't get on my soap box about that and I most certainly am no expert.

But nonetheless, no other religion claims what Christianity does nor does it offer what Christianity has to offer. None. Nada...zip and most certainly ZILCH.

I know that God is ever present, drawing every living breathing human being unto Him...but I also know the trappings of having been raised from a very young age to believe what I hold to.

I always wonder how it is that the miracle of He - can draw people out of darkness. The darkness that they themselves are immersed in culturally, socially and within the tight knit walls of their families.

Being raised Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist...they hold to their beliefs just as strongly as I do out of what they absorbed from the time they took their first breath. The conversions of others not raised in a predominantly Christian culture is a miracle I find most fascinating and mysterious!

But from what I learned in my search...no other religion or belief system offers a god that comes to the earth, that loves people so much that he (or even she in some cases), would become just as vulnerable as they are. There's a sort of an other worldliness about most religious systems with the human beings separate, the god being too good for them and the requirement that the human to aspire (most unsuccessfully) beyond what he or she is capable of in order to come into their presence.

Basically, the whole concept of GRACE is missing.

And without Grace, there's no hope whatsoever if you ask me.

But Christianity, has this spin against what they offer. It offers Jesus, who puts himself in the form of a tiny baby....the most fragile of all forms of humanity and lives life through our eyes. It's really and truly EARTH shattering news!

It causes me great and deep awe to think of Jesus being born to Mary who was more than likely around the age of 15. Not to mention the scandal Joseph may have had on his hands with a young wife, pregnant by another before their wedding day. Have you ever thought about what the punishment was for her being in that state? Most certainly it was death by stoning.

How strong they must have been and how ever-present the Spirit had to have been in their day to day lives in order for them to endure and triumph.

I think of all the circumstances from the government in rule at that time, to the mishaps that young parents find themselves in with their first born and how from the outside Jesus' arrival was by all appearances was a very complicated, controversial, and cataclysmic event.

Yet the Lord was hovering over every detail, protecting, providing and fulfilling His purpose.

All of this just deepens my tenderness towards Him. He was an artist putting Himself in His own painting I've heard it said. (Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew) It's unfathomable!

Whenever I hear, Mary Did You Know? or Silent Night. I can't help but feel the rush of emotions causing me to want to cry my eyes out. When I stop to think of my own sons and how tender the relationship is. I think of being in Mary's shoes and how priceless this time is as I watch them grow bit by bit into what will one day be grown men.

I cannot help but stop and think of Mary feeling the same about Jesus. Proud over his first tooth, his first words, his first steps, ready with hugs when he falls, helping him learn, seeing him grow into a strong young man...

All these thoughts come home to me this time of year and while the grandest fact of all is that He died to pay for my sins...you can't dissect the path and the journey that led Him there. The mere fact that He became nothing for my sake...

How could He do all this for me?

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 should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of the Father.

Philippians 2:6-11

Have a very Merry Christmas this year....I know I will.

LOVE AFTER LOVE

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger that was your self,
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott

CJ is what she'll always be to me...

FB disturbs me sometimes. Mainly because it'll throw an ad up that says I haven't chatted with Cindy (my roommate from OBU) lately...it asks me to post something on her wall. When the truth is, I can't talk to Cindy anymore...well, not in a two way conversation.

Cindy passed away this Summer unexplained. It could have been a number of things but so far it's "inconclusive". Whatever that means.

Cindy and I had just reconnected on FB. We'd gotten busy in our lives, in our marriages and with our children. We hadn't spoken on the phone since Ethan was born. Yet, I knew Cindy still.

Cindy and I did a lot of growing up together those 4 years at OBU. Went through broken hearts, happy times being free from a curfew and the woes and triumphs of college life. We liked being together and we hardly ever fought. I can only think of one occasion that we did and it resulted in no sleep because we stayed up in our dorm room until we had it worked out.

I'm sad now and then thinking of the hole she left behind when the good Lord took her up to Him this past Summer. But I also know, where Cindy is, she is whole, nothing can hurt her and she's happiest realizing her faith was true and her reward is seeing things with Him now.

But I do miss her. I know her family misses her even more. Cindy, if you can read this, I love you and I can't wait to see you again...have a Merry Christmas, your most favorite of holidays. What a way to spend it this year!