Christmas

Born to bleed…

Having just finished up a sermon, and being a little exhausted, I’m not going to write a lot for this evening’s blog entry.

But I’ve been noticing this Christmas how often Easter makes an appearance in the carols and songs of the season. I love it. You can’t have Christmas without Easter and you can’t have Easter without Christmas. Sometimes people want to just enjoy the sweet baby Jesus, without thinking what would happen 33 years later. Well, maybe it is because I had the experience of being at the birthplace of Christ, and then the deathplace of Christ a few days later this year…but I just can’t look/talk/think/sing about the baby without also being deeply aware of the cross. They go hand in hand for me.

And they should. The baby has to grow up, and do his work and lay down his life, or we’re all lost.

So on that note, I’ve been listening to this song a lot this season. I hope you’ll enjoy it, too:

Mary and the angel…

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In 12 days it will be Christmas Eve. I hope you are on your way to ready, if not completely prepared yet. Personally, I am just about finished with my preparations. I have a few gifts that I am waiting for them to arrive in the mail. And I have a lot of wrapping, some mailing and a little grocery shopping to do. But that’s it. And I am pleased.

I think the time has come to make the turn from waiting for the birth to telling the story of the birth in this Advent Calendar blog project. I love the story of Jesus’ birth. I love all the details and the way it came together. So I want to take my time with this story, to tell it slowly over the next 12 days.

Let’s begin!

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!”

Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.“Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”

Luke 1:26-33 NLT

When I was a child, this part of the story scared me. I mean, I understood that God is love and that therefore one might expect that God’s messenger would be loving as well. But I was terrified at the idea of an Angel waking me up in the middle of the night. I didn’t want God sending me any messengers. The thought just scared me.

So I love that Luke says that Mary was confused and disturbed. I bet she was! I would be too, if this happened to me.

But I as I grew up I began to understand that somehow Mary had courage even in the midst of being confused and disturbed. That somehow, this messenger was welcome, even in the midst of her fear. Maybe because his words are so good. His message is one of hope and joy and the absolute confirmation of God’s love for Mary.

Maybe because angels – who have been in the presence of God – have a calming way about them.

Or maybe because Mary already had faith in God, she already lived with peace in her heart – peace that passes understanding. Peace that her son would bring into the world and share with all who chose to follow Him.

 

 

(PS…it is really, really hard to find non-cheesy angel images!)

Finding balance…

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The last two days have been kind of crazy. Packed full of activity – lunch with friends, back-up singing at an Elvis impersonator’s concert (I never get sick of dropping that detail into conversation!), Christmas shopping, addressing Christmas cards, cooking, buying turkey(s). It’s been a bit of a whirlwind.

So on the night before the Advent Sunday of Peace, I find myself reflecting on the lack of balance I’ve had this week. It has been full of one thing and another. It has been sadly lacking in peace and rest.

I found myself at the local mall this morning. I had gotten too little sleep the night before and had too many things on my to-do list, and now that I think about it…I was one of those grumpy joyless people that make me frustrated at this time of year. Now that I’m on the right side of a good long nap with my dog, some time spent with friends, and the completing of so many things on my list, I realize I could have actually enjoyed this morning. I could have spread all my errands over a few days. I could have stopped and taken it all in rather than rushing from one moment to the next. I could have found the balance between getting it done, and enjoying the moment.

Micah, the prophet, wrote:

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
are only a small village among all the people of Judah.
Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you,
one whose origins are from the distant past.
The people of Israel will be abandoned to their enemies
until the woman in labor gives birth.
Then at last his fellow countrymen
will return from exile to their own land.
And he will stand to lead his flock
with the Lord’s strength,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
Then his people will live there undisturbed,
for he will be highly honored around the world.
And he will be the source of peace.

Micah 5:2-5 NLT

Part of the problem with my experience this morning was that I got so focused on the list of things to do, that I forgot the reason I was doing it all. In the end, it is all to honor Jesus. To celebrate that moment when Love came down from heaven and dwelt among us.

Micah says that Jesus is meant to be the source of our peace. So I will try to make him the center of my celebrations from now on. I will try to smile when it might be easier to scowl. I will tap into the source of my peace, and remember that this is about him first and foremost. I will pray that you will be able to do the same.

Plans…

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For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

I have blogged about this passage before. But never in the context of Christmas. This is not one of the classic Christmas prophecies. But it could be. After all, what is Jesus if not God’s plan to give us a hope and a future?

Today I am thinking about this text because of a conversation I had this morning. It was one of those moments when God lets you see all the ways he has been working his plans for you and for the people in the community where you serve – plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future. That doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it is beautiful to a shocking degree. I have been grinning all day, each time I thought of it.

I have known and loved this verse for years, but today it has taken on a deeper meaning for me. It has become the living word of God, instead of ‘just’ a good reminder. On the one hand, I know to put my trust in God. Of course I know that. I know that God has plans for me. I know that God has good plans for my future. But it is one thing to know it intellectually, and quite another to experience it full-force.

It must have been a little bit like that for Mary that first Christmas. When she finally held her baby in her arms and just KNEW that everything she had been through – the raised eyebrows at her pregnancy, the moment when Joseph told her he’d thought of calling off their engagement, the long, difficult journey to Bethlehem – had been part of God’s plan to change the world forever. I wonder if she remembered this bit from the scroll of Jeremiah as she held her little boy.

My prayer for us all, this Christmas, is that God would reveal His plan and how he’s been working it in each of our lives. My prayer is that we might be touched not by the intellectual notion of hope, but by the living truth of our hope in Jesus Christ. My prayer is that God’s plans would continue to take on flesh and dwell among us.

Advent!

Today begins my favorite season of the year – the days leading up to Christmas. I love everything about Christmas – the hustle and bustle, the lights, the songs, the parties, the time spent with people we love, and most especially – the worship. This time of year is so fraught with great themes. Light in the darkness. Hope in troubling times. Incarnation. Sacrifice. Life. Death. Eternity.

For some who share my profession this time is a time of weariness. The joy of Christmas is stolen by the grind of work. I understand this, and I certainly have experienced moments of weariness and frustration and despair during this season. But I fight against allowing myself to feel that way about Christmas in general. For me, it is extremely important to find moments of celebration and moments of worship even in the midst of this busy season.

One of the ways that I do that is through my blog. So for the second year in a row, I will be writing a daily Advent Calendar here. I will read the Scriptures, and invite you to read them with me. I’ll post pictures each day that will help reflect the reading and the idea that I am writing about.

Today it begins with hope. Long before Jesus was born, there were prophets who spoke for God. Often they delivered messages of doom to a people who had wandered astray. One of my peers likes to call them the grumpy old men of the Old Testament. But in the midst of all their doom and gloom, hope was also present. And the hope was the Messiah who was to come. Jeremiah wrote these words:

“For the time is coming,”
says the Lord,
“when I will raise up a righteous descendant
from King David’s line.
He will be a King who rules with wisdom.

Jeremiah 23:5 NLT

 

For centuries the people waited. They read these words in worship and dreamed about what the Messiah, the righteous descendent from David’s line, would be like. I believe they didn’t have the slightest clue about what God had in mind. But still, they turned to these words for hope. Because they knew that God’s promises would be fulfilled, that the Messiah would come, eventually.

Our season of waiting is so much shorter than theirs. We have less than a month to enter into patient waiting for the Messiah to come. And yet, as we enter this season,I give thanks for those ancient writers, who bled hope on to scrolls so that God’s people would not grow faint of heart.

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So it begins…

The weekend got away from me. There was so much to do and so little time, it seemed. And in the midst of it all, I never did find a quiet moment during which I could put out my nativity set. That quiet moment finally arrived tonite.

After all the hustle and bustle of the day was over, after I’d had my nightly phone call with my Mom, after the puppy had finally been fed, there was time. No plans, no emails that had to be sent, no chores that had to be done. Just time.

So I loaded my “Everything Christmas” playlist onto my iPhone and set it into its speakers. And as some of my favorite Christmas music began to play, began to unpack my set from its boxes. This is a favorite ritual of mine.

I first saw my nativity set in a store window in the Pickering Town Centre mall, when my parents and I lived in that city. It stopped me dead in my tracks and my Father (with whom I was running errands) had to come back to get me. And we spent a few minutes together, still in the midst of the bustling mall, marveling at how these figures told the story with beauty and simplicity. And how we could still be struck silent by the story these figures told.

A few Christmases later, my Mom and Dad bought me the first pieces in my set. For a couple of Christmases they added to it, until the whole set was mine. Every time I take it out of its boxes I am reminded of the reason for this season. And I am reminded of the faithfulness of my parents, who taught me the story of God’s saving love coming to earth in the form of a helpless baby.

This is the beginning of my Advent season. This is the beginning of all the preparations, all the decorating, all the little steps that will lead to the celebration of Christmas 2012. For me, in this quiet, worship-ful moment, it has begun very well.

The whole set (and stockings for me, Koski and Spot).
The centre piece.
The Wise Men.
A shepherd and some animals.