What to do with Christmas....?

I have heard all the reasons why Christians should or should not in some way celebrate Christmas. To me, however, most of it boils down to propaganda based in fear. Yes, I know where Christmas started, and I understand all about those symbols associated with Christmas that have nothing to do with Christ and Christianity. Whatever you believe or don't about the matter, you cannot deny that taking time out to pause in wonder at the events that took place some two thousand years ago.

God stepped down from His heavenly throne and entered the world as a baby destined to usher in restitution and salvation for all of mankind.

Even saying it becomes amazing.

Either way, if you celebrate Christmas or not, Jesus' birth was just as important as his death and resurrection in God's plan of salvation. And I find that nothing short of miraculous and glorious.

What Does Jesus Look Like?

I have a sinking suspicion that if Jesus were to walk through a busy airport terminal and sit down next to one of us, that we would not recognize him. We are too busy and distracted by life to pay attention to what is going on around us, much less what the person beside us looks like. Asking us to pray five minutes a day is just like asking a person to give up their life... We don't even like to spare five minutes for our own families, why should we bother spending it with Jesus?

Its sad that you can find a Jesus statue or picture of Jesus in every shade of humanity, but no one really seems to know who he is, or what his purpose in dying on the cross was... Instead of preaching and teaching Christ our churches have become fashion central, and user friendly. No one wants to talk about things that just might offend anyone else. Sinners and saints alike are seen as safe as long as they just attend one service every once in a while...

There will come a day, however, when Jesus will separate those who know him from those who do not know him. So many of us who think we are in the "IN" crowd of Christianity will have a rude awakening when he tells us that what we thought was true all our lives is not... That he doesn't know who we are...

So, what do we do about it?

Lets start with that five minutes. Yeah, you could probably use that time checking your e-mail, but it may be better for your spiritual health to take time out and discover who Jesus really is. Prayer is great, but don't just stop at prayer... There is a whole book written about Jesus and the church that calls themselves by his name. Five minutes doesn't look all that bad when we think about the future and our eternity... After all, there are only two choices... Eternity with Jesus, or eternity without Jesus...

Been Sick...

I haven't posted for a while because I have been ill... Really, I have been too tired to even think about things to post. I just wanted to lay in my bed and cry because it hurt to breathe. (Yeah, I know... I need to quit being a cry baby. But I was really, really sick.)

Anyway, I was thinking about things that bring us comfort when we are sick, and reminiscing about my youth. I don't know about your mom, but my mom always made me feel better when she was worried about me being ill. There is just something about that cold hand feeling my head for a fever, or her waking me up out of a dead sleep (that I finally was able to reach) to check my temp that made me feel that she loved me. And she always made my favorite soup...

But then I grew up, and momma wasn't able to be there all the time. That just made all the times I was ill even worse. No one is a good substitute for Momma, except Jesus. I could say a lot of things here about the goodness of God, but there is nothing so comforting as knowing that He cares for us. No matter what it is that we are going through, He cares. You can always call on Him, and He will always answer your prayer because He cares.

He loves us like a father, nurtures us like a mother, cares for us like a brother. Is there anyone who can compare to God?

I don't think so.

1 Peter 5:7

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

But Everyone Else Is Doing It....

Do you remember those iconic words? The words we uttered when we didn't get the answer we wanted from our parents and we really wanted to participate in that one thing that would have made us like everyone else? My mother's response to that phrase, "But everyone else is doing it/going there/has one", was quite simple... She said, "No means no."

Except for a few languages out there, the word "no" means the same as it does here in the USA. It is a denial of permission, the opposite of "yes", and a refusal. So simple a child could understand its meaning, right? Hardly. Even adults have a hard time accepting the answer of "no".

Everyone Else is...

When we first don't get the answer we seek, we try to bring the rest of humanity in on it. Everyone else has a car. Everyone else has an IPOD. Everyone else has a swimming pool. Everyone else gets to go to concerts.

The implied meaning is that everyone else gets to have or do something but you. Furthermore, the implication is adjusted to mean that whomever is denying you the opportunity to join in is being cruelly unfair. This implied meaning does not take into account the reason behind the with holding of permission. I mean, there is a reason you (we) are (were) told "no" in the first place. What that reason happens to be is often ignored because we, as the injured and unfairly treated individual, are focused on the unfairness of it all.

I mean, it is soooo unfair that Cathy has a television with TiVo in her own bedroom, and I cannot have a television at all. My parents just don't understand how important it is for me to have one. It only costs a little bit, not much. They could charge it on the Master Card and I would work it off... Its just not fair.

What we do not take into consideration is that there is usually a reason behind our parents' seeming unfairness.

Money

Money is a huge consideration. You have to have it to live, and there are more important things to spend it on when you have limited supplies. Its rather silly to spend your last dollar on something that could very likely mean starving to death.

Linked with money is that all powerful credit card. Today we seem to think that if the bank account is empty, we can charge it. We don't take into account the cost of that charge. You are going to end up paying more for your charge on the credit card than you are if you pay it in cash.
Credit card bills when you have no money to pay them are not fun.

Responcibility

Not everyone is responcible enough to have a television in their bedroom. If I had had one as a kid/teen, I probably would have had an even greater excuse not to go to sleep until after midnight thirty (really late in country terms). So what if I hadn't done my homework... there are lots of things to watch on that television to distract me until its too late to try.

Along with responcibility is content. What kind of things are you going to allow yourself to view in that there television? Would you just watch the news and cartoons? Would the cartoons you choose to watch be what you should be viewing? Is there any reason to watch reality tv? Not every thing on television is age appropriate, or morally acceptable. Would you really watch that show if your parents were in the room with you?


Danger!

Could you put yourself in danger by having that? If not physical danger, what about spiritual danger. Parents who are watching out for danger refuse us things because they could lead us to harm, injury, or death. That harm, injury, or death does not have to be physical. Spiritual harm, injury, and death are just as devistating as their physical counterpart.


Israel

I Samuel 8 (click text for passage)

In the Bible we are told that even though God set up a Theocracy in Israel, the Israelites wanted an earthly king. They didn't want a king because it would be better, or because it would stop fighting and misunderstanding between the tribes, there were judges and the prophets for that. No, the Bible tells us that Israel wanted a king because everyone else had a king.

They were worried that there would be no one after Samuel to lead them, so they demanded that Samuel set up a king over them in his stead. Samuel was appauled. God was the King of Israel. All things eminated from God to the people of Israel as long as they obeyed His ways. Had he not provided them a way out of Egypt, an escape from tyranny? Had not God provided them with food and water, and leaders, and land? Why insult God by demanding a king?

The people would not listen to Samuel on this, however. They had used that trump card of "Every one else has a King", and had mulishly stuck out their lips and refused to take no for an answer. So when Samuel took the matter to God, He allowed them to have what they were asking for. But he gave them a warning.

Choices have Consequinces

Because Israel did not heed Samuel's warning, they became enslaved to their human leader. The model that God had set for Israel's government was forsaken, and His people enslaved themselves for the chance to be led like everyone else. They got wars, taxes, and a whole lot of corruption in the "King" package. Things God did not intend them to go through, or experience. They also got ungodly leaders who led them further astray from God and His mercy than would have happened had they listened to Samuel and forgot the "King" thing.

Our choices have consequinces also. What we choose to do or not do affects the rest of our lives. When we are faced with that iconic phrase of "everyone else..." we need to stop and look at it more closely. If God, or our pastor, or our parents are saying "no", there is a reason for it. Rather than be like Baalam and Israel and push ahead inspite of hearing that refusal of permission, we need to think about why that "no" is being said in the first place. Because if we do, we could end up like Israel, and experience a whole lot of trouble and trials than we would have if we had listened and accepted "no" as an answer.

Thoughts on Sharing

True sharing is not a part of human nature, it has to be learned.

My mother has a cute little black and tan dachshund-terrier mix named Bella Sera. Bella (or Berra as she sometimes gets called), is a hyperactive jumping-licking-whining-tug of war player. The minute you walk in the front door, she will attack you from the back of the couch with kisses and nibbles. If you make the mistake of paying attention to my dog (Oscar) first, she will then pummel you with leaps and whine like you are killing her. She has three beds, and each bed is full of stuffed (and some no longer stuffed) toys and bones. Those are her toys. She doesn't like sharing them with Oscar, or with anyone else... That is, she doesn't like sharing them with anyone unless you have something she wants.

Case in point...

Saturday, I made peanut butter cookies. I gave one to my niece, Avie, when she and her mother came over to run an errand. Bella took one look at that cookie and decided that she had to have one as well. When I didn't get up and go get one for Bella, she decided to steal Avie's cookie instead. When that didn't work, Bella galloped over to her living room bed, and pulled out her little stuffed shoe toy, and raced back to Avie's seat. Bella then placed the little shoe at the feet of Avie, and barked. Bella's signal that she wants to play, or trade. When Avie ignored her, she jumped up beside Avie in the chair, and shoved her little shoe in Avie's lap. Then the dog cocked her head and let out a garbled, half whined, "Ry Ruff Ru!"

Had Avie been paying attention to anything but her cookie, she would have realized what a rare treat she had been given. The dog that hides all her toys when my niece comes for a visit, was sharing her toy with Avie... Granted, she was sharing because Avie had something that she wanted, but she was sharing none the less...

Some of us would probably believe that Bella's idea of sharing is what true sharing is. We would like to believe that sharing really is about "give and take", but its not. Sharing is about caring. Sharing is about self sacrifice. Its about giving your last dime to someone who has nothing and not begrudging them the gift. Sharing is letting someone borrow your things with no strings attached.

God didn't teach Bella's idea of sharing in His Word. Instead, God taught us to love our neighbor as if our neighbor was our self. He taught the Ultimate self sacrifice in dying for us on the cross of Calvary, and his Apostles reiterated it through their writings and epistles that make up the New Testament in our Bibles.

Ah! But what if you don't have enough to share? That is what we tell ourselves, right? I don't have enough to share with anyone... Well, half of a little is still more than none. The little boy who gave up his small lunch to the disciples didn't have much either, but he was willing to give what he could. Jesus multiplied that tiny meal and made a feast, but it would not have happened if that boy had not been willing to share in the first place.

Sharing doesn't have to involve a physical object either. So you don't have money, and you don't have food, that doesn't mean you still cannot share. You have in your grasp a very important thing, something that may never be granted again... Time. Sharing your time is as good a thing as sharing a dime. You don't believe me? Ask those men and women who live in the hospitals and nursing homes in our world whether time matters at all. Ask the kids who don't have parents to share their daily experiences with if time matters. I bet you anything that they will tell you time does matter. You can see it in their faces each time you come for a visit, or offer to tutor someone in school.

One last thing...


What you share, and how you share it affects how the world sees the light of Jesus in you. People are watching you. They are looking at your life and how you act. They will use your failures as an excuse not to live for God, and they will use your successes as a reason to trust in God. So think on it a bit... Are you willing to share?

Matthew 5

¹³Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

¹⁴Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

¹⁵Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

¹⁶Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.


⁴²Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

⁴³Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

⁴⁴But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

⁴⁵That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

⁴⁶For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

⁴⁷And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Pockets and Human Nature

I am going out on a limb here with this. I know it will probably sound nutty, but bear with me for a few moments. I have a hangup about pockets. Its not that I don't like them, or don't use them (I tend to over use them...). I just think that we use pockets as an excuse to hoard.

Take the average purse out there... It usually has between three and seven pockets (depending on the manufacturer and model). The average purse is intended to hold less than five pounds of stuff, yet if you actually take a chance to look inside of the average purse, you would be amazed and perhaps mortified at what you find in there... I mean, mine weighs about 12 lbs. I keep cleaning it out, but it has never weighed less than 7 lbs. at a single time unless you count the day I bought it.

Why so heavy you ask? Well, I just can't live without me checkbook, my phone, my tablet of paper, my extra brush, my breath mints, my mirror, lip gloss, neosporin, bandaides, hair pins, barrets, gum, pens/pencils, my coin purse, my drivers license, the brass casing from my uncle's funeral 21 gun salute, keys and extra keys, body spray, breath spray, toothettes, tylenol, motrin, and a toy for my niece to play with at church... sometimes I even stuff a book or three in there and my MP3 player or my CD player.... Its all stuff I am going to need (at some point or another... not like right now...).

My work uniform is sort of the same way. I usually have between 2-5 pockets in my uniform, and I tend to stuff them all full of supplies I may need at one point or another. Mostly with pens though, since I seem to be frightened that I may run out of ink during my shift. (Its not like I will not be able to borrow a pen from the nurse's desk, or take one from the break room table in my office, but I guess irrationality is a quirk of human nature.)

Men and women alike seem to have this urge to fill thier pockets with stuff for no other reason than because they have pockets. The deeper the pocket is, the more stuff we tend to cram in there. We tend to forget that a pocket (or purse for that matter) is not a suitecase. No matter how hard we try, we aren't going to fit all we need in them. Eventually we will find out something is missing when we get into a jam.

We are so ingrained in stuffing our pockets, that we forget that sometimes our clothing fits better if we aren't carrying around 10 lbs. of useless things. We forget, ladies, that our backs won't hurt so much if we take a few things out of those heavy bags we carry around. Our spiritual life is like that too.

We tend to keep things with us because we never know when they will become useful, forgetting that God called us to depend on Him. No wonder we are staggering around groaning under our heavy loads, we haven't taken the time to empty our spiritual pockets. We haven't loosened all or our burdens. We haven't laid everything at the feet of Jesus, because we keep stuffing it in our pockets.

Are you really going to need them in Heaven? Will those things we keep close to us in our spiritual pockets so dear to us that we cannot let them go? Jesus said "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matthew 11: 28-30)



Why don't we do that, and as we go, empty our pockets.

It doesn't gain us anything to hoard those things. Let them go, and let Jesus take control.

The Chicken Story

My grandmother would get very embarrassed when we as children would ask her to tell us "The Chicken Story". She would have much rather we asked her to read us Snow White or Rin Tin Tin than repeat that silly old thing again and again. Yet that is the one story we all wanted to hear time and time again because it was such an awesome thing. It was full of wonder and excitement to us when her voice would tremble or raise in surprise while she recounted this tale of our dad's childhood trauma with his pet chicken.

The story takes place some time after Easter when Dad was just a boy. He had received the chicken as an Easter surprise, and had taken to raising it in the bathroom until it was old enough to fend for itself in the Texas out doors. (Now, I don't know about yours, but my dad doesn't move very fast unless there is a fish on the reel, or he is chasing Oscar who is escaping out the front door that he forgot to close; so this tale about my dad has always intrigued me... )

Here my dad is at the age of seven or eight(I am not really sure about that though...Ok, its official... Dad said he was about 4 or 5), running through the house to see his chicken, and not watching what he is doing, or thinking about what could happen. So in his excitement, he slammed the bathroom door open with youthful exuberance, and smashed the poor dear chicken between the door and the wall. A lot could be said right here about the carelessness of youth, and the naivety of the young, but I think its really self explanatory at the moment.

Dad, however, didn't wail and cry or sulk for days over his dead chicken. Instead he did something that many of us at his age probably would not have thought of. He went and got his momma and asked her to pray for his dead chicken. I know I certainly would not have thought of it at all, and neither would my brother or sister. We, collectively, would have howled heaven down upon our shoulders with grief and tears. Nothing would have soothed our broken hearts at the knowledge that we had done harm to our pet, and none of us would have probably thought to pray... Sad thought, isn't it?

Now this is the part where Ma-maw would get embarrassed and hurry on through the story. She was trying to sooth my dad, and at the same time prepare him for the future without his chicken. So she knelt down and prayed. She prayed for my dad, for my uncle, for her friends and family, for the needs in her community, for those who needed healing, for anything else she could think of, except the chicken laying dead on the bathroom floor. But Dad didn't know that. All he knew was that his Momma had prayed, and when she prayed something happened.

So when Ma-maw wiped her eyes and said, "In Jesus name, Amen," Dad jumped up and ran back into the bathroom, expecting to see his chicken bopping around like chickens do. However, the chicken was still dead on the bathroom floor. To hear Dad tell it at this point, he was boiling mad. His Momma had prayed for that chicken, and he knew that when you got prayed for then God made everything alright. So in his indignation at said chicken, he swung back his foot and kicked it up against the wall, shouting, "Get up you dumb chicken! Don't you know you've been prayed for!"

The chicken slid down that wall, flopped on the floor, and let out a squawk of chickenish affrontery, stood up, and lived a very happy chicken life afterward.

Sometimes I think we as people are that way.

When things happen that we have no control over, we either stop and die in our tracks, or cower down. When people pray for us, we don't even acknowledge the faith, or we express our disbelief that we could be healed or helped miraculously.

Sometimes God has to deliver a swift kick to our systems to get us back on the right track, like my dad's pet chicken. Just imagine what our lives could be like if we grasped the concept that when we call for the elders of the church for prayer, that something is going to happen. Imagine what it would be like if Christians started believing that God still heals the sick, and can bring back to life the dead. Sometimes we just need a swift kick from God to think things through properly...


Mark 16:17, 18

"These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."