A Change of Plan

One thing this COVID chaos has done for us: it's made us very good at changing plans!

From my observation, people are a lot more understanding of last minute changes; they're more willing to go with the flow; they know now that some events really ARE beyond our ability to forecast and out of our hands to control. We're embracing in new ways Proverbs 16:9: "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." (ESV)

Not to brag, but I feel like I'm really getting good at the whole handling changes in my plans. I'm a planner, so not that long ago, last-minute changes made me CRABBY! But, take Thanksgiving for instance: our first THREE sets of plans all had to be scrapped before we were able to see a plan through to fruition! Friends, it's not often that I have to wait for my fourth round of planning to see some results! Talk about disappointing.

But it was still a good weekend.

We spent Thanksgiving as a family. We used Preston's extra day off (which was supposed to be used to go out of town) to decorate the entire ground floor (and most of the the second) for Christmas. We had lots of time with our precious daughters. I washed the van on the nice Saturday after Thanksgiving (after our third set of plans hit the dustbin). We even started Christmas baking. We had a lovely time, one we would have missed had our first few rounds of plans succeeded.

Yet, often, I fear the change of plans. I think of it as a malicious swipe at my happiness. I have my life laid out in the manner I want it to proceed, and anything that looks like it might change that is a threat. Yet, when God intervenes to "establish" our steps, we know that for the child of God, that can only mean good things (not necessarily pain-less things, but that's another topic...).

I came across an old Christmas hymn a while back called "Creator of the Stars of Night." The second verse has captured my mind the last twenty-four hours:

"Thou, grieving that the ancient curse

Should doom to death a universe,

Hast found the healing, full of grace,

To cure and save our ruined race."

Did you catch it?

Christmas is a celebration of a change of plans!

Back in the garden, Satan saw the crown of God's creation as a chance to wound God. He planted a doubt, fed it with a lie, nurtured a fear. And then humankind, in all our infinite wisdom (we thought), shucked God's rule for our life.

(Yes, it was Eve's hand that reached for the fruit. Yes, it was Adam who was "with her," yet did nothing other than acquiesce. But that seed of sin has woven itself deeply into your heart and mine. We are guilty in our DNA. Do you doubt it? When given the chance, we repeat the sin of our forebears. We, too, wave our fist in the face of the One who made us and scream, "I'll do it my way!")

God said don't, but we thought having knowledge like God couldn't be so terrible, so we ate that fruit. We had plans to be like God, to know good and evil, to take charge of our own existence. What a wonderful thought! What a titillating promise!

And it killed us. Our heart charted its course for damnation.

But (praise be to God!) He had a change of plan in mind. There were other steps He would establish for His children.

When Christ was born in the manger, it was under the shadow of the cross and with the promise of the resurrection. A baby in a manger does NOTHING for anyone without the rest of the story. If our hope of peace on earth and goodwill to men doesn't last past December 25, we're still just as doomed as we were the instant the juice of that fruit hit Adam and Eve's tongues. But if we consider advent as the anticipation not only of Christmas but also as an introduction to the entire church calendar of December through Easter, we see a path charted for us that ends not in death but in life as it was meant to be.

Where our attempt to rule ourselves spelled destruction for us, Christ stepped down and into earth, entered as one of His own creations, and stood in the path of God's righteous wrath. The locomotive of justice that was rightfully headed our way struck the only Son of God full force, entirely satisfying the demands of the law we could never keep.

So what is left for us?

Forgiveness from a holy God; reconciliation with Him, others, creation, and ourselves; the ability to walk in newness of life; an existence ransomed to serve God and enjoy Him forever!

Praise God for changes of plan!

"To God the Father and the Son

And Holy Spirit, Three in One,

Praise, honor, might, and glory be

From age to age eternally!"

The Darkness has Not Overcome

Fear is sneaky.

Most days, especially when the sun is shining, I can function normally and leave the rest to God.

But then there are the times when the days have been gloomy and the girls have been testy and night falls and I'm left feeling like the locomotive of COVID-19 is barreling down the tracks toward my family and it's only a matter of time til it hits and all I can do is hunker down and wait.

On one such night last week, I actually did something right about my emotions. I talked to my husband (who's been a voice of calm in the insanity of the last few weeks) and then went up to bed and opened my Bible.

(I'm working my way through "The Story," an adaptation of the NIV that presents the words of Scripture, while in selections, as one continuous story. Reading it is much like reading any other book, with breaks for chapters rather than separate books with chapters and verses. While there are brief editorial breaks to explain themes or summarize missing sections, it's largely simply the Biblical text, and it's been a nice way for me to get a new perspective on passages that otherwise have become rote.)

I opened to my bookmark, and this is the first thing that met my eyes.

That's where the stirring of the Holy Spirit stopped me, and what I believe He impressed on my heart was exactly what I needed at that moment. I'd like to share it with you, in the hope that you may be encouraged, too. It's maybe not completely cohesive, but hopefully it's coherent!

In the beginning - As God was speaking planets and molecules into existence, He already knew that the year AD 2020 would find a pandemic sweeping the globe.

He knew it all: the beginning of COVID-19 in China; Italy's anguish; that hospitals would be unprepared; the steady creep of the disease from our continent's coasts toward its interior. He already knew every detail of what was coming, including the ones we don't know yet.

He isn't surprised; He isn't less good; He isn't less in control.

the Word - Jesus, "the Word," is the sum total of God's message to humanity. He's the culmination of everything God had said before the New Testament, everything God has promised to say to His people, and everything God is ever going to say. Think of it! All this embodied in one 33-year life on planet Earth. (Spoiler alert: His life and teaching still have ramifications for us today!)

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. - Seventh grade science tells us humans are made when an egg and sperm fuse to become a zygote. This mono-cellular carrier of a complete genetic code has all the information necessary to bring into being a fully functioning adult man or woman.

John, the writer of the above passage, tells us that it is actually an egg, a sperm, and God who make each person (although maybe not in that order...).

Psalms says God knitted my children together within my womb.

This is an issue of personal workmanship!

If I take pains that the frisky cat not claw up the afghan I crocheted - if I delight in the art and craftsmanship of my hand and my husband's and our friends' - if I hang these things on my walls and store them gently when they're not on display - how much more does my God care for the two miraculous lives He designed, built, and brought to life? We're not guaranteed a pass on suffering or even on infection, but He knows. He understands. My fear, my attempt to trust, my weakness in the face of the unknown, all of it.

And He loves my daughters more fiercely even than their mommy and daddy do, and He will work all things to good. They are safe in the hands that made them. (And while I still pray that my husband and I will be allowed to raise our children to adulthood, I also thank God for allowing us to raise them this day.)

life/light - In this time of disease, we understand our need for life much like we understand our need for light only when in a dark room in the middle of a power outage. Jesus possessed the life that was the light of all mankind.

And we killed it.

The darkness in you and the darkness in me rose up and extinguished Him. (We spend a lot of time talking about the good in everyone, but why would we put so much effort into proclaiming our goodness if there wasn't actually darkness - sin - there, too?)

He was dead.

Gone.
Kaput.
Laid in a grave.

(Have you been to a funeral? Looked in a casket? Seen it prepared to be lowered into the ground? How many of those people do you see walking down the sidewalk a week or two later?)

And for two days, it looked like the darkness had overcome.

But.

But then?

Then came Easter morning.

Please Stop Practicing Fear

COVID-19 is running rampant through our society, and it hasn't even made very many people sick yet.

Colleges are going online. Businesses are shutting corporate offices. The Army is closing bases to visitors. I even got an email from a grocery store regarding what they're doing to keep their customers safe! Solid facts seem hard to come by, as tables and charts show how much worse influenza is than coronavirus currently, yet predictions from the CDC are grim.

How do we respond? No one wants to be taken in by the boy who cried “wolf!”, but neither is it wise to disregard everything entirely.

Let's remember that God has not given us a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7a).

So if our fear is not from God, where did it come from?

Consider this seriously. Whoever planted that fear did so for a reason. He/she/it/they wanted us to react from fear. We're effectively being controlled by this source without even realizing it!

If this fear is not from God, maybe we need to consider the benefits of giving it the proverbial boot. Let's stop practicing being afraid. Let's stop training fear into our children. Let's stop making decisions motivated by fear.

So what should we do, if anything? Consider what God HAS given us: a spirit of power and love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7b).

Let's tackle these in reverse order.

• Wash your hands. Shouldn't it seem strange to us all that this seems like a such a revolutionary concept to everyone? We've known about germs since the 1860's. That's 160 years! Of course, wash your hands, but haven't you been doing that already?
• Reduce or eliminate junk food in your diet. Sugar makes it harder for your body to fight disease. (Include pop in this category, of course, but also sports drinks – if you haven't just exercised – and fruit drinks, too.)
• Eat foods that grew from the ground or had a mother, as Jillian Michaels says. The less processing that happens in between the source and you, the better. Your body needs nutrients and minerals to function well, not to mention defeat disease. (If your diet is deficient in a certain way, consider supplements. For example, fish oil for diets low in sea food, or vitamin D3 during a Minnesota winter.)
• Drink water. Half your weight in ounces is one recommendation. (Are you bored yet?)
• Exercise. Get that body working the way God intended it!

These are “sound mind” principles. They're things that make sense, that the more health conscious among us probably already do anyway.

What about love?

• Love your neighbor by covering that cough.
• Stay home when you're sick.
• Speak/post/send words of encouragement grounded in truth rather than feeding the fear.

And power?

• Pray for your family, your community, those at high risk, those who've contracted coronavirus, the medical providers caring for them, and the family of those who have died from it.
• Consider your plans with discernment, and then live your life.

What power there is in not harboring fear!

Before I close, I would like to urge us all to slow down, stop allowing knee-jerk reactions. Stop spreading the fear. Consider your actions thoughtfully, and make well-informed decisions. This is not the first terror to come to our fair shores – nor will it be the last (think of anthrax, West Nile, ebola, SARS, to name a few from recent history). Are we going to panic every time there's a new version? Aren't we tired of running around screaming, “The sky is falling!”?

Statistics are in: 100% of people die. No one gets off this planet alive. So are we going to spend our time stressing and over-analyzing every sniffle, or are we going to live as the dignified, respectable, courageous citizens of the United States of America that we are?

John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." (ESV)

Philippians 4:5-7 "Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (ESV)

Feeling Kist

It was a Wednesday afternoon, and the week still hadn't decided if it would be sour or sweet.
Spring played hard to get;
N wanted her lunch,
except when she didn't want it,
until she wanted it again,
at which point she only wanted it if I would feed it to her while she danced around the kitchen table between bites.

And then two piano students came in for their 100th lesson. And they had flowers.
For me.
For our 100th lesson.

But even that paled in comparison to their old-fashioned thank-you note.

I think this week is going to turn out quite pleasant after all.

A Christmas Miracle

It's snowing. Cinnamon raisin bread bakes in the oven behind me. N is upstairs in her crib - not sleeping, but content.

It's a rare moment to sit and reflect in the middle of holiday preparations.

When did Christmas start to mean making so many plans you meet yourself coming and going? We've got parties and presents, gatherings and goodies, cards and church. Preparation consumes days, evenings, lists, budgets.

Historically, Christmas was a mass, maybe with stockings stuffed with oranges and chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil. People didn't plan holiday schedules months in advance. Sometimes, there weren't any gifts at all. Did they not know that Christmas is about the joy of giving and family togetherness? I guess Hallmark hadn't gotten that message to them yet.

Of course, if you want a party, you could go back to that first Christmas: the actual evening Jesus was born. There weren't shiny baby announcements printed by an online printer; but there were angels announcing his birth. There wasn't a baby shower; but there were those really rich guys who came months late with a fortune - not an exaggeration - in gifts.

Something big happened. Something to trigger heaven's hosts to sing. Something that would cause people - even people who don't actually profess faith - millennia later to pause their usual lives and acknowledge a peculiarity in the day.

It wasn't family togetherness. Joseph and Mary don't seem to have been welcome with their families back in Nazareth.

It wasn't the joy of giving. Those smelly shepherds who showed up that night probably didn't leave anything behind them other than a pungent odor.

It was Emmanuel. "God with us."

What's the big deal about that?

Do you realize that every other religion on the face of the earth is an attempt by man to reach god(s)? Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam . . . even some that borrow language from Christianity and encourage their people to read the Bible, they're all a story of men striving to make themselves right. People trying to approach God through working, praying, fasting, denying themselves, traveling to holy places. They know something stands between man and God, and they do everything humanly possible to get past that or to outweigh it with "good" things so God will approve of them.

Christmas is a big deal because that is when God gave us the gift we never saw coming: He came to us.

Emmanuel.

God with us.

No more striving. No more analyzing whether we've done more good than bad. No more comparing and wondering and worrying. God reached down, became a man, so he could die. So he could rise. So he could obliterate death and sin.

Not so the good works would outweigh the bad, but so that the bad would die - poof - gone.
Not so we could get to God, but so that God could live in us.
Not so we could do good things, but so that God could act through us.
Not so we could have a good life, but so that we could live eternally.

If that's not a Christmas miracle, I don't know what is.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John 1:9-13 ESV

The Struggle, Reviz

Back in May, I posted about the importance of struggles in our lives, how they help us grow, if we let them. Now, after having a daughter for five months, I've been rethinking my perspective on it all.

I don't recant anything I wrote then. It's more of a shift in attitude.

Here's what I mean:
My daughter, N, cries in her cradle.
I know that she needs a nap; I can hear the sleep-need in her voice. But she sounds so sad. And then she gives that hiccupy sob that sounds like her heart is breaking - and it threatens to break mine.
I could go in, pick her up, cuddle her, comfort her, rock her to sleep, and hold her in my arms for her entire nap.
I want to.
Or
she fusses over tummy time.
She doesn't want to work on holding up her head anymore! She's tired, and she's tired of laying her face back on the blanket on the floor. The whole rolling-over thing is complicated, and it is a toss-up whether or not she might make it work, and it's a lot of work! "Mom!" she seems to yell, "come fix this!"
And I want to fix it.
Oh, how I want to take it all away and reassure her of my loving presence.
I have done so on occasion.
A lot of the time, I don't.
I have the power to remove that sorrow from her life, yet I opt not to.
Why? Why would a loving parent allow his child - the child he loves more than breath - to be sad, lonely, upset? How can a parent call himself loving when he could fix it, but doesn't? Why would a parent put himself through those tears and heartache when even he would like to swoop in with a rescue?
I know why I do.
I have a bigger picture in mind than little five-month-old N can imagine. I can see the results when I have given in too often. I have a goal of health and happiness in mind for N that allows me to push through discomfort - hers and mine - in order to reach it. (And, I have a stellar husband who is my biggest cheerleader, my fellow disciplinarian, and the foremost member of my support system!)

This all has been affecting my change of mind. I have always seen God as the loving but firm Father, the one who disciplines us à la Hebrews 12:3-11.

"God is treating you as sons," the passage says of times of discipline.  "He disciplines us for our good. . . . For the moment all discipline seems painful . . . but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

How stoic those words can seem! How stiff and unbending we can make God appear when we toss out these words of "comfort" to someone in the midst of their struggle.

Is this God? Is this our heavenly Father? Is this His heart?

"[Do not] be weary" in times of discipline, the author urges, because "the Lord disciplines the one he loves." This, too, sounded condescending but firm to my childish heart. "Don't be sad about the hurt," I once heard, "It's all for your good in the end, so brush it off and have a good attitude."

But, not being a parent yet, I missed something.

12:3 begins, "Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself." Who is this? Jesus, of course, whom 5:7 describes this way: "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears . . . " This is the same Jesus that 4:15 assures us "sympathize[s] with our weaknesses."

This is me with N. This is the sadness I experience with her. This is my heart, aching to fix things for her, able to fix things for her, yet knowing, because of my love for her, that I must not.

You know what that tells me?

God hurts with us.

Think of that! The Creator of the universe, the one with all power and all knowledge, the one who knows that the struggle is important, He feels our pain with us! He is not up there somewhere, smiling grimly or grinning gleefully over our misery. He hurts for our pain, so much so that He exchanged His only begotten Son for us adopted sons in order to put things to rights.

Of course, everything is not all put to right yet. We still feel the effects of a broken world and our own broken souls. We're in process still, and that means growing pains as we go, and it means sharp, piercing pains as the filth is dug out of us like infection out of a tooth.

But don't lose heart in the pain. This discipline - literally, disciple-making - has been carefully chosen, painstakingly vetted as the right tool for the task of producing a holiness like our big Brother's.

And, even more so, take comfort:
Those tears you've cried over that struggle in your life or in the life of your loved one - He's cried with you. That ache in your heart from the unresolved issue that constantly nags and threatens and circles back for more - He feels it, too.

He's your Daddy, and He hurts with you.

Christmas Lights

Hooray for Christmas decorations!

They are undoubtedly my favorite of all my home decor items. I love to decorate for Christmas!

But, of all the Christmas paraphernalia, mini white Christmas lights are my favorite.

After decorating this year, I had to sheepishly ask my husband to help me move the piano so I could plug in another extension cord, so I could spread out the five strings of white lights that I currently had on a single extension cord. I know, not the best idea to be loading them all on one like that, and, yes, I got that incredulous, husbandly look that says, "My wife may be losing it," but they are so pretty! I have them twisted into a wreath and twining through a rustic basket of pinecones and peeking through lettering in a little tin box that reads, "Peace on Earth." They're peaceful and bright and cheerful and cozy.

They wouldn't be nearly as nice in the middle of the summer.

The weather pulls us outside then, and the sun shines brightly through the windows nearly all our waking hours.

But in the winter, oh ho!, the winter is perfect for decorating with light. As we cuddle in for a dark, Midwestern evening, those little points of light are enough to gently brighten an entire room.

I don't think it's an accident that we use lights to make our homes ready to celebrate the nativity of our Lord. John 1:4 says that the life He brought was light. Light shines best in the dark. What a dark world He came to save:

the people were oppressed, conquered by a ruthless, godless emperor; that nation was stretching its tentacles of control into every corner of the known world, creating one world empire, and allowing no place to hide; taxes were oppressive; infants were slaughtered at a whim; regional rulers were suspicious and groped for power; pleasure was king, and those who refrained were eyed suspiciously; human life was cheap.

It sounds a bit like a world I know today.

Maybe all these crises and issues of the last century are not as original as we think.

Maybe all our panic over controversies and emergencies should be put on pause to give us a little time to reflect on His light.

For surely, the light that pierced the darkness in that stable in the shadows of Bethlehem in the depths of Israel in the blackness of the Roman Empire still shines brightly today. Indeed, it is multiplied exponentially in the Spirit-filled Church He left behind on earth!

John 1:5 says, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Another way to read this is "the darkness has not understood it." We should be the most misunderstood people on the face of the earth. In a world of deep despair, self-gratification, and false worship, Christianity does not make sense. We die to live, lose to gain, glory in suffering, have peace in chaos, and hope in an unseen reward. 

We look like madmen, yet we claim to have the cure for what is wrong with the world:

Wholeness for the broken;

Healing for the sick;

Light for the darkness.

Did God? Or Did I?

Last weekend has left me pondering the supremacy of God in tension with the free will of humanity.

Two tragic deaths occurred within hours of each other. On Thursday night, friends lost their infant son. He was born with a rare heart condition but lived long enough for the natural familial love to grow stronger through enjoying daily interactions and reveling in his personality. On Friday morning, my husband and I were driving to a church event and came upon the detour caused by a crash which resulted in the death of a husband and father from our church. A semi-driver had failed to notice the intersection.

How does faith meet with real life when we desperately desire to discover that it has all been a bad dream?

I know that God allows choice. He started with Adam and Eve and hasn't changed since then. We know what they chose. Is that what God wanted? Or did He give them the choice in spite of what they would do with their freedom? Was their disobedience and His plan for buying humanity back His original plan, or was it some sort of beautiful patch-up job?

But I also know that God had every day of every life numbered before a person draws breath. That means that, should someone hold a gun to my head, I can rest easy because, if it is not in God's plan that I die that day, there is nothing that person could do to kill me; yet, if God's story for my present life
closes at that point, nothing anyone does can change it.

So which is it?

Did God's plan make allowance for disease and human error and plain evil, knowing all the while that He could still work beauty?

Or were these tragedies part of His will from the get-go since no one can change what He has done?

And what about moral failure? Surely this is another sort of death, as Adam and Eve discovered. Surely God's plan couldn't actually include sin in the life of His child!

I know that I am not the first to ask these question. I will certainly not be the last. Yet knowing that I am not alone in the confusion provides poor comfort.

These morose mental musings of mine received an abrupt shaking on Monday morning, when a text surprised me. Our fourth nephew had decided to make an early entrance, and the joy of a new life appeared as a beacon, as if this new development promised that a turn for the better had taken place.

His safe and unexpected arrival jolted me enough that I could grab some perspective: there's more going on in all of this.

Whatever combination of God's plan and human action occurred this past weekend, the result is that two are in heaven, and God is making their stories beautiful. They have life like never before, joy beyond our imaginings. They receive His rest as they await their bodily resurrection.

When God's child fails - and every one of us will until we are finally and fully freed from sin through the first death - there is another (sort of) resurrection that can occur. With the admission of guilt and the plea for forgiveness comes a continuing of the new life that breathes into us from the time of salvation to our physical death. We are not saved again, but we are reminded of our death to sin and our being raised to new life in Christ. We begin again, much like beginning a new life, continuing to trust in His plans for us.

And they are good plans.

I know that, whatever the God-ordained combination might be of my working and His planning, His eyes never widen in alarm over my decisions, and He works my decisions into His will. It doesn't matter that I can't understand it all. (That's why He is God and I am not!) What matters is my response: trust? or panic?

And much like the birth of our little nephew this Monday morning, hope is born in my heart with every reminder of God's overwhelming love for me, of His gift of more grace than I know what to do with, of my freedom from striving and guilt.
And it comes unexpectedly.
And it comes beautifully.

Getting Antsy

Did you know that this time of the year is not actually the Christmas season?

Nope.

I have been reminded in a couple of ways lately that this part of our yearly calendar is actually Advent.

Now, before you yawn and close the page, bear with me. I know, it's a boring word, and most of us don't know what it means and perhaps couldn't care less. "Cut the chatter; I've got 15 gifts to buy and wrap, 3 Christmas programs to prep for, and 70 dozen Christmas goodies to make, so I really don't care that I use the wrong semantics when I tell people goodbye."

I get that, really I do - but there's something worthwhile to realizing the difference, something that could revolutionize the way you experience this holiday. I know this because it is happening to me.

So, Advent. What is it?

Wikipedia, the almost-all-knowing, says, "Advent is a season observed in many Western Christian churches as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. The term is an anglicized version of the Latin word adventus, meaning 'coming'."

Or, in normal English, "a coming into place, view, or being; arrival; the coming of Christ into the world." (Thank you, Dictionary.com!)

Traditionally, this is symbolized through the lighting of candles, more being lit as the celebration of Christ's birth draws nearer, showing the light of the Word coming into a world dark with sin.

It's a nice little exercise, but like a lot of churchianity, it can become rote when we get too busy to think about what's going on around us - or even what it is that we are playing an active role in.

Think about the world that Jesus came into:
There was no New Testament. The people of Israel had their stories of God's Creation, passed down from Adam (he probably got it from God's own mouth!), canonized by Moses. They knew the who and where of where their people had come from, how God had called them as a nation out of Egypt, given them the law, and promised the beautiful gifts of His presence. They had learned, from the cradle, of the judges and kings; of idolatry and exile; of prophets of doom and hope and warnings and promises. And then? And then there was nothing. For three- or four-hundred years, there was a heavenly - yet how lonely - silence. The Romans swept through on the heels of the Greeks and became the most recent model of oppression. The proud Jewish people once again had to bend to the will of an earthly power rather than their all-powerful God and had to submit to the indignity of the conquered rather than living up to their dream of independence and freedom. I have to think that somewhere in there, children watched parents and grandparents living their faith and yet receiving no compensation, no assurance of being heard, and started to wonder if maybe God had forgotten to listen, forgotten His promises, forgotten His people. But they kept trying, kept waiting, kept hoping.

And then.

And then God came. He showed up in a way that few expected, but He was there all the same. He rescued them from chains they did not know they had but that had consequences extending far beyond the reach of the Roman empire. He brought freedom from sin rather than from earthly problems, and He formed a people out of all peoples rather than regathering anyone with a drop of Hebrew blood in their veins.

He didn't meet their expectations, but how far better was His plan! Salvation for all, not some; blessing for the many, not the few.

And so we have Advent, anticipation leading up to the full-blown presence of God on earth, the Divine becoming tangible, the Creator amid the creatures.

But that's not all!

Think about our world today:
Here we are almost 2,000 years since the final "Amen" was written, and we have the 66 books. We know God's great story. The Holy Spirit indwells us while Christ Himself intercedes for us before the Father who has good planned for us. But how dark it can be here in the day-to-day! The present is so real, so demanding, so all-consuming, that our mansions in the New Earth acquire the feel of a fairy tale - it feels good to think about it, but it doesn't seem to make a difference in our cleaning and laundry and jobs and vacations. Besides, faith is rapidly leaching out of vogue; the public mention of Christ is being ground out of what is permissible and decent - even during the Christmas season! Say anything except that Christ came to save us, the voices scream, Love anything rather than the Trinitarian God!

And then.

And then, God will come again. Someday, we will look back on it from a beautiful future, but for now we get to live in the anticipation of divine intervention. The story was begun in the Old Testament and brought to fruition in the New. We were even told the ending. But today, we get the privilege of living in the tension of the already-not yet. We are already saved; justice is not yet fully wrought. We have already seen God on earth; He has not yet come to make His final dwelling here.

Remember Christmases as a little tyke? Recall that feeling of nearly jumping out of your skin to see those presents under the tree! And you knew that some of them, a few of them, were wonderful gifts just waiting for the moment when you could unwrap them and then they would belong to you! There were the ones that filled out the paper in a shape suspiciously like the doll/Legos you'd been begging for; then there were the ones that gave no hint of their contents, yet beckoned promisingly with bows and bright paper of the excitement they contained.

That is what Advent is. It's knowing that there is a future planned for you full of good gifts. It's knowing that soon, God is going to break in on our humdrum life. It's knowing that these little glimpses we get now are just general shapes and shadows of the glories to come.

He has come, and He is coming again.

That is Advent.

The Joys of Homemaking

Well, we have been settling into our new house!

Unpacking didn't take long, but every now and then I find a box of items in a closet that need an official home. My husband and I are settling into a routine of sorts, filled with work, dishes, cooking, cleaning, making little changes and fixes, etc., etc.

Dave Ramsey would be proud of our budget meetings. Money issues scare the starch out of me, so my favorite plan of attack is avoidance; but the ominous "M" on the calendar's last Tuesday of each month keeps us accountable, and I am finding out that things are much less stressful when we know how much is coming in and when/where it's going out. Still, I have had to adjust to a new way of thinking of money - I used to deal with it in terms of tens of dollars. Seventy dollars for groceries, twelve dollars for my monthly share of our family phone plan, forty dollars for a school text book . . . now, however, money tends to leave in hundreds, whether it is for groceries, insurance, mortgage payments, house bills, and on and on.

Living in town hasn't had a steep adjustment curve, and the folks here have been so kind. We have felt so welcomed by our neighbors - I especially enjoy chatting across the lawn when a neighbor and I are both outside at the same time.

Having our own home makes us feel so rich - and aren't we? Sure, things might be tight and we save for what we want, but to have four walls around us that have our name on them . . . it's just cozy. I marvel at all God provides. As Thanksgiving draws near, I become more and more grateful for the refuge we have found in this place - a place of healing from yesterday, of hope for tomorrow, and always, always of gratitude for today.

Self-Talk

This morning, I was leaning over, looking through my bottom cupboards for a tupperware, when the cereal box on the counter above me tipped over and rained its contents upon my head. I've sat in a waterfall, and now I've been under a cereal-fall, I guess.

But, as Honey Nut Cheerios poured forth upon my head, I realized in a single moment that I had a decision before me:
I could either be angry at the inanimate box for maliciously making a mess for me first thing in the morning,
OR
I could laugh at myself, standing there in my bathrobe with little cereal rounds plinking on the kitchen linoleum.

It reminded me of a time last week when my husband and I were in the midst of a misunderstanding and the options seemed laid before me in a similar manner - a moment when the question crystallized:
Am I going to make myself vulnerable and tell him what I'm thinking and feeling in a bid for reconciliation,
OR
Am I going to play the dramatic, wounded heroine who bears her injuries silently (albeit sullenly)?

It's hard, in a world so me-centered, to consciously push myself to the side. Yet, invariably, it's better, at least in the end.

When the idea for this blog post started to percolate in my mind, I thought it was going to be culture-directed . . . addressing the ills of the self-esteem movement, going after the poor psychology of pop-culture psychology.

But that's not the real issue.

The real issue is that I am desperately wicked.

Not flawed.

Flawed sounds nicer, but it points the finger in the wrong direction.

Think about it: if you buy a product that is flawed, whom do you blame? The manufacturer, of course. You're not going to blame the product for being made in error; you're going to take it back to the store or write the company and ask for a refund (or just complain and not do anything about it, but that's a topic for another time).

If I am flawed, then God gets the blame for making me this way. But I know that everything He makes is good, so His workmanship can't be the problem.

There's another word, not as nice as "flawed," that sheds some light on the issue.

"Sin."

Sin isn't a popular word today. In fact, I may have just gotten branded as part of the radical right for using it. But give me a second; acknowledging sin may be the kindest thing we can do for ourselves and each other.

Consider the current concept of self. We live in a day when teachers are not allowed to reprimand students or use red ink because of the harmful psychological effects it might pose. Spanking is going out of vogue as the idea of shaping and molding children gets pushed to the out-of-date column. We are told to accept people for who they are, to allow the free expression of individuality, and to affirm each person's unique bent rather than to suggest that they might be wrong or in need of change. God made us like this, we are told; appreciate it!

But, what if we are not flawed, and God didn't make us like this? What if we are sinful?

If we are sinful, we can be forgiven.
If we are sinful, we can learn to live differently.
If we are sinful, we can learn how to draw near to a holy God.
If we are sinful, we are not without hope.

I am sinful. I sin. But because I know I sin, I can ask forgiveness.

(Who asks forgiveness for sin they haven't committed?)

The most gracious (in the truest sense of the word, that is, filled with grace), hope-filled, loving thing we can do for ourselves and others is to admit that we sin, that we are in the wrong, but that God has made provision for us through Christ.
And because of all this,
we
can
change.

That's what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving.