Category Archives: Christmas
Life is Like Boot Camp for Living in Heaven
Life is hard, but it’s liberally sprinkled with times of joy, love, insight, courage, hope, faith, and a peace that really does totally pass understanding.
It’s kind of like a boot camp for living in heaven. The hard parts are tests, but not pass or fail or get a grade tests, but tests that stretch us, strengthen us, teach us, even giving us amazing “Ah Ha!” moments where we get a sneak peak at what comes later, what life is about.
Life is about becoming willing and able to love like Jesus did. And Jesus was God’s love for us fleshed out, expressed so we could know it first hand, up close and personal.
God’s love is a love with no illusions, but also no limits. It’s unconditional love, humbling in a way, because we don’t and can’t earn it. And it seems like God has terrible taste, because He loves everyone, even those tacky, awful people we can’t stand.
God loves us because of who God is, not because of who we are.
Sometimes God’s love fills our heart with joy until we feel like we may burst.
But, God’s love also opens our hearts to suffer with those we love until the stretching makes our hearts feels like they are literally going to tear in two.
The joy of love and the suffering of love are two sides of the same coin. You do not get one without the other.
“There are faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.
In fact, that’s the goal of the first two.
Our Advent Prayer “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Christmas trees, decorations, Christmas music, even in stores pushing the season earlier and earlier for their own purposes, all fill me with wonderful memories, anticipation and joy. I’ve learned over my eighty-two years, that what puts the focus on Christ at Christmas is my own hunger for his presence.
Advent is the traditional pre-Christmas season of preparing our hearts for his coming.
Those four weeks were arbitrarily set centuries ago to reflect the four thousand years that the world waited in darkness, longing for his coming. Many years ago, I began on the first Sunday of Advent to pray each day, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Then I watch expectantly for him to become present in small, but recognizable ways in my heart and life.
And some years my heart and mind are actually attentive enough to recognize his coming.
One Christmas Eve, our children and grandchildren were all at our home, surrounded by the friendly reds and greens of Christmas and delicious smells teasing from the kitchen. In one bedroom, a grand-baby snuggled into sleep, while in others whispering parents wrapped and ribboned Santa secrets. Only Granddad was missing, out doing his traditional Christmas Eve shopping.
As excited older grandchildren were setting out to explore the woods and creek, I was making a clean up sweep through the holiday chaos. (Having ended up the “cleaner upper” by default, I was grumbling to myself a little.)
And one preschooler, too young for exploring and too old for a nap, went from room to room knocking on doors only to be told that he couldn’t come in. When I found little David sobbing forlornly in the middle of all the Christmas glitter, I decided to console him(and me) with an outing to feed the ducks that winter over on the lake in town.
When we arrived at the lake, the hungry ducks gobbled up our bread crusts so quickly
and ferociously, that we began to fear we would soon become part of their Christmas Eve
menu.
As we took refuge in the car, I heard our parish church bells ringing for the special Christmas Eve children’s service, The Mass of the Bells. Since the children get to sing all their favorite carols and even ring bells to celebrate the birth of Christ, it seemed like a Christmas serendipity for David. Looking at our faded jeans and muddy tennis shoes, I hesitated, but remembering the ragged shepherds at the first Christmas, I headed on to church anyway.
For lack of having his own bell, David rang my key chain as he sang with off key gusto. Then, as all the children gathered around our parish priest on the floor of the sanctuary to talk about the Christmas Story, David somehow managed to squirm all the way to the front of the group. When Father asked what happened when Mary and Joseph
knocked on the door of the Inn, David’s response rang out, “They wouldn’t let them in.”
Then, with a sudden rush of outraged feeling, he shouted louder, “They wouldn’t open the door!”
It seemed like he remembered his feelings about closed doors earlier at home and identified with the Holy Family.
And then when Father asked how they would respond to Jesus knocking at the door of their hearts right now, David sang out with conviction,
“Come in Jesus. Come right on in!”
On our way home, David joyfully assured me that even if others sometimes didn’t let children in, he and Jesus always would. At his own level he made the connection between his life and the Gospel story, even realizing that opening his heart to Jesus, also meant opening his heart to others.
And my heart was filled with the joy of Christmas, of seeing Jesus being born once more
in the heart of a child.
As a post script I’d like to share more about David. When he was a college junior he and several other college students took cold water and hamburgers down town in the Memphis August heat to share with the hungry and homeless. As they did this, one man asked for them to pray over him (David said that they needed God’s grace for that). But as they prayed, others began coming forward asking, not for money, or even food, but for prayer. Since then, David has taught in schools in Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Bolivia.
Whenever the stores start Christmas music, August or October, let it be our cue to start praying the prayer of our hearts, “Come, Lord Jesus. Come.”
Re-posted for the Christmas season 2013 and 2016.
Since We’ve Done Away with Sin and Hell, What’s the Point of Christmas?
To be honest, I don’t see sin the same way I used to and I’ve discovered that we make our own private hells on earth, when we refuse to grow past needing into loving.
A view currently popular is that a world suffering from some original ancient ancestors’ screwing up isn’t reasonable or just and that tiny babies come into the world innocent and lovable.
I agree with both.
BUT, all tiny babies come into the world Needy with a capital N. Ask any parent. And some are needier than others, through no fault of their own. It’s just how nature is.
And NEED is the opposite of love, in fact it prevents us from loving.
We can’t experience the transforming joy of Christmas, until we recognize our neediness.
Note: needing to please others or even getting pleasure from doing for others is not always love. It can actually be a destructive enabling out of our own neediness.
At one point in my life, I recognized that I was a bottomless pit of needs and wants. And I felt totally unable to truly love- anyone, even parents, husband, children. I was like Snoopy, I loved humanity. It was people I couldn’t accept.
The paradox is this: unless we know, with mind, heart, and soul, that we are loved unconditionally, we cannot grow from needing to loving. But that requires recognizing and admitting with mind, heart, and soul that we are needy, not loving.
At the point when I recognized that I was too needy to love, I also recognized that there was not enough love in this imperfect world of imperfect people to free me . Fortunately for me, that is what Christmas is about.
Perfect Love for all of us came as a baby with human needs and offered us a Love that can set us free.
And that is the transforming joy of Christmas: Saving unconditional love that sets us free and gives us illustrated instructions on how to grow from need to love.
Joy to the world, for Love has come. Let us rejoice and open our hearts to receive it.
Come, Lord Jesus, free us to love.
The Love of God
The Love of God is the only thing
of any importance at all.
The Love of God is so incredibly different
and beyond compare
that it boggles our ability to believe in it
enough to accept it.
No matter how much we have been loved
by family and friends,
no matter how famous and wildly adored
by the multitudes,
nothing has ever been more than
a barely glimpsed shadow
of the Love of God.
The Love of God is all that is necessary.
We need nothing more
than to know the unconditional love of God
with our whole mind,
to experience it with an open heart
until our spirit is so filled
with it, that we simply pass it on
by letting it overflow.
We begin to sense this Love of God
when we consider
the possibility that the creator of the universe
chose to walk in our skin,
to experience the frustrating and fearful limits
of being human,
being born under crushing political oppression,
a scorned minority,
bearing physical exhaustion and bodily pain,
the heartbreak
of being abandoned and even betrayed
by his only friends,
publicly ridiculed, tortured and killed,
even taking the
leap of faith into the darkness of death
to show us there is more,
because of His Love.
The love of God can free us to see ourselves
exactly as we are,
to accept our own need for forgiveness
without guilt, just true sorrow
that brings a joy that sets us free from fear
and gives us grace to change.
The Love of God begins to free us to forgive
both ourselves and others.
The Love of God heals us of the crippling wounds
that stunt our growth in love.
The Love of God takes our mustard seed of good
and nurtures it with grace.
The Love of God builds our faith and sets us free
to die and live again.
The Love of God is
personal, unconditional, and eternal.
All else fails.
There is nothing greater than
the Love of God expressed in Jesus,
the Love of God for you.
Grow, Lord Jesus, Grow
Had an interesting dream last night. I discovered that I had a new baby. At seventy-five this would not necessarily be good news. But this baby was simply awesome. He could talk and had eyes that sparkled with intelligence and love. All he seemed to need was some food, so the baby and I set off to find food for him.
When I remembered the dream today, I thought maybe the baby represented a new part of me that needed nourishing. I couldn’t figure out what in me needed nourishing, until I was looking at my Nativity Scene, debating whether to put it away. The figure of the baby Jesus resembled the infant in my dream.
I love Advent when I spend each day praying, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come” and watching for glimpses of God’s love and grace in each day. This hope and expectation suit my personality perfectly. And I am seldom disappointed. But, somehow once the joyous symbols of Christmas are put away, I often lose my focus, and allow the cold grey days of January and February to dampen my spirit and dim my vision and ability to see God in each day.
There is a difference between waiting expectantly for new life and taking responsibility for nurturing it once it comes. With the infant Jesus this is easier, because He can tell us how.
As I looked at the tiny figure in the manger, I felt a renewed sense of responsibility for nourishing Him within me. So, my prayer for after Christmas, is “Grow, Lord Jesus, grow within me. Help me find nourishment for You.”
Once Again He Has Come
Christ came this Christmas for me in a moment of clarity. He came when I recognized with deep joy that my husband and I finally “get” each other.
We were total opposites in personality, in upbringing, in spirituality, in interests, values, in our ways of responding to people and life. Our sense of humors differed, our ways of expressing and receiving love also. It has been a challenging fifty-four year journey, side by side, but never quite together.
Today, Christmas day, I realized that a few days ago for the first time, he actually heard something spiritual I wrote and responded spontaneously from the heart, and today I also realized that I see the physical world in new ways(his)and frequently now laugh out loud when I have spontaneous humorous images flash into my mind when I read or hear certain things, just like he has tried to explain to me over the years. The gift of our seventies has been shared laughter.
When I reflect on the ways we’ve changed, I think it took more than just accepting how each other are, it took actually learning how to see through each other’s eyes and hear with their ears; for him to be able to feel with me and for me to become able to step back from feelings and see things logically. For him to be able to express love and for me to be happy showing it in small acts of service.
We are far from perfect at this, but we have broken through the walls of self and begun to experience being one.
Isn’t it amazing that life and love begin anew so many times and that it’s never too late to love in new ways?
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for coming once more, with your gifts of love.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 