Worthy

Worthy.

This tangled word, a mystery.

The back and forth of it all. Only He is worthy. And yet, and yet, each of us is worthy, for each one He willingly lay down His rightful throne in exchange for a crown of thorns.

And my bro Tom grapples with the Advent mystery as only he can.

Thank you.

One Christmas Eve, a long, long time ago, I asked Tracy for some carrots, walked out into a frosty night, chomped down on them a bit, then scattered their butt-ends across the end of our driveway on the way to our garage. I grabbed an armful of gardening straw, and on my way back to the house, threw it liberally across a snowbank and across the front walkway. I then dotted the area with reindeer tracks by jabbing a coat rack dowel into the snow, amid the scattered grass and vegetable-remains. Inside, Tracy carefully wrote replies on our kids’ scrawled letters to Santa. When I re-entered the house, I dutifully chomped bites from our kids’ proffered sugar cookies (I ate all of the brownies) before we settled down to a late evening of toy assembly and gift wrapping.

I remember a long time ago, getting into an argument with a fellow-Christian about the whole Santa-thing. “When is it right,” Tim asked, “to lie to your children--especially about a day as important as Christmas? What impact will that have on their faith on the day ‘they find out’?”

I grew up in a home in which I learned that faith—my walk with God—was based on objective truth: a series of events orchestrated by a loving God (unbeknownst to me) who pursued my love from across the cosmos. This divine pursuit punctuated human experience some two thousand years ago, beginning in a humble Palestinian stable, culminating in an empty tomb on a morning outside of Jerusalem. These facts, established by historical archeology and anecdotal testimony throughout the ages, provided the bedrock surety of the story. But that is only the story. When does the story become my story?

The power of that story of so long ago, is only made mine when it becomes inspired—imbued with mystery. Though necessarily bound by fact, my beliefs, my faith, only becomes significant when I step out into that which I may not be so sure of—the mystery and wonder of what might be rather than only what is.  

Maybe the mystery of Santa that my children experienced so long ago can be used as a template—a stencil that prepares their minds for a world that is bigger than their childish comprehensions—which can, in turn, prepare their hearts (and mine) for a love—God’s love— that breaks through any empirical skepticism . Within the context of a rich Christian education and heritage, the belief in the mystery of Christmas can prepare a son or daughter for the far more profound—and may I say, far more improbable Mystery of Christmas. The Cosmological Omnipotent wrapping Himself in human skin to become killable is even more unlikely than a fat, flying elf and eight tiny reindeer.

The Mystery is God in the form of a baby. The mystery and wonder of the Christmas season prepares me to trust the entrance into a relationship beyond my wildest imaginations: the mystery of Christ within me. 

And Tim just came in with another armload of firewood.

Present

His gift to mankind

From the very beginning

Come walk with Me, Child.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.  But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” Genesis 3:8-10

 Pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17

On Christ the solid rock I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand.

Prayer is not a transaction that somehow pleases God but a transformation of the one doing the praying. Prayer is the awakening of an inner dialogue that, from God’s side, has never ceased. This is why Paul could write of praying “always.” Prayer is not changing God’s mind about us or about anything else, but allowing God to change our mind about the reality right in front of us (which we usually avoid or distort).

When we put on a different mind, heaven takes care of itself. In fact, it begins now. Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.

Jesus tells his disciples, “Be awake. Be alert. You do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight, at cock crow, or in the morning” Jesus is not threatening, “You’d better do it right, or I’m going to get you.” He’s talking about the forever, eternal coming of Christ now . . . and now . . . and now. God’s judgment is always redemption. Christ is always coming. God is always present. It’s we who fall asleep.

Or hide.

Be ready. Be present to God in the here and now, the ordinary, the interruptions. Being fully present will allow you to say, “This is good. This is enough. In fact, this is all I need.” –Richard Rohr

Selah.

How can I be afraid?

Curled up once again in The House Beautiful. Yes the old junk wood is crackling in the stone fireplace. Of course. The sky turned bright pink for just a moment, and now it is simply light.

Yesterday piled high with despair. A distorted reality. And God calls to me, gently, once again, “Where are you?”

Here I am.

Present is good. Present is enough. In fact, in Truth, Present is all I need.

And grammar helps us think about purpose.

Rejoice

Is a clear command;

Rise up and do joy again,

An action verb form.

May my meditation be pleasing to Him,
    for I rejoice in the Lord. Psalm 104:34

“For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to Your word.” Luke 2:37-38

And part of my Wednesday prayer for myself is a response to this command: And may I live in the joy of the Holy Spirit.

Trust and obey.

Two more action verbs.

Yesterday the first grade teachers asked me to model a grammar lesson, so again and again I got to talk to rooms of six-year-olds about nouns and verbs.

And this time I remembered to right up front to teach MY signal for attention: Give me five. Give me your eyes, your ears, your mouths, your fingers and your thinking. So we practiced that a few times just to make sure we all understood the expectations.

Those kiddos could all rattle off “person, place or thing.” (Idea is added in third grade.) So we played “I spy with my little eye,” and worked with our elbow partner writing down verbs and nouns and drawing pictures of them and then we waved our fingers to show V for verbs and N for nouns and all was good. And simple. And we talked about why we might need to know how to use these cool words we were learning to read and write. And they all nodded their heads in agreement, but really, I am thinking that these question words a little bit abstract for this crew.

But now a bunch of us are old and sad and the Why and How questions are big and glaring and keeps us up at night. And my Joy in the Holy Spirit Day got a little rough at the end, in spite of all my good intentions. A friend Facebook posted some lyrics from the new U2 album that asks a question like Oh Jesus, if I’m still Your friend… what the hell is this all about? I received a lamenting letter about hope deferred. And my daily prayers include a lot of kiddos who are staring at the messiness of life and not even asking. Just shrugging, which is even more aching.

And I think that actually the Hamilton song Rise Up is going to be my go to echo chamber for this day as I am about to strap in my bike helmet and double-glove my fingers, and ride out into the day.

Rise up and do joy again.

Trust. Obey.

And

Rise Up.

For nothing will be impossible with God.

Que toca mi corazón.

Open

Joy in the Spirit

Come, Lord and open in us

The gates ever wide

Yesterday one of the kindergarten teachers was out with a head cold and the last line of my unofficial job description is “Anything else that needs to be done,” so I found myself in the kinder class because there is a special kid in the class that no regular sub could possibly handle but I can because he spends a lot of time sitting with me in my little closet of an office and we are special buddies because we both really like dinosaurs, well, at least he really likes dinosaurs and I can read stories about them and download coloring sheets full of them off of the internet. Anyways, we plugged through the stacks of neatly sticky-noted and paper-clipped handouts on following directions and less or more and I read a book about two mice who fell in love with the same pumpkin and so they both watered it a lot and piled manure on it, and the kids were horrified to discover that manure is a fancy word for cow poop and that’s what plants eat and so we must wash our vegetables and fruit before we eat them and then the art teacher came in and we made reindeer heads out of construction paper and googly eyes and of course great big red jewels for a nose and then, well, I still had another twenty minutes with twenty-six squirmy five-year-olds, so we did a little Simón Dice. I know only a crazy person would plunge into Spanish at 2:20 in the afternoon on the last week before winter break, but such is life.

And as we stood there, smiling and a little out of breath and pretty dang proud of ourselves a little one came up and hugged my neck and whispered, “I will miss you Mz. Christy,” and then another and another and another, little lemmings that they are, and suddenly all twenty-seven of us were in the biggest and happiest group hug ever.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Veni, veni.

Among

Each and every one

To You belong all nations.

Yes, Emmanuel.

Vindicate the weak and fatherless;
Do justice and maintain the rights of the afflicted and destitute.

Rescue the weak and needy;
Rescue them from the hand of the wicked. Psalm 82:3-4

Who is there upon earth that has no poor, miserable, sick, erring ones around him? Why does he not exercise his love to those? Why does he not do to them as Christ has done to him? –Martin Luther

My Saturday prayer: … LORD please make me ever aware of Your Spirit, moment by moment wisdom, quicken my spirit to immediate, full-of-faith obedience.  Cause me to be thankful…this obedience results in a joy that brings glory to you.  I pray that that I will hear Your voice and follow it.

Selah.