Travel is always iffy this time of year, in this part of the world. We live in the Rocky Mountains, but our adult children have all followed the jobs to prairie cities. It is understood that estimated times of arrival are followed with a “weather permitting” in most of Canada in the winter. We will be there by a certain time if –if the passes are open, if the roads have been plowed, if no trucks have jack-knifed on the icy curves, if the winds don’t whip up white-out conditions, if the car starts again after we stop for lunch…
One year the nine hour trip to our grandchildren’s house for Christmas took two days. We had to stop half way and wait for the plows and sanding trucks. It was nearly minus 40 Celsius when we reached Northern Alberta and in spite of a good heater our feet were freezing. Icicles actually formed inside the car from our breath. We were frankly a little stressed and rather grumpy when we pulled up in front of the house.
As we trudged up the walk on crunchy, squeaky snow (very cold snow is loud), necks retreating into our parkas like frazzled turtles, our little grandson flung open the front door and yelled, “Did you KNOW about canny canes?”
“What, honey?”
“DID YOU KNOW ABOUT CANNY CANES? Why nobody tell me about canny canes afore?”
He pulled us into the house and before we had time to take our fogged-up glasses off or share hugs all around, he shoved green and red striped candy canes into our mitted hands. “You lick them like this! But first you should take off the plastic. Did you KNOW about canny canes? Wow! They so good!”
He spun around the room doing a hilarious canny cane dance. “Why you didn’t tell me?”
The strain of the previous two days disappeared entirely as we experienced joy through a three-year old’s taste buds.
Sometimes I feel like that about Jesus Christ. I want to fling open the door and shout, “Did you KNOW about Jesus? Did you KNOW how good He is? Why nobody tell me about this good Jesus afore? Wow! He’s so good!!” Then I do my funny little God-is-so-good dance. You should see it.
Sing to the Lord, all you godly ones! Praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime! Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.
I was very young, three, maybe four years old, but I remember what it feels like to be in a car driving over somebody. I remember the frost making dramatic patterns of the red flashing lights on the back window of the Olds. I remember Daddy taking the blanket wrapped around my thin stockinged legs to cover the man up. I remember the anxious adult voices in the street.
“…right out in front of me. I couldn’t stop. The ice…”
I remember Mommy’s voice making puffs of clouds in the cold night air as she held my little brother and I down in the back seat.
I remember the hushed voices in the kitchen saying, “We can’t let this spoil the children’s Christmas.”
I remember Grandma taking us into the bedroom and telling us that Santie Claus was on the roof. Could we hear him?
I asked her where the dead man was now.
She said Rudolph’s nose was glowing extra brightly when he learned this was my house.
I asked her if my Daddy was in trouble for driving over him.
She said she could hear Santie Claus eating the milk and cookies we put out for him in the living room.
Then someone opened our door and we were ushered into a room where presents now spilled out from under the tinselled tree.
Mommy said, “Oh look what Santa brought you!
Her eyes were red.
I was very young, three, maybe four years old, but I knew it was my job not to spoil the grown-ups’ Christmas. I squealed with feigned glee and hugged the doll sitting in front of the tree. It was an Oscar performance. Mommy smiled.
Daddy said, “Here, Honey. Open this one.”
His hands were still shaking.
I wondered if the man was with grown-up Jesus in heaven now -and if Jesus liked my blanket too.
Years later, when my children were scattered around the world and I was procrastinating putting up a tree, I admitted out loud that I hated Christmas. What right did merriness and hustle and bustle have to barge in and try to hide pain and sorrow behind sparkly red skirts as if it didn’t exist? Who gave this season permission to trump reality?
I know I was not the only one. There is something about the images of happy harmonious families that makes the first Christmas with an empty chair at the table excruciatingly harder to bear.
There is something about an entire tray of shortbread cookies on a table for one that makes loneliness stab deeper.
There is something about mistletoe and perfume commercials that makes unchosen celibacy crave illegitimate intimacy even more.
There is something about joyful carols in a church full of contented faithful that makes the struggle to believe feel like being cast into outer darkness.
There is a dark side to the Christmas story that doesn’t make it to the ceramic nativity scenes. We bring in the Wise Men, with their odd assortment of gifts, ahead of schedule for the sake of convenient story-telling, but we skip over the part where a jealous despot sent men to kill all the innocent two-year old boys and babies in the sweetly lying, still little town of Bethlehem –men who had to do his despicable dirty work, and then probably went home to a life-time of post-traumatic stress disorder from what their eyes and ears could not block out in the wine-stupoured nights to follow.
Then there was baby Jesus’ adopted father, Joseph, awoken by an angel with an urgent warning to get up and run to a country where he would be a refugee, confused by language and custom, doubly rejected for something that was not his fault, yet responsible for a family. He probably heard reports of the grief their presence had caused the parents in Bethlehem. Perhaps he had survivor’s guilt as well.
He was born into a dark place, and a dark time, this child. In the fullness of time, the Bible says. The angelic promises relayed by terrified farm hands, and the words spoken by two wrinkled old prophets in the temple had to feed this little family’s hopes for a long time. Joseph died before ever seeing what the boy was to become, yet he dared to bear his wife’s shame by marrying a pregnant woman; he dared to get up and follow the instructions from a mere dream to protect a child that wasn’t even his. He dared to obey. He dared to hope.
There was no rockin’ around a holly jolly Christmas tree with lights strung across the market place and the smell of turkey and stuffing wafting out of windows in that town. The story the Bible tells looks despair and pain right in the face. There is no denial of feelings here. And yet, and yet…
There is hope.
The sorrow of Christmas is also the blessing of Christmas, because this pain is why He came. Jesus said he came to destroy the works of the devil. Jesus said he came that we might have life, and have it abundantly.
There is hope in the midst of darkness.
“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light…”
Unto the hills around do I lift up my longing eyes: oh whence for me shall my salvation come, from whence arise? From God the Lord doth come my certain aid, from God the Lord who heaven and earth hath made.
The seventy came back triumphant. “Master, even the demons danced to your tune!”
Jesus said, “I know. I saw Satan fall, a bolt of lightning out of the sky. See what I’ve given you? Safe passage as you walk on snakes and scorpions, and protection from every assault of the Enemy. No one can put a hand on you. All the same, the great triumph is not in your authority over evil, but in God’s authority over you and presence with you. Not what you do for God but what God does for you—that’s the agenda for rejoicing.”
At that, Jesus rejoiced, exuberant in the Holy Spirit. “I thank you, Father, Master of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the know-it-alls and showed them to these innocent newcomers. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way.
“I’ve been given it all by my Father! Only the Father knows who the Son is and only the Son knows who the Father is. The Son can introduce the Father to anyone he wants to.” (Luke 10:17-20 The Message Paraphrase)
“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and he will give you everything you need.
‘So don’t be afraid, little flock. For it gives your Father great happiness to give you the Kingdom.'” (Luke 12: 31,32 ESV)
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. (Isaiah 9:2)
You must understand that God has not sent his Son into the world to pass sentence upon it, but to save it—through him. Any man who believes in him is not judged at all. It is the one who will not believe who stands already condemned, because he will not believe in the character of God’s only Son. This is the judgment—that light has entered the world and men have preferred darkness to light because their deeds are evil. (John 3 Phillips version)
If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)
Mourning today for the 20 children killed in the U.S. and the thousands of children killed in Syria and the millions of children killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sometimes I feel like the Lord throws pebbles at my window to catch my attention. When I respond he whispers, “Come! I have something to show you!”
Sometimes I answer, “But I have work to do –blank forms, sticky floors, unmailed parcels.”
“Come!” he says.
The attention grabber this time was freshly fallen snow on mountain ash berries outside my window. I grabbed my camera and went out to look. Then I followed the light and the mountain ash trees down the block to the creek. An hour later I was back at my desk with rosy cheeks and renewed joy in the goodness of Daddy God. He knows I love colour and the red berries covered with delicate pure white snow were like a sign of his goodness to me.
Shortcut Home
It is his goodness, his kindness, that makes me want to change.
Like a lot of people, I grew up with a God I was afraid of. I know I’m not the only one who picked up that message or the phrase the TV character, Maude, used, “God is gonna get you for that,” would not have connected with so many people.
In my culture the best thing that could happen to a person was to be “used” by God. That was an entrenched lie that took some considerable spiritual explosives to dislodge. Well, I had been “used” by humans and that was not something I looked forward to happening again, thank you very much. I understand now that the best thing that can happen is to grasp the solid bedrock granite concept that I am loved by God. Only then can I risk change.
One days, years ago, I called the children to supper. Two adorable little kids had recently joined our family as foster children. They did not come when I called. I found them hiding in the basement.
“Why didn’t you come when I called?” I asked.
The little girl said, “You put the bottle on the table.”
“What bottle?”
“That one!” she answered, pointing to a bottle of soy sauce I bought in Chinatown.
“You don’t like soy sauce?”
“When Grandpa puts a bottle like that on the table bad things happen!”
She covered her eyes and cried. That’s when I realized the bottle had the same size and shape as a whiskey bottle.
At first I made the mistake of trying to correct kids who experienced hurtful things the same way as we disciplined our own children. It didn’t work because they didn’t understand that they were loved. They didn’t know that if I sent them to their rooms that they wouldn’t be locked in there for days without food. They didn’t know what safe meant.
I picked up one of our little foster guys to take him out of a public place because he was disturbing others who wanted to enjoy the show. When I reached the aisle he grabbed the last seat and hollered, “Don’t beat me!!!” (I was probably reported.) I had never beaten him nor did I have any intention of ever beating him, but he didn’t know that.
God forgive me, but my prayers for years were don’t-beat-me prayers. It must have broken his heart.
Uphill
I “asked Jesus into my heart” during the Cuban missile crisis in the 60’s because I was afraid of going to hell if a nuclear bomb fell near our house, or of being “left behind” if all the people with an in with God got zapped off the planet. I didn’t need anyone to tell me how disappointing I was, how far short of the mark I fell. I certainly didn’t need a preacher telling me week after week that I needed to repent and change my ways. I needed someone to tell me how –or rather Who.
Leaning
Like our foster children I needed to learn that God was good, that he would provide my needs just because he was good. I did not understand that I didn’t need to earn nurturing care by making myself useful in the church, and thus indispensable. Yes, sometimes we had to set down firm boundaries for the kids at the start for the sake of safety (You may not stab your sister, nor yourself with a fork. You may not play on the road. We respect gravity here, and like gravity the natural consequence of defiance is consistent.) Eventually the children learned to trust that we had their interest at heart. Usually. The analogy breaks down when you are talking about sleep-deprived, nerve-jangled, insecure parents who also need to change, but most of the time we spent nights rocking them and days feeding and clothing and nursing them back to health –and playing.
So often people hear the message of Jesus Christ as “Change –or God will get you for that!” There are those who worry that if we speak of the good news, if his goodness is poured out in healing and encounters with a loving Daddy God who says it’s ok to leave work behind and go play in the snow, that we are offering a “greasy grace” that lets folks get away with unacceptable behaviour. “You’re just asking them if they want to come meet the One who just met their need. Where’s the repentance? Where’s the obedience?” they say.
Well, a lifetime of people telling me how disappointed God was with my behaviour led to my responding to correction with the same attitude I saw in a child who said, “I can’t do anything right! You think I’m just a pile of poo! I hate you! You’re not my mother and you can’t tell me what to do!” Like her, I went off and hid myself in depression and wallowed in my pooey-ness. It was the unexpected kindness of God that demonstrated he was not the same god I grew up with. He held out his hand to me.
Cool Waters
Change happens when we see ourselves as God sees us –loveable and worthy of his care. When we trust that fact that he is, indeed, loving and has our interest at heart we can see his discipline as disciple-making, as empowering us to become who we are meant to be. His judgment is a daily assessment of what is progressing well and what needs to be worked on next. It is not meant to be vengeful punishment and condemnation.
Charis: Subject to Change 