The Stinking Gifts of Christmas

Image by AgnesR from Pixabay

After a whir of concerts, recitals, and Christmas gigs, I was drained. I might play “Silver Bells” with its dream of “children laughing, people passing, meeting smile after smile,” but that wasn’t happening in my heart. I was being irritable with the people I love the most, and I was irritated with myself for being that way.


If I paused and painted a picture of Christmas, you wouldn’t see a “Holly, Jolly Christmas.” When I strip away the veneer of the carols, my soul goes back to the Bible in Isaiah 1:5b-6 (ESV):

The whole head is sick,
    and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even to the head,
    there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores
    and raw wounds;
they are not pressed out or bound up
    or softened with oil. 

That’s me this Christmas. I reached the end of myself, and it wasn’t pretty, but then God came down. He painted for me a picture of Christmas in Isaiah, setting the stage in chapter 1.

His people were laden with iniquity (Isaiah 1:4). Their evil deeds weighed them down and broke their backs, yet they stubbornly plodded on. They were wounded and suffering (Isaiah 1:5-6), yet they refused to seek help from the God who wanted to heal them. Instead, they offered sacrifices and celebrated their religious feasts, pretending everything was okay.

“Enough!” God cried.

Your new moons and your appointed feasts
    my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them. (Isaiah 1:14 ESV)

This empty religiosity was one load God refused to carry. “Give Me everything else,” God said. “Give Me your sin, your pain, your sorrow. Just don’t make Me carry your hypocritical ceremonies.” We find this promise in Isaiah 53:4-6 (ESV) where God foretold the coming of His Son Jesus:

Surely he has borne our griefs
    and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
    smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
    and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
    we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all. 

God doesn’t want me to pretend I have it all together. He yearns for me to be honest with Him that I’m broken and I need Him to heal me and fill my heart. So when I wrap my gifts for God this Christmas, I’m not putting great deeds of righteousness under His tree. I’m giving Him my sin and my sickness because I trust Him. He came to earth for this reason, to carry my yuck, to receive my stinking gifts of Christmas. He loves me that much.

Embracing Turkey Day

Image by PublicDomainImages from Pixabay

The grocery store was a zoo Monday evening. With snow coming everyone needed their Thanksgiving shopping done immediately. What would Turkey Day be without a turkey?

Our national day of thanksgiving has turned into a day of food and football, but I'm not fighting it this year. I'm embracing it, the food part at least.

Worship in the Old Testament seldom happened without food. The Israelites took their sacrifices to the temple, offered them to God, and then ate of the sacrifices. If the offering was particularly holy, only the priests could eat. The food was sacred.

Jesus's death on the cross has ended the Old Testament sacrifices, but God invites us to celebrate every meal as a holy offering to Him. In 1 Timothy 4:3-5 God tells us we may eat anything we want. There are no longer forbidden foods "for everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer" (ESV).

I always read these verses as permission to eat bacon, one of the forbidden foods in the Old Testament. I missed the significance of the words made holy. This is the same term used in the Old Testament to describe the grain and sin offerings--they were so holy that anything which touched them would be made holy (Leviticus 6:18, 27).

We find the word again in the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." Our food can be holy like the name of God. This changes the way I think about turkey.

There is no dividing line between Thanksgiving and Turkey Day. When I receive my food as a gift from my holy Father, eating it is a sacred act, just as sacred as eating food from the altar.

So enjoy the feast, add bacon if you want, but do it all as an act of worship to the God who daily showers us with blessings. And may you have a very happy Turkey Day.

So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10:31 ESV

The Lost Art of Sitting

Conservatory Coffee from Pixabay

Facebook is a necessary evil in my life. I'm thankful I can stay in touch with friends around the world, but when my loved ones are hurting, social media isn't enough.

Too often I click on Message and find I have no words. Words are hollow in the middle of our pain.

As I hunt for an acceptable sentence or two to reach out and share my love, I think of Job in the Bible. His friends did well for a week. They cried. They tore their clothes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Most importantly, they sat with him and didn't say a word. Only after a week did they open their mouths and fail completely.

That's how I feel on Facebook. If you're hurting right now, I wish I could sit with you. I don't want to say anything. I just want you to know my love.

The Monotony of Worship

I was sipping coffee and reading a few chapters in my Bible Saturday morning when I came to Hebrews 10:11 (ESV), "And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins."

Photo by thesuccess at morguefile.com

"How monotonous!" I thought. Can you imagine going through the same rituals day after day and wondering if they did any good?

Instead of beautiful moments of worship, this verse reminds me of the Greek myth of Sisyphus, forever struggling to roll a boulder up the hill only to watch it tumble back down. But maybe that's the point.

Maybe God wanted them to glimpse the pointlessness of it all, so they would understand none of their good works or rituals could make them right with Him. They needed something greater. They needed Someone greater, as the very next verse states, "But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God" (ESV).

So the next time I'm too tired to feel anything during a worship service, when my mind is a fog and my heart is numb, I'll accept the feeling as a gift. A reminder that it doesn't depend on me. God has done it all.

The God who Runs, the God who Walks

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My pastor preached a moving sermon last Sunday about the prodigal son. He dramatized the shame this son brought on his family when he demanded his inheritance early. "Dad, I wish you were dead," the son implied.

Then came the moment when the the inheritance was spent, and the son found himself feeding pigs, unclean animals both physically and ceremonially. The son finally felt his own shame.

But his father didn't hold back. In a culture based on honor and respect where men don't run, the father did just that. He abandoned it all and ran to meet his returning son.

We see this as the epitome of love and grace, yet I seldom feel the impact of the story because I can't see myself in the prodigal son. That's not my personality. I follow the rules.

The grace that touches me most comes at the end of the story when the father walks out to his older son, who was fussing, "You never threw a party for me."

What greater shame could the father bear? Having to walk out and beg his unrepentant son to come in?

But that is what God did for me. I will forever be grateful to the God who walked out to me and said, "Jenny, I love you. I'm throwing a party, and I want you to be part of it. Will you come in?"

Releasing My Dreams

After a hectic week directing and teaching at a music camp, I packed for vacation and set off for a week at the lake. Packing is an intricate process of choosing the best books to fill two tote bags, throwing a bunch of clothes in a suitcase, and calling it good.

My book selection this year was perfect. I relished moments rocking on a swing, listening to waves lap against the shore, and flipping pages in my chemistry book. Yes, chemistry.

How Chemistry Essentials for Dummies made it into my carefully packed book bag is a question I'll let you ponder. The why is not as important as the what that I discovered in chapter four. After agonizing through a chapter on electron configurations with their orbits and energy levels, I was surprised when chapter four touched my heart.

The opening paragraphs explained how every atom wants to be satisfied. It wants a full set of eight electrons in its outermost energy level. Atoms with seven electrons can gain one, and they're complete. Amazing satisfaction.

But what about those poor atoms with only one electron in their outermost level? Is it possible for them to be satisfied? The rules of chemistry say they can't gain more than three electrons.

Thankfully, there is a path to satisfaction if they're willing to lose an electron. If they release that lonely electron in their outermost energy level, the energy level disappears. Now an inner level that's already full with eight electrons is the farthest out. It's satisfied, and so is the atom.

Why am I so excited about a satisfied atom? Because I realized I can become satisfied the same way.

I have so many dreams spinning around, never coming to fruition. I structure my days and use every minute in a hopeless attempt to fulfill each vision. But sometimes I just have to release the electron, let go of the dream, and realize that underneath I'm already complete.

I'm not giving up. I'll still pursue my hobbies and give the dreams a chance to come true, but I don't need them. I'm satisfied.

Doing Easter First

The Resurrection of Christ
by Rembrandt

Although I've never attended a liturgical church, I find beauty in the church calendar. The solemnity of Holy Week paints in dark brush strokes the agony of our Lord and draws our eyes irresistibly toward Easter, toward the light, just like Rembrandt did in his famous painting The Resurrection of Christ. The impact of Easter fades if we refuse to walk the road to the cross.

But somehow the apostle Paul got this mixed up. Maybe he was chronologically challenged, but he blundered when stating his life's goal in Philippians 3:10, "that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death" (NKJV). Everyone knows you have to die before you can rise. Why switch it up like this?

The answer is in the meaning of the cross. If Good Friday were only about getting into heaven, Holy Week would make sense. I should spend that long contemplating the price Jesus paid for me before celebrating His resurrection. However, the cross is much more than payment for my ticket to a good place.

The cross is God's invitation to me to be His friend. He yearns for fellowship with me. He wants to be close, but friendship isn't just mushy feelings. When we're friends, we bear each others' burdens. We carry our friends' sufferings and weep their tears.

How can I be the friend of God? I'm already cracking under the weight of my little problems. How can I bear the burdens of God, who carries the weight of the world? Paul knew the answer. He didn't carry the cross first. He visited the empty tomb.

If I still smile when my heart is aching, if you see peace in my eyes when the storm is strong, I'll tell you the secret. I can face the darkness because God gave me the light. I can bear the pain because He gave me the power. I can walk through Good Friday because I did Easter first.

The Beautiful Humility of No

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A friend reminded me recently of the importance of saying no. She knows me too well. I rush here and rush there, trying to use every minute to the maximum, and yet I always feel like I haven't done enough.

"Whenever you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else," my friend shared, and she is right. We cannot avoid saying no, but we have two choices. We may choose when we say no and how we say the word.

No can communicate a lovely spirit of humility. I am admitting that I am not superwoman. I am not God. I am weak and frail, and I cannot do all the things that are close to my heart.

No is also a word of trust. The apostle Paul exemplified this aspect of no. When the church at Ephesus asked him to stay with them longer, he declined, but he left his companions Priscilla and Aquila at Ephesus. He trusted them do the job (Acts 18:18-21, 24-26).

To be honest, I'm not a wonderful example of humility and trust like Paul. Too often I say no with a touch of frustration. Don't people understand how busy I am? I work from breakfast to bedtime. I don't have fifteen minutes free. How do they think I can do one more thing?

But I have a choice to make, and I choose to be more like Paul. I'll say no more often, and I'll say it with a heart of love that recognizes the importance of the thing I was just asked to do and yet shares my weakness and vulnerability. I want my no to radiate trust in God and others around me—I can't, but someone can. That is the beautiful humility of no.

Traveling Home

Photo by grandma613 at morguefile.com

This week has been a whirlwind of rescheduling as we cleared our schedule for Grandma's funeral today, but I'm glad we could be there. The ceremony was sweet with memories shared by my uncle, and I cherished the time with my cousins during lunch.

On the trip home as our car bumped along the backroads of Wisconsin, I buried myself in a book. Ironically, I was reading about how Greek philosophers compared death to the journey home, an image that resonates with my soul.

When dusk fell and the words became blurry, I closed my book and gazed at the pink clouds wisping across the sky. I searched for words to sum up the day, but my wisdom falls far short of the great philosophers. I did decide what not to say. I'm not saying good-bye.

I'd rather whisper, "Welcome home, Grandma. Welcome home."

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 Corinthians 5:1 (ESV)