Toddled Dredge

Today is the last day of Christmas. I hope you have enjoyed this series and that it has helped you celebrate the Christmas season. My last guest-poster is my mother, about whom I have told many stories.  I will conclude this series with an Epiphany post tomorrow.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 111:28-30)

My friend Sharon and I went to Florida to visit an old friend. Sharon’s boss was a member of an exclusive tennis club, so she asked her boss to call the club and reserve a court for us. When we arrived we were told the dress code required all white clothing. We went out and purchased white tops and white shorts. When we returned we were told that the club member had to be present before we would be permitted to play. He couldn’t be there, so we couldn’t play.

Excluding people is built into our way of life. Sports teams reject those not skilled enough to “make the team,” while those who are skilled enough preen themselves on their success. Colleges reject applicants. Cliques reject anyone they choose. All of us participate in this process by evaluating whether others dress acceptably, talk correctly, listen to the right music, and so forth. We have many unspoken standards by which we include or exclude others: having or lacking money, looks, social connections. The list goes on.

The good news at Christmas is that all can “come and behold him, Christ the Savior.” Those of low status, like the shepherds, are welcome, and those of high status, like the wise men, are welcome too.

During his ministry Jesus made explicit what is only implicit in the Christmas story. He said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest”(Matthew 11:28).

Strange as it may seem, the welcome God sent out by his agents at the first Christmas is still being sent out by God’s agents today. Everyone and anyone is welcome to worship. The welcome mat is out.

My guest-poster today is none other than my father. I don’t write about my father much on my blog; I tell more stories about my mother. Partly that is because my mother is the more dramatic and entertaining character, but it is also because my father’s way of thinking already infuses everything I write; there is not need for stories, too. Here are the words of my Dad.

He shall feed His flock like a shepherd; and He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. (Isaiah 40: 11)

The birth story of Jesus, the Son of God, is one of the many scriptural narratives which model diversity in harmony. Many years ago a friend captured the essence of this diversity on a Christmas card she wrote to me. The card said simply “Yet God came down, all steel-like strong, wrapped in the arms of a baby.”

In Jesus the contradiction between God’s almighty strength and human weakness is reconciled. We learn God is both strong and weak and everything in between.

In Jesus God shows us the compatibility between strength and weakness. We know in our hearts how weak we are and how much we need God’s strength. Hallelujah! we can be saved after all, despite our inability to overcome sin and death.

Isaiah 40:11 expresses God’s reconciliation of his strength and our weakness in terms of God’s providential care for us. “And he shall feed his flock like a shepherd….” And this shepherd leads his flock with love and gentleness. “He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them in his bosom. He gently leads those that are with young.”

No one likes to be led, but everyone likes to be led well. The shepherd-Messiah leads well. He makes following him a joy. He makes us want to sing and provides Handel’s great work so we can sing well.

God’s reconciliation of his strength and human weakness is one of the deepest mysteries of the creation. Messiah “was crucified in weakness, but raised by the power of God.” Only by the Holy Spirit can a human mind receive this mystery. To the mind without a love of God’s goodness, there can be no reconciliation between weakness and strength. Without a love of God’s goodness, strength is admirable and even worthy of worship. Without a love of God’s goodness, righteousness comes from holy war in both its secular (nazism, statism, communism, militarism) and religious forms. Play nice, but win! Without a love of God’s goodness, weakness is at best pitiful and at worst contemptible.

But God says “Hah! My strength is made perfect in weakness.” I will send my Son as a baby. And he will triumph over sin and death without the power of the state. He will triumph the only place triumph is real–in the hearts of those who believe.

So the Christian glories in his weakness and in the babe of Bethlehem, knowing that the God who cared for Jesus will care for him, and knowing that accepting our own weakness means opening our lives to the power and goodness of God.

Today’s guest-poster is my beloved brother-in-law, who is also our family’s resident computer genius and all-around nice guy. He and my sister are the ones who gave me my own URL last year, which still makes me feel all fancy-schmancy here at Toddled Dredge. Brother-in-law has a tender heart, and I’m sure many of you can relate to what he wrote here.

Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. (Isaiah 35:5-6)

The problem of evil, pain, and suffering was introduced to me during my first philosophy class in college. My mind focused from the moment my professor forcefully challenged us to defend God’s existence, or rather His character, in the light of such terrible things. It was not the intellectual argument that weighed on me, but the personal, emotional aspect. How can God truly love me, and yet force me to endure future trials? As an unscarred teenager, I could see no way to reconcile God’s love with our suffering.

Time brought many new experiences into my life. There were many wonderful blessings, but also the first real scars. The deepest of these involved my child who died in utero. I watched as my wife passed the child suddenly in the night, and took both to the hospital where physicians decided that surgery was necessary. Despite the horror of the previous night, the Lord didn’t rest the next day, but brought even more trials to my family. He brought everything from the mundane - flat tires and being stopped by the police - to the terrifying: complications in surgery that could take my wife. He did not, however, leave us alone.

The Lord had blessed us with good friends, and they came quickly to comfort us. But something struck me deeply about their caring. The friends that touched us the most were the ones that said, “We have also lost a child.” When these friends wept with us, their tears contained the memory of their own experiences. And those tears were a balm for my wife and me. We grew closer to those friends, just as we grew closer to each other for having endured this pain together.

There was another to whom I grew closer through my suffering: the God who also lost a child. In some real sense, I knew God had drawn me closer to Him through our suffering. The tears that really healed me were the tears of the one that held me. And it was in the comforting arms of God in the midst of tragedy that I lost all my emotional and intellectual objections surrounding the problem of evil, pain, and suffering. I began to realize that there was something binding, something permanent about enduring pain and suffering together.

God desired to bind us to Him in a way that could not be broken. So He sent His son to suffer greatly with us and then to suffer for us. Jesus brought sight out of the blind, hearing from the deaf, leaping from the lame, and singing from the dumb. And in His physical transformations of suffering into blessing, He shows us the spiritual reality of a life bound to Him. It wasn’t until I suffered that I could truly appreciate the suffering of my Savior, and the binding of God to us that resulted from it.

The New Testament frequently uses the language of being “with Christ”. We are baptized into Christ (Galatians 3:27), suffer with Christ (Romans 8:17), are crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20), and even die with Christ (Romans 6:8). But out of such suffering with our God comes a binding that can never be separated (Romans 8:35-39), a life that can never end (Romans 6:8-10), and a kingdom that we co-heir with Christ (Romans 8:17). It is out of our suffering, that God brings unimaginable blessing. This is something that only an all powerful, all wise, all good God alone could possibly do. Through the greatest evil, the crucifixion of God Himself, the Lord brings about the greatest good: the salvation of His people.

In having an appreciation of this born through suffering, I can now see and hear, leap and sing.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy King cometh unto thee! He is the righteous Saviour… and He shall speak peace unto the heathen. (Zechariah 9:9,10)

My children were in our church’s Christmas pageant this year. JellyBean and Sweetpea are 5 and 3, respectively, and were old enough to sing in the angel choir for the first time.

The women in the church who organized the pageant worked hard and did a great job. The children practiced after Sunday School for a few weeks. Each practice, they trouped up to the stage and stood there, singing “Away in a Manger,” memorizing their song for the big day.

When the day of the pageant arrived, a kind lady held the new baby and I sat in the back holding one-year-old PoppySeed. I saw Jellybean and Sweetpea climb the steps with the other children, following the woman who was playing Mary. As the song began and all the other children turned to face the audience, JellyBean and Sweetpea turned the opposite direction. They faced Mary, who was cradling baby Jesus. The children sang their song, and I never even saw my children’s faces. I felt a little embarrassed that they had not followed directions.

After it was over and everyone was de-costumed and re-coated for the cold outdoors, I walked my children to the van. As I helped them in, I said to JellyBean, “Sweetheart, you were supposed to turn and face the audience when you were singing. You were supposed to look at the audience.”

JellyBean turned to me in surprise and said in a tone of perfect certainty, “But Mama, of course I wanted to look at Mary and Baby Jesus.”

In the Christmas season it is easy to get caught up in the audience. We worry about how our efforts will be perceived by our children, our parents, our neighbors, our friends. We concern ourselves with pleasing and impressing people. We behave as if we are putting on a show.

The solution to this problem isn’t cutting back our schedules or toning down our expectations - those may be good things, too, but they will not recover the mystery of Christmas for us. We keep “the reason for the season” when we remember whom we adore. Like two captivated children, facing the wrong way, singing their lullabies to the baby Jesus, we worship him instead of an audience.

The passage today is a simple one, a messianic prophecy of peace from Zechariah. Maybe I could write a clever post about it, impressing you with how very theological I can be, but my goal today is different: I am going to try to do what it says.

Today in my ordinary day, as I bustle about in my ordinary tasks, I am going to pause, turn away from the demands around me, and rejoice. The good news is still good. The Savior is still righteous. There is something more captivating there than the laundry piled up, or the dishes in the sink, or the bills waiting in a stack on the table.

My king has come. Let’s turn our eyes toward him, and adore.

Are you enjoying my guest-posters? I’m still not quite up to snuff, so for the shepherds passage today, I am reprinting something from my Advent 2007 posts. I will be back tomorrow with something brand new.

There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord”. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying…”Glory to God, Glory to God in the highest: and peace on earth. Good will towards men.” (Luke 2:8-14)

We missed church AGAIN this morning. This time it had nothing to do with shoes; I got the clothes and shoes lined up the night before.

This time it was the car. I’ll spare you the details, but it proved unreliable this morning. I thought about trying to take three small children on the bus, but when I slipped on the icy front step, I lost my courage. I don’t think I can manage icy pavement while holding a baby and trying to keep a four-year-old and a two-year-old away from the wheels of a bus. So we stayed at home.

And it was a busy day, full of the details of running a household. We lost power briefly in parts of the house yesterday, maybe from the icy branches pressing on the lines. Since then, the dishwasher has not worked. So today I spent most of my time switching circuit breakers, running around the house to see which appliances went off with which breaker, and - most dreaded household task of all - washing dishes by hand.

When Jesus was born, there were shepherds in the fields outside of Bethlehem, doing what shepherds do. They were having an ordinary day, full of the details of their profession. Maybe they were busy with frustrations. Maybe a few sheep had strayed, or a predator nabbed one for dinner. Or maybe the shepherds were having a good day, calm and uneventful, enjoying the open skies and the fresh air.

During this ordinary day of herding sheep, the divine ingressed into human ordinariness. An angel appeared, and the glory of the Lord shown around them, and they were scared spitless. The glory of the Lord is not supposed to shine around you in the middle of an ordinary day. Angels are not supposed to appear when you are herding sheep, or when you are scraping your knuckles to pick up the radiator cap you just dropped deep inside the car’s hood, or when you are up to your elbows in suds at the kitchen sink.

The glory of God is not supposed to appear in the middle of the ordinary. God is supposed to let us manage our day as best we can, without terrifying us by becoming too startlingly real.

But that’s exactly what happened in the Incarnation. God stepped into human existence in all its banalities. The baby born in Bethlehem came the ordinary way, at an inconvenient time, and he demanded something greater than an interruption or a pause in our routine. He demanded our worship, our rejoicing, our broken hearts and our longing.

It turns out that God cares a great deal about our souls, but not much about our schedules.

The shepherds had the sense to drop what they were doing and run off to find this baby whose birth was such great news. The shepherds did not complain and sigh (oh! how I can complain and sigh) about the interruption in their work schedule. They HURRIED to find the baby, searching the town for the baby, presumably even - despite the sheep in creches around the world - leaving their flocks behind. The shepherds were blessed with the good sense to realize that the great news they had heard outweighed every other consideration.

And thinking about the shepherds tonight, I stopped what I was doing. I left the dishes in the sink, I left the blog post unwritten, I even left the spit-up on my sleeve, and I gathered my girls around the Advent candles. We lit one for the prophets, one for the town of Bethlehem, and one for the shepherds. We sang “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and we prayed. We read the story of the shepherds from Luke 2:8-20.

The girls are in bed now, and I am sitting here, glorifying and praising God for the salvation he has given me, through his Son, Jesus Christ. May the Incarnation interrupt my ordinariness every day, until he returns at last, and nothing is ordinary ever again.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.