Christmas Gratitude

Job 1:21 (ESV): Gratitude

And [Job] said, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

The following meditation comes from Kristen Holmberg at Our Daily Bread Ministries:

Job is famous for a life of such “troubling” moments. Indeed, his losses were deep and many. Just moments after losing all his livestock, he learns of the simultaneous death of all his ten children. Job’s profound grief was evidenced in his response: he “tore his robe and shaved his head” (1:20). His words in that painful hour make me think Job knew the practice of gratitude, for he acknowledges that God had given him everything he’d lost (v. 21). How else could he worship in the midst of such incapacitating grief?

The practice of daily gratitude can’t erase the magnitude of pain we feel in seasons of loss. Job questioned and grappled through his grief as the rest of the book describes. But recognizing God’s goodness to us—in even the smallest of ways—can prepare us to kneel in worship before our all-powerful God in the darkest hours of our earthly lives.

O God, You are the Giver of all good things. Help me to recognize Your generosity in even the smallest ways and to trust You in seasons of loss and hardship.

I, like Kristen Holmberg above, hope to live deliberately, to be thankful, and to experience God in the minutia of my day. But the breakneck pace of life easily robs me of this beauty. How can I slow down?

At the end of her article, Kristen Holmberg recommends starting a “gratitude list” to remind us of the beautiful, sacred gift of God’s love in the small moments of our lives. I am going to take her up on this . . . as soon as I finish the shopping, wrapping, worrying, unboxing, cleaning, recycling, assembling, and donating.

I wish each and every one of you a blessed Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Stan

Scrooge and Fezziwig

Philippians 4:4-5: To Be a Person of Loving Kindness

Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!
Your kindness should be known to all.

There is joyous scene in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It appears in Stave 2, when Scrooge visits with the Ghost of Christmas Past. During that visit, the ghost takes Scrooge to a time when he was a young clerk under the tutelage of Mr. Fezziwig. In this scene, Dickens paints a beautiful picture of Mr. Fezziwig’s generosity and kindness. Celebration and self-giving are evident throughout the scene. And when Scrooge once again feels the love and warmth of the moment, he makes an important observation:

[Scrooge said,] “It isn’t [the few pounds that it cost], Spirit. [Mr. Fezziwig] has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

What Scrooge finally realizes here is that true happiness does not come from avaricious self gain. True happiness, instead, comes through kindness, love, and self giving as exemplified by the generous spirit Mr. Fezziwig. Scrooge feels such joy in this scene that it evokes a momentary epiphany, and he says, “I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now! That’s all.” This memory, moreover, erodes Scrooge’s selfish worldview.

Paul, in his letter to the church at Philippi, reminds us to rejoice always in God’s generous love, a love that we take for granted. Like Scrooge, it is easy to forget God’s generous love and instead get caught up in our world of ambition and responsibility. But if we take a moment to pause and think about Paul’s point, we are easily reminded of God’s awesome love.  And in that reminder we, like the fictitious Mr. Fezziwig, can be ensigns of God’s love and generosity to those around us.

May God’s example of love be the model for our own kind, generous actions today and every day. In Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.

Have a blessed week!

Stan

The "Christmas Season"

Luke 3:4: The “Christmas Season”

Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.

When I was a kid, there was nothing more exciting than the day after Thanksgiving. My mom would have us climb the attic stairs to retrieve our Christmas decorations. Our house, then, would be filled with decorating and preparing for that wonderful day of the year, Christmas. The hi-fi stereo in our dining room, would croon the Christmas tunes of Elvis, Lawrence Welk, The Partridge Family, Andy Williams, and Johnny Mathis. The air smelled of warmth and sugar. The excitement of the Christmas season was electric. As an adult, however, pre-Christmas days bring a sense of financial dread.

Every year around November, we begin the maddening march to spend mountains of money on gifts. By the time December rolls around, our finances are decimated. Though we vow to be frugal in our gifting game plan, the reality is the opposite: We overspend. And in that economic squeeze, that race to get “the right gift,” we lose sight of the most important gift we have -- God’s love.

The season of Advent is too often obscured by the craziness of pre-Christmas spending. But in the midst of the madness, if we pause and listen closely to our hearts, we are reminded of the greatest gift ever. God, in his self-emptying love, became one of us in the womb of a poor Hebrew virgin, Mary. God chose to be born a vulnerable human, to take on the temptations of sin, to the feel the pain of loss and abandonment, to give his life so that we could live. What we celebrate in Advent is not the mentality of “I can’t wait until this is over.” Advent is, instead, a time to anticipate and meditate and reflect on the greatest gift of love ever given to the world, the birth of Jesus Christ, God who became man to demonstrate true self-giving love and to save us from our sins.

If you are like me, the second week in December can be distracting with spending, wrapping, and readying. However, we have the choice to look toward the manger, to remember Gabriel’s words to Mary, to recall Mary’s “yes,” to remember Joseph’s choice of Mary and Jesus over himself, to remember our awesome God who loves us beyond our comprehension. Advent is a beautiful time to meditate on our God who is always with us.  

O merciful Father, we thank you for loving us with the great gift of your Son, Jesus Christ. Please let us focus on your love rather than the business and busyness of the world. Guide us, dear God, in your love always so that we, too, can reflect that love to all we encounter.

Have a blessed Advent!

Stan

The Path of Christian Understanding

Luke 18:34 (NRSV): The Path of Christian Understanding

But the disciples understood nothing about all these things; in fact, what Jesus said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.

I always find the disciples’ spiritual blindness comforting. Here we have the closest friends of Jesus, those twelve specifically chosen by him, without a clue to what Jesus’ most important teachings mean. The disciples’ misgivings, moreover, give me hope.

In chapter 18 of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus reminds the disciples that he will be victimized, tortured, die, and rise again on the third day. But the disciples, as clueless as they can be, do not get what our Lord says. It is typical of the neophyte followers, for they listen with human ears, see with human eyes, and respond with human ambitions. Not until The Acts of the Apostles, and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, do the disciples finally get those all-so-important lessons that Jesus gives in the gospels. Our Christian formation, likewise, must go through its own trials.

Every time I try to understand moments in Scripture, prayer, faith, or life lived, I am reminded of my own ignorance, my own spiritual blindness. The beauty, however, is when, by grace, we persevere despite our own missteps, much like the disciples. That is when our spiritual misunderstandings steer us not away from God but toward him, even though our routes to him may be crooked. And believe me, I follow many crooked routes.

I once heard someone compare our misunderstandings with GPS navigation. His analogy went on to describe the circuitous route that happens when we make wrong turns or follow detours. With every deviation from the original route, the GPS recalculates our path and reconnects us to our destination. These missteps often lengthen our distance and estimated time of arrival. But we eventually get there if we trust and commit ourselves to this technology. Our faith in God is no different. We will make wrong turns and follow certain detours in life; it’s inevitable. But we must trust and put our faith in Christ. He will guide us through every twist and turn in life.

Let us pray for clarity, faith, hope, and forgiveness and thank God for his loving patience with each of us, especially when we, too, succumb to the wrong turns and detours of our own spiritual misunderstandings. Amen.

Have a blessed week!

Stan