"Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness"  Psalm 29:2 KJV

This is a provocative phrase that sets two nouns that do not ordinarily hang out together, beauty and holiness, in company with the verb worship.  Worship, an energetic and all involving verb.

Beauty is splendor, grandeur, adornment. Life - core existence - spills over the containers of mere survival or utility. 

Holiness. An interior fire, a passion for living in and for God. A capacity for exuberance in the presence of God. In His presence there are springs deep within and around us which we drink and sing God.

It's life really. Beauty is the outside and holiness the inside of what is essentially the same thing. It is life God created and God blessed, life here and now. 

When we get glimpses of the intricate connections between everything we see and can't see, the usual metaphor is "heaven and earth". When we sense the pulse and surge of life within and around us, our spontaneous response is to worship.

Worship is the most soul-involving, reality-assimilating act available to human beings. We are most ourselves, our image-of-God selves, when we worship: "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness."

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Of course, the issue is that both beauty and holiness are in short supply. Beauty is commonly trivialized in our culture, reduced to pretty or nice, or it is mere decoration.

But beauty isn't an add-on. It is not an extra. Its not what we pay attention to when we break from reality. Beauty is fundamental. It is evidence of inherent wholeness and goodness of things. It is life in excess of what we can manage or make on our own. 

Beauty arrives through a sustained and adorational attentiveness to what is there: a rock, a flower, a bird, a face, a rustle in the trees, a storm crashing through the mountains.

When we are tired and our senses dull and our attention wavers, writers, singers, artists, all grab us and say, "Look, listen, feel! Embrace and respond to life within you and around you!" This is what the poet of Psalm 29 is doing.

"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Mary Oliver wrote these words and it adequately captures verse two.

If the fate of beauty in culture is to be trivialized, the fate of holiness is to be reduced to blandness. Many sectarian groups reduce life to behaviors and cliches that can be certified as safe. Goodness in a straitjacket if you will, truth drained of mystery, beauty reduced to platitudes or knickknacks. Ellen Glasgow had a wonderful line in her autobiography where she described her father, a Presbyterian elder full of rectitude and rigid with duty: "He was entirely unselfish, and in his long life ... never committed a pleasure."

Holiness is in wild opposition to all this banality and blandness. We are introduced to it through the stories of the burning bush in Midian, the mountain on fire at Sinai, the smoke and angel filled temple in Jerusalem. We find ourselves in the presence of God alive, with life far in excess of anything we imagined. This God-life cannot be domesticated or used: it can only be entered into on its own terms. Moses and Isaiah walked out of those stories on fire themselves, energized for lifelong, life-giving vocations. Holiness did not make God smaller so they could use God in convenient and manageable projects. It made those men larger.

Frederick Buechner took on the task of re-imagining holiness. He put the fire, the smoke, and the angels back into holiness and holy living. Leo Bebb in The Book of Bebb and Godric and Brendan, and hen with Jacob in The Son of Laughter, Buechner immersed us in convincing, contagious stories of holiness that exude life, stories of life giving, life enhancing, life-deepening holiness.

Here is the catch. Life, which is characterized by its modifier holiness as God's life and God-derived life, lavish and exuberant, beyond domestication and inaccessible to control, is mediated to us in beauty. Beauty.

Beauty is our sensory access to holiness. God reveals himself in creation and in Christ, in ways we can see and hear and touch and taste, in place and person. Beauty is the term we use for these hints of more. Hints of transcendence that show us there is more going on than what we can account for.

We need to rub our noses in the stuff of this world, inhale its fragrance, press our hands in the clay, listen to songs and stories. God is our recruiting every writer, artist, musician, pastor, child, and parent he can find to help us do just that so we can worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness.

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The phrase "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" is embedded in the experience of wild, crashing thunderstorm. The storm is then turned into an extended metaphor in which the thunder is the voice of the Lord, qol-Yahweh. Seven great thunderclaps, seven times the Lord peals out:

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over many waters. (verse 3, ESV)

For the Hebrews, the waters were chaos, the uncontrollable and uncontrolled, the home of Leviathan, anticreation if you will. But when the voice of the Lord thunders over the waters, chaos becomes subject to creation: life, an allusion to Genesis 1, our first glimpse of the beauty of holiness.

Storms are splendid, beautiful, awesome. God is on display performing the beauty of holiness, and we have a ringside seat.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf,
and Sirion like a young wild ox. (verse 5-6, ESV)

Now the imagination of this praying poet takes off: the voice of the Lord splits huge trees into kindling for bonfires and turns immense mountains into a carnival of dancing animals. Lebanon is a grand mountain range to the north of Israel, and Siren is its largest mountain, a nine-thousand-foot snow-covered peak. The cedars of Lebanon, like the sequoias of California, were renowned for their monumental majesty. We are witness to a world at play to the glory of God, in the beauty of holiness.

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. (verse 7, ESV)

Lightning bolts stab the darkness in a magnificent light show, each lightning strike illuminating another detail in the beauty of holiness.

The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. (verse 8, ESV)

An earthquake now. The Lebanon mountains at play to the north are matched by the Kadesh wilderness in ecstasy in the south. Earthquakes are normally frightening, but in this context we imagine something more like children skipping or bouncing on a trampoline. 

The voice of the Lord makes the oaks shake
and strips the forest bare,
and in his temple all cry, "Glory!" (verse 9, ESV)

Can you imagine trees whirling like partners in fast-paced dance, the voice of the Lord calling out the moves, leaves swirling from the trees like skirts and scarves of dancers, the rhythms and movements and exchanges beautiful in holiness.

Suddenly they are assembled in the temple. Oceans roaring, mountains playing, lightening flashing, wilderness skipping and tumbling, oak forest dancing. 

Every time God speaks, there is more life. The energy and exuberance in place and people accumulate.  And them we hear, "In his temple all cry, 'Glory'". 

If we have been paying attention, we are here with them. We are at worship in the beauty of holiness.

_______

The Spirit of God has descended on this old world of ours. It could be a grace-revealing gesture, raindrops on the window, a friend's forgiveness, a miracle conversion, a truth-telling poem, a rose in bloom. The beauty of holiness. And we have ringside seats.

​Henry James said that a writer is a person on whom nothing is ever lost. That sounds like a focused Christian identity to me: the men and women on whom nothing, at least thing that has to do with life - an everything does - is lost. 

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. (verse 2, KJV)

Amen.

It's interesting that the most famous Psalm, the psalm of psalms, is the one that many of us know despite the fact that we know very little about sheep or shepherds. If you have been a part of Christian culture for a reasonable length of time, you know Psalm 23 is etched in.  It's deep in our imaginations and it is the psalm most likely to be remembered by the aged and dying. 

Yet, this familiarity has its dangers. The sharp edges are blurred. Familiarity carries the danger of it becoming a cliche. I am hoping to give this some fresh meaning as you read.

There is something in this psalm that transcends the Palestinian countryside and the work of the ancient Hebrew shepherd poet. Can we realize in a fresh way how this prayer retains its beauty and truth in our world and concrete roads, fast cars, domesticated pets, and internet shopping?

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The shepherd is the center of this psalm.  He is identified as an image of God. In one sentence we are transported in our minds from a Palestinian countryside half a world away and three thousand years ago into our own neighborhoods and work places where God is present. He is Shepherd-Lord. God is good and present. Life is a miracle and brims with beauty and love.

In verse 4, a shadow of all that is wrong in the world in introduced and threatens to move the good and merciful presence of the Shepherd: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me" (ESV).  The shadow is death - death valley.  This could be the darkest shadows of death: cancer, Alzheimer's, depression, divorce, domestic violence, grinding poverty, homelessness.

We live in the company of both the Shepherd and the shadow.

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We need to talk about the sheep. God is the shepherd and we are the sheep. 

Sheep are notorious for their stupidity. If they are left to themselves, they wander into danger. They absolutely need a shepherd. The psalmist, knowing himself as a sheep "prone to wander' knows God as his shepherd. Many a time God's "rod" guided him around a deep chasm.  Life in the desert for both the shepherd and sheep is not soft. It is menaced by the dark shadows of the beast-infested valley. The threats to life are all around, but the presence of the Shepherd guides and leads, dispersing the threats.

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The second half of the psalm (verses 5-6) exchanges the image of the sheep for that of an outlaw or fugitive: "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies" (ESV).

Those who committed serious crimes in ancient desert culture would flee to the uninhabited desert. They would be hunted down until they were found in this harsh, dry, inhospitable climate.

There was one exception to unfriendliness of the desert for these men cursed by a past of sin and hunted down by the law of blood revenge, and that was the custom of open hospitality. Every wanderer in the desert was received into a shepherd's tent as a "guest of God" (Arabic term), furnished with food, and kept inviolate. The shepherd host took responsibility for his safety. This custom still prevails today in Bedouin cultures.

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows." This is the outlaw speaking. He is threatened by his past, but he is welcomed into the Shepherd's tent, and there, "in the presence of my enemies," he is served a meal. In the shepherd's tent he is safe.

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God is the alpha and omega. He is the beginning and the end. We acknowledge Him at baptisms, at the beginning of human life. We acknowledge him at funerals, at the end of human life. He is also present at the conclusion of business careers, academic commencements, anniversaries, and birthdays.

But what about the in between, the large living interim between death and death, that long stretch between the beginning and the end? What about the middle? It is this period where we tend to belittle our small faith. Is God our shepherd guiding us through life? Is he with us during the fugitive years? Here is where we fall short.

Psalm 23 is a convincing witness that God is our Shepherd.  He preserves, accompanies, and rules us. We  are not created and then turned loose to make the best of it we can. He doesn't just let us fend for ourselves until we die and hauled before the judgment seat for an accounting of our conduct. He is our Shepherd. He guides us as we wander. He sustains us in our fugitive lives. 

Karl Barth put it this way: "We need not expect turns and events who have nothing to do with His lordship and are not directly in some sense acts of His lordship. This Lord is never absent, passive, non-responsible or impotent, but always present, active, responsible, and omnipotent. He is never dead, but always living; never sleeping, but always awake; never uninterested, but always concerned, never merely waiting in any respect, but even where He seems to wait, even where He permits, always holding the initiative. In this consists His co-existence with the creature" (Church Dogmatics 3.3, the Doctrine of Creation, 13)

The shepherd is a guide and a protective host. The Shepherd's rod and staff signal his leadership and a shared life of love and companionship; the Shepherd's table and cup anticipate his protection and sacrificial life of grace. Because not only do we need guidance in life to protect us from daily peril, but we also need grace to free us from past sins, to deliver us from the tangle of bad decisions and faithless acts.

And the psalm is not abstract. There are "green pastures", "still waters", "paths of righteousness" (straight roads), "valley", "rod", "staff", "table", "oil", "cup", "house". This is a relationship of personal presence.  The entire desert and range of experience of sheep and fugitive is brought into intimate and dependable connection with the Shepherd. 

He is a personal God that protects and guides on the one hand, and provides grace and refuge on the other.

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​Do you know that the last word on Psalm 23 was spoken by Jesus? They were often on his lips, and his life was a dramatic exposition of the best of them. "I am," he said, "the good shepherd" (John 10:11). He lived and spoke Psalm 23.

We need to remember that there were good and bad shepherds in Palestine. The test of a shepherd was how far he would go in risking his life to protect sheep or fugitives. Would he lay down his life for them? Sheep can get themselves into dangerous and awkward situations. A shepherd who made the decision to go into a deep and dangerous canyon for single sheep at the expense of one's own life would not be a easy decision to make. We need to remember that neither fugitives nor the enemies hunting them down were harmless. A shepherd would think twice before opening his tent and seating him at his table, anointing his head and filling his cup with the presence of the man's enemies who were out to kill him. The shepherd led a dangerous life. 

When Christ said he was "the good shepherd" (John 10:14), I don't think they understood him to mean that he was gentle, kind shepherd would be nice to the sheep. They lived in shepherd country and understood the reality of a shepherd's life. Being a good shepherd meant taking the risk of life against beasts, robbers, and murderers and they understood this.

And Jesus did just that. He entered Jerusalem when it was filled with shadows of hate and murder. He faced the combined accusations and assaults of religion and government for the sake of all the wandering sheep and fleeing fugitives. He blessed Judas Iscariot with a meal on the same night Judas betrayed him.

Jesus Christ fills in the detail of Psalm 23. Our shepherd continues to work specifically and historically guiding us, saving us.

The prayer has shadows, but the Shepherd is never absent: guidance and grace. Guidance for us wandering sheep and grace for us as guilty fugitives. Guidance and grace triumph.

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of me life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

I would like to leave you with this poem from Elizabeth C. Clephane who wrote a poem entitled "The Ninety and Nine": 
    
    But none of the ransomed ever knew
    How deep were the waters crossed;
    Nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed through
    Ere he found his Sheep that was lost.

Hallelujah and amen. He is our shepherd.

I remember discussing the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken” in high school and wondering what was down the path that was not as worn down.  It reminds me of real life in trying to follow a path few have chosen and even fewer seem to understand.  Psalm 1 describes two paths.  It sets the stage for the rest of the Psalms, our ultimate prayer book and evidence of every emotion imaginable. It is interesting to note that it was likely written last. It is the finishing touch, defining the contents and fixing the atmosphere on which all of the Scripture is prayed and lived.

But first a story about the Scottish Pastor Alexander Whyte.  When he was addressing a group of theological students, he said, "Ah! I envy you young men with your ministry before you., and especially that you ahead a lifetime of explaining the Psalms to your people!" His delight and and satisfaction in providing a exposition on the Psalms began at the very outset.

"Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,                                                  nor stands in the way of sinners,           
not sits in the seats of scoffers. (verse 1)

Blessed.  It's a beautiful word that announces a sense of well-being, wholeness, happiness.

Jesus used this word eight times in the Sermon on the Mount.  He laid out eight ways to be blessed that the listeners hadn't thought of before.  Here is one of many instances that Christ captured the Psalms.

The psalmist says we are blessed when we do not walk in the counsel of the wicked. As we travel in faith, we are surrounded by others who counsel, advise, urge us in ways that guarantee our happiness. Their advice is supported with statistics and documents. Have you (and I) learned to not be impressed. We are learning to listen to a different drummer.

We are also blessed if we do not stand in the way of sinners. An easier way of understanding this is to not stand around or hangout with those who aren't going anywhere.  They are "in the way" but each one stands making small talk.  They have plans, dream up projects, are great conversationalists, but if we listen long enough, we realize it is mostly hot air.

We do not in the seat of scoffers either. A seat is a place to deliberate, to make judgments, to render decisions. Scoffers look down on others who have't the sense to take a position. They sit together with the know-it-alls. It's a place of cynicism, gossip, and superficial witticisms.  No judge sits over them and no counsel informs them.  They hold nothing in authority but their own so-called cleverness.  Spurgeon, the famous British preacher, called them the "Doctors of Damnation" (The Treasury of David).  

It's important to note that there are three rejected ways of living.  They descend from "walk", "stand" and finally "sit".  It can go from activity to passivity, from the dynamic to to sedentary, sluggish immobility, internal imprisonment. 

__________

The blessed way of life is then elaborated in two phrases:

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night. (verse 2)

We are brought into the world of the Word made flesh.  The world of revelation, the Scriptures, and Jesus.  It is not superstition or guesswork.  It's a world where there is a personal relationship between a God who is involved in our salvation.  Our salvation that is revealed in the Sinai Law of Moses, the preaching of the prophets and apostles, and the good news revealed in Jesus.

We take delight in this through meditation. This does not mean to just read it or just memorize it. Meditate gives the connotation that it is something monks and nuns do in their monasteries or what you might do in contemplating a beautiful sunset.  It's something you do when you are serious about God.

In the original language, the word meditate has to do with slow thinking or slow eating.  We are to literally or slowly chew or masticate or suck on a lollipop.

The best illustration I can think of is what a dog does with a bone. I am sure you have seen it. The dog takes the bone to a private place and goes to work.  He gnaws, turns it over, licks it. He is enjoying himself and is no hurry. Often for a few hours, the dog enjoys the bone, buries, it, and returns the next day to take it up again. An average bone can last about a week.

The dog meditated his bone. You and I are to meditate the revelation in Scripture and Jesus.

___________________

The meditating person is

" ... like a tree
planted by streams of water,
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither,
In all that he does, he prospers." (verse 3)

Why is there a tree here? Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Jesus use the same image.  An example of robust, long life with strength and beauty.

"...planted by streams of water" is such a lovely detail. It is a planted tree, not something wild growing by chance.  These streams were Babylonians canals that were put into the desert to provide moisture and make agriculture possible in a land of dust of sand. 

The Hebrews were in Babylonian exile when this Psalm was written. They were the tree that had been the object of special care and cultivation, the knowledge and skill of the horticulturist God. Brains and purpose had brought to bear on this tree.

The planning and planting had been successful.  The tree bears fruit and is perpetually green. Creation and redemption are effective and not an illusion.

________________

"The wicked are not so
but are like chaff which the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." (verses 4-5)

The chaff here is written to contrasted with the tree.  The wicked, the sinners, the scoffers have persisted in their lack of seriousness and have maintained their course on the road to nowhere.

Chaff is the closest description to nothing that was available. It has no weight, no meaning, no use. Without meaning and responsibility, the wicked have no existence to speak of at all.  It is the dried up husk of something that once bloomed, bore fruit, and brightened the landscape. The wicked are far from what they had been created to be. They are at the mercy of breezes and winds. No roots and no life. There is nothing to them, defined now only by what they are not.

The rather terrifying conclusion is that the life of the wicked/sinner/scoffer is the complete inability to be anything.

________________

"For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish." (verse 6)

These last two lines show the end result of the two ways of life, the life of the tree and the life of the chaff.  The verb here knows is alive with gospel.  It's the same verb we see in Genesis 4:1 where Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived.

This verb is deeper than our modern day notion of dealing with information.  In the Christian sense, it is firsthand relationship, personal knowledge, historical, and existential. In Christ, God knows us, and then, because the initiative has been Spirit-given to us, we know God. It is personal and experienced.

None of us are finished with finding ourselves personally in Psalm 1 until we pay meditative attention to Christ's comprehensive definition of himself in his his last conversation with his disciples.  He says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6 KJV). 

Christ gives his life as an exposition, an incarnation, a presence of how this way works itself out in our lives. This psalm gets our feet wet on the way to Jesus, reading and meditating on the Scriptures in a companionship in which we acquire a feel for the Jesus way of blessing.

Amen for the way!

.There have three major themes that have been a part of 2017.  Teaching, writing, and pastoral work.  Let's look at each in turn.

September 2017 marked the beginning of my 20th year teaching English in Korea.  This was also a year of ups and downs.  Two of my classes were cancelled at the beginning of September just as I was completing a course on history.  I did not take this very well initially.  But, it turned out to be a blessings in disguise!  Due to only thirteen hours of teaching, I was able to:

1) get to know my students very well,
2) spent time tweaking lesson plans and thinking through new possibilities on old lesson plans,
3) exercised three mornings a week and lost over 10 pounds,
4) finished an Advent book that I have been working on since Aidan was a baby,
5) started to think through a blog in resilience for educators,
6) spent more time with Aidan after school.

This was the year I worked with my lowest and most difficult student ever.  I had never encountered anyone who absolutely refused to try speaking English in class until this past semester.  He never did warm up to the idea that he could try to speak and I would support whatever he tried.  This got me thinking about how fear can paralyze and what needs to be done to get over fear and develop resilience.  This will be a new project in 2018 and I look forward to delving in.

2017 is also the year I began to think of myself as a writer.  Despite the fact that I have been blogging since 2012, I don't think I really considered myself a writer.  Why not? This blog has been a creative outlet in so many ways.  I have poured out my thoughts on a myriad of subjects including teaching, random thoughts, family events, food, and book reviews.  The only common thread running through all of this is me celebrating what I thought was important in my life.  I realized I write for me more than for an audience.

This year was the first time I got up the courage to take an online course on blogging.  I signed up for Jeff Goins Tribe Writers course.  Even though I still haven't finished the course (I'm halfway through as I write this), I learned so much about how to write well, blog well, and how to do marketing in a natural, thoughtful manner.  2018 will be the year where I conquer the fear of others being critical of what I write, start a blog on resilience for educators, and finish the editing I need to do on the Advent book I have finished.  

And no, it's not a typical Advent book in any way, shape, or form.  This non-traditional book will look at the trees in the Bible, the stories the trees tell, and the lessons that they have to offer. 

Lastly, I have been involved in pastoral work with children.  KNU New Kids was launched in October of 2015 and it has been a great ride.  I've enjoyed watching this ministry grow from a handful of students to an average of twenty.  My heart feels good when I see the kids sing, dance, and enjoy God's presence.  I have led them through worship, told Bible stories, helped them memorize verses, played games, journeyed to Bethlehem, made crafts, laughed, cried, and hoped.  I have tried to teach Bible, but in the end I hope they will develop their own unique relationship with God and enjoy His good and gracious presence.  

All of these have involved God's heart, my heart, and a huge amount of creativity.  What did God call you to in 2017? More importantly, what do you think God is calling you to do in 2018?

The winds were scornful,
Passing by;
And gathering Angels
Wondered why
A burdened Mother
Did not mind
That only animals
Were kind.
For who in all the world
Could guess
That God would search out
Loneliness.
~Sr. M. Chrysostom, O.S.B. “The Stable” from Mary Immaculate: God’s Mother and Mine Marist Press, 1946.

Jesus is God’s wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed. Jesus’ suffering and death brought joy and life. His humiliation brought glory; his rejection brought a community of love. As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others.
Our own experience with loneliness, depression, and fear can become a gift for others, especially when we have received good care. As long as our wounds are open and bleeding, we scare others away. But after someone has carefully tended to our wounds, they no longer frighten us or others….We have to trust that our own bandaged wounds will allow us to listen to others with our whole being. That is healing.
— Henri Nouwen from Bread for the Journey

Home, it's said,
is the weightiest word
in any language--
one syllable with a density
impossible to deny
or quantify.
 
You, Jesus,
chose displacement
that we might know
at- home-ness--
chose absence from
your joy of Three
that we might
have it, too.
 
You left your home
to build for us
a home that cannot 

be destroyed:
peaceful...
protected...
permanent...
true.
 
All praises be to You.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
Galatians 4:4-5 ESV

Merry Christmas and a beautiful winter season!  May you see Him everywhere!

Happy Advent and Merry Christmas!

I came across this quote by G.K. Chesterton in blog post I was reading earlier this week. 

A mass of legend and literature, which increase and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox:

that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle.

Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded...

I mean that all the eyes of wonder and worship which had been turned outwards to the largest thing were no turned inward to the smallest...

It is true that the spiritual spiral henceforward works inwards instead of outwards, and in that sense is centripetal and not centrifugal.

The faith becomes, in more ways than one, a religion of little things.

- G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

We are about half through Advent and it really is a religion of small or little things. I think Chesterton should have added that it is about difficult things. It's about celebrating the difficult choices. God came down. Mary said yes. Joseph said yes. The shepherds went to find Him. The Wise Men went to find him. It is beauty in the midst of chaos. It's subversive.

There are Christmas lights shaped like a tree around Jochiwon train station. The squalor and dirt are there but so is this tree shape. This defiant shape stands in contrast to its surroundings. It's beautiful in the midst of Jochiwon traffic and the swarms of moving people. 

I want to be like that tree. I want to be a light in a dark place. I want to be like Mary and Joseph who said yes to the difficult and miraculous thing put before them.

In a world where people choose self-centered lives, where ugly things happen, where sin seems to spread unchecked, where daily assaults take their toll, we need to be able to point to the defiant beauty of a selfless life. We need seek the kingdom of God first. We need to put others first. In this way, we can proclaim the transcendent truth of something great than ourselves. 
​
We need to do more than just say Merry Christmas...

We need to say Merry Christmas and remember what the words actually mean. We’ve forgotten the weight that those words carry. We are saying we also unite with him in his death, his resurrection, and his call to make disciples.

If we really mean “Merry Christmas,” it will cost us something. It may cost us everything.

But am I really willing to make myself uncomfortable for the sake of the gospel?

I say “Merry Christmas,” yet I turn against Jesus again and again, forgetful and unrepentant, and twisted in my thinking. I lose my focus at Christmas. I spend more time with books than with Scripture. Don’t forgive like I should. Demand my own way. Stomp my feet. Get really bossy with God. Doubt. 

Man, have I doubted Him.

Christmas is not a greeting at the store.

Christmas is not a political platform.

Christmas — real Christmas — is not a political party, a certain set of traditions, a tree, a pile of gifts.

​It is not a happy little feeling for an hour at the church.

Christmas is all about Jesus. And it’s positively dangerous. in that we are owning the name associated with a holy God and His only Son. This alone should cause me to kneel — or fall flat on my face.

Here’s what Christmas really is:

Christmas is pick up your cross and follow,
and spend yourself on behalf of the hungry,
and act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.
It is The Way of the contrite and broken.
It is not my will, but Thine be done.
It is “blessed are the poor in spirit,”
and a rejoicing in our suffering.

It is salt and light and fruit of the Spirit.

It is "prepare him room!"

It’s a cup and broken bread.

It is the belief that Christ is our only hope, that heaven is our future home, and that we get to do His work right here, today, before we go there, someday.

Christmas is not a word for your greeting card, but a way to wrap your whole life around a cup and a cross.

It’s not an empty promise for prosperity, but investing our very lives in each other because of an empty tomb.

Merry Christmas is happily agreeing to “love your neighbor as yourself” — even when your neighbor looks an awful lot like your enemy, or someone who doesn’t believe the same things you do. Christmas also commands this: “Go and make disciples.”

It is a walk on water, hyssop on the lips, and a belief that Christ is the central figure of the most radical story to hit planet Earth.

Christmas believes that an enemy prowls, but that a King wins – that the battle isn’t over, but the war is already won.

I won’t deny it: Christmas People believe in crazy things. We believe that God’s Son descended from Heaven to Earth, not so we can have a party on December 25. But so He could die a horrific death and carry people’s sins away.

It’s scandalous, isn’t it?

Scripture whispers that scandalous truth that Jesus wants our ragged, rule-breaking hearts, these hearts that have spurned Him. There’s a word for it: grace. These are the foolish ways of the Christmas People. And so, then, I shall be a fool among them.

Today, I say to you with all the boldness I can muster: “Merry Christmas.”

And when those words cross my lips, I don’t even know the half of it.

​I don’t really know how much it cost my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Someday, I will.

Until then, I’ll say it to you, and I’ll say it out loud for the sake of the gospel:
Merry Christmas.

The Light of the World stepped down into our darkness.

And that changed everything.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Be comforted; the world is very old,
And generations pass, as they have passed,
A troop of shadows moving with the sun;
Thousands of times has the old tale been told;
The world belongs to those who come the last,
They will find hope and strength as we have done.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “A Shadow”

A couple of weeks ago I took the kids and a couple from our church Kongju to learn about the missionary heritage there.  Kongju is a small town in Korea that is steeped in tradition.  Most of the town looks like Korea did 30 to 40 years ago.  We listened to a Korean woman tell stories about the missionaries who came to the area, built a school, and made a deep impression on the community there.  We also visited the school which is beautifully situated on top of a hill. 

We took a walk.  It was a glorious autumn day.  We went up a hill to find the grave stones to four of the missionaries.  The site was beautifully surrounded by the forest around it and provided reflection on what he had seen, heard, and pieced together.  It was a quiet, hidden place where people can come to remember the saints who have died.  Why are there so few places that invite joy and sorrow at the same time? This space allowed for both.

We wandered the path towards the old missionary house. A three story building built in the 1900s must of been something to see for the Koreans. Their housing structures are so simple compared to what was built.  The stones and memorial plates held Bible verses. 

I wanted to a few pictures to capture the feast we have enjoyed.  It is a feast of history, reflection, and redemption.  “Stand here, this light is perfect,” they hear me say. They turn and pose accordingly. Tilting and grinning in what became a vertical theme. 

Coming down I had to say something to the boys. “Shhhh”, I remind them. “This is not a place for wild romping”. This is a place to remember. A place to pray. A place to feast on the goodness of the promise of heaven.  It is also a place to grieve.

We also visited an old Catholic church that afternoon.  The beauty of the fall intermingled with the stillness of the sanctuary. 

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

I watched my son Aidan sit in the sanctuary and pray for a moment.  I realize once again that God gives freely and abundantly to those who seek him.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

His presence that afternoon is a feast. The light cascading through the trees beams with His glory. The gentle rustle of the leaves sound as if He is brushing past them as He strolls hidden in front of our eyes. This place requires my attention. Artfully, and without effort, it demands it. I felt like the day had been built for me and those who participated.  Built for us. 
 
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

 The shadows of the past gave light that afternoon.  They told stories, created beauty, and ultimately, shared Jesus Christ, the living God.

The shadow’s the thing. 
If I no longer see shadows as “dark marks,” 
as do the newly sighted,
then I see them as making some sort of sense of the light.
They give the light distance;
they put it in its place.
They inform my eyes of my location here, here O Israel,
here in the world’s flawed sculpture,
here in the flickering shade of the nothingness
between me and the light.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
​

Andi Cumbo-Floyd encouraged me to write a love letter to myself about writing.  I liked the idea so much that I have actually done it here in this space.

Dear Me,

There are a few things I want you to remember about writing.  I know this fills you more than anything else you do, so it is wise to take care of this writing life and this writing space.

First, writing is about rhythm.  Everyone has to find the right time and right place for when they write.  Yours is in the afternoon.  Mornings are for children, breakfast, housework, errands, and teaching.  Afternoons are for reading and writing.  Evenings are for meals, sharing, children, and more reading.  Your daily rhythm revolves around family, teaching, reading, writing.  And this cycle is your beautiful rhythm.

This rhythm gives you rest.  All of the other activities pour into you to create beautiful things when you sit down and write.  You are learning this autumn how to take a rest and not be busy all the time.  Follow the rhythm and your will keep the rest that you so desperately need.

Writing is about you but it's also about others.  The beauty comes out in the words.  It is not exhausting work.  Words create wonder.  They capture ideas and images that God has deemed good.  Even when describing problems, eventually we come to a place where the words we have expressed start to heal, start to bless.  

It's beautiful work.  Redemption, blessing, and wonder are in the words.  Keep going!  Keep writing!  

"May you put yourself where you can see the magic on the page.  May you trust it will be there even if you don't see it.  May you let yourself listen and may you let yourself dance."
- Andi Cumbo-Floyd in Love Letters to Writers

 #LoveLetters2Writers