the answer of Christmas

The other day I was talking with my neighbour about Christmas. He knows I am a pastor, but he also doesn’t really buy into the whole Christian thing, as he puts it. He finds it hard to understand how he could possibly be responsible for other people’s actions, and so he finds it really hard to understand how one person could take away the curse of those actions.

If he is only responsible for his own actions, then he alone can pay for them.

I have to admit that this is a very difficult thing for our culture to understand. We find it very difficult to figure out how someone we have no connection to could possibly have any impact on our lives (for bad OR good). But you see, Christmas is a very personal answer to a very personal problem. Sure, we as a race have been separated from God and live in a very broken place because of our own stupidity. But we also bear the pain of this brokenness in our own individual lives. Regardless of how many times we tell ourselves that we are independent and bear no connection to events or things that happen around outside of us, we are hurt by things that happen to others, even if we have no connection to them.

We start to feel the other’s pain.

This happens in all sorts of different ways, and sometimes calls us to cry out to someone to listen, if not for our sake then for the sake of others. People who lose family members to a long battle of cancer, or a quick heart attack.

Marriages that break up five days before Christmas. Families that have to have two family dinners because certain people can’t be in the same room together.

All of these things compel us to ask someone to fix it. We wonder if God sees, if he knows, if he feels.

We wonder if he cares.

The thing about Christmas is that God cares enough to enter into it. God loves us enough to come and live with us under our own curse. He chooses to enter the prison of our own making, and set us free.

The wonder of Christmas is that God actually listens to our cries, and enters into our pain with us.

[images from anna szczekutowicz via flickr]

pray blood

“Prayer isn’t a time for holy thoughts, or purity, or carefully crafted phrases, she was discovering.  It’s a time for rage, for pain, for despair and hope.  A time to sit in the dirt and joy of everyday life, to purge herself of the questions that plagued her by flinging them at God.  Sometimes when she prayed, all she could do was sit there with her torso ripped apart and her guts in her hands.  When you pray you sweat blood.” – Laryn Kragt Bakker, Clutching Dust and Stars

There are times in life when we come up against a brick wall. When we are faced with a choice, and the things that God seems to be calling us to are really, really hard. When we know we have to forgive that person that really hurt us. When we know we have to apologise for the things we did so long ago. When we have to go back and face the pain that lies deep within us.

We usually think there are two options, we think we cannot do it on our own so we turn away and ignore the call of real life, or we take the challenge and plunge head first trying to do it on our own.

But what if there were a third option? What if we were able to recognise that we could not do it on our own, and then go and do it anyway? What if we were able to cry out to God and tell him we do not like what he has given us to do? What if we had the freedom to express the doubts, pains, fears, anxieties which lie deep in our souls?

What if, in the praying of these things to God they were taken away?

What if prayer really were a time “to purge [ourselves] of the questions that plague [us] by flinging them at God?”

glory of the cross

The Westminster Shorter Catechism begins with this question and answer.

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

But what is God’s glory?

Many people think of God’s glory as something that is out there. They may equate it with something like magnificence, or brilliance, or radiance. John Piper defines glory this way.

The public display of the infinite beauty and worth of God is what I mean by “glory,” and I base that partly on Isaiah 6, where the seraphim say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his—” and you would expect them to say “holiness” and they say “glory.” They’re ascribing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his—” and when that goes public in the earth and fills it, you call it “glory.” … So God’s glory is the radiance of his holiness, the radiance of his manifold, infinitely worthy and valuable perfections.

So God’s glory is primarily an appearance of being something greater than us. When Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the instructions on how to life and worship God, those who had been freed from Egypt turned on God and made their own idol to worship. God planned to destroy them and start over with Moses, but he changed his mind based on Moses’s intervention. Then he told Moses to take the people from the Mountain and lead them to the promised land. Moses begs God to come with them, and he agrees, and then Moses makes a strange request.

”Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.” ” (Exodus 33:18-23, NIV)

Here is Moses, on Mount Sinai, he has been enveloped by the cloud of smoke and the fire rising up from the top. He has been surrounded by the trumpet blasts and the very voice of God. He has experienced a visual and auditory display of the might of God, yet he asks to see God’s glory. Then God complies, and shows him his back.

“Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”” (Exodus 34:5-7, NIV)

What if this speech event, this explanation of the very name of the Lord, is the manifestation of God’s glory? What if God’s glory is not the incredible visual and auditory display but that this almighty God chooses to become a covenant partner of one nation? What if God’s glory is not his greatness, but that his greatness is not considered a barrier to a relationship with us?

But what if the glory of God is not his magnificent presence, or his almighty power, or his awesome authority? What if the glory of God is his service?

What if God’s glory is more like Mother Theresa than the Queen of England?

After all, if Jesus is the ultimate image of the fullness of God, then in Jesus we see glory manifest on the cross. To say that God’s glory is the radiance of his holiness only makes sense if you see the cross as a step toward Jesus’s glory. This is to see the humiliation and sacrifice of the cross as something that had to be endured in order to receive glory, rather than as something that in itself shows God’s glory.

Jesus’s glory did not come from cross, Jesus’s glory was the cross.

Jesus said he came to serve, and to give. We are called to serve, and to give. The trouble with thinking about God’s glory as something that is detached from his service is that we begin to think of our glory as something detached from service.

We begin to think that our service is something to get us glory when really our glory is in our service.

When the song rings out in Revelation that Christ deserves honour and glory and praise it is because he is the lamb who was slain, not because he was the lamb who was slain. The call to die to ourselves and to live to Christ is a call to give up on glory seeking behaviour and to serve.

If we see our service as something that lead to glory, how is that not glory seeking behaviour?

But if we see our service to God and others as full of glory, that brings glory to God because it allows others to see God’s true nature, his selfless, loving, and forgiving nature.

God’s chisel

There are things in our lives which we know are not really a part of God’s plan for us, but we hold onto them really tightly. The Bible tells us we are God’s masterpiece, and when we ask God to make us into an incredible original work we sometimes do not really want him to get rid of the things we need to lose.

Check out this skit from the skit guys (you may have to turn the sound up a bit).

Things are not easy when we ask to follow God, they may even get more difficult, but we know that God doesn’t make junk.

May you experience the freedom that comes from a God who works amazing things for, in, and through you.

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monday thanks

“[G]ifts have no significance in and of themselves. Gifts only have meaning in that they trace the outline of God’s heart.” (Ann Voskamp from A Holy Experience)

Since joining the Gratitude Community, I have been trying to savour the gifts that God has been giving me. Truth be told, it has been somewhat difficult to focus on the gifts. There are so many things that take up mental space and energy, it is difficult to create room for thanks.

It is difficult to make room for God.

Sometimes I feel as though I am a husband, run off his feet with work stopping only long enough in the kitchen to stuff a sandwich in my mouth as I head out the door to do something else, neglecting my spouse in the process.

I feel as though I am neglecting God in my daily work.

This may sound strange for someone who is a pastor. It may be easy to say that all my work is directed toward God. It would be easy to argue that everything I do is an act of devotion and love toward God, but that would simply not be true. There are too many days that go by when I give God the cursory peck on the cheek and completely ignore him for the rest. There are too many days when I miss his tender touch as I run about doing my own thing. Too many days I do not see his gifts.

This is why Mondays are a real gift for me now. Mondays I sit down and think about what God has given me, how he has blessed me, where he has touched me. Days when I can really experience his gifts.

21) the crunch of gravel on a well worn path

22) a bench during a long walk

23) reminders of our brokeness

24) the majesty of the Rocky Mountains

25) the calm of water

26) this ache in my soul

27) the convicting closeness of God

28) heated seats

29) a partner who will listen, even when my thoughts are incoherent

30) the grace of change