Christmastime is Here

There was an article in the paper the other day that said that since Christmas falls on a Sunday this year, many churches are cancelling their Sunday services in expectation of low turnout.

That kind of logic completely baffles me.

When I was a kid and Christmas fell on a Sunday, it didn’t mean we were less likely to go to church, it meant that we most definitely were going to have our behinds in the pew that Sunday. 

But let’s face it, Christmas is an odd time of the year and as the years come and go it seems to only gets stranger. 

People have been complaining about Christmas and materialism for decades beginning, perhaps, with Charlie Brown and one little Christmas tree among dozens of aluminum trees.  (Did they really make such things?)

For many people, Christmas is a sad time of the year.  This year’s Christmas episode of Glee had two characters arguing over whether their Christmas special should be only happy songs.  I, myself, have suffered through some gut-punchingly sad Christmases but also some gloriously happy ones. 

There was that Christmas, my senior year of high school, when I got everything I wanted (for the record, a mechanical kitty cat, a TI-85 calculator and tickets to see The Phantom of the Opera—which I think says everything you ever need to know about me).

The nature of Christmas though is to be both happy and sad.

We celebrate the birth of Jesus.  The sanctuary which had been clothed in blue during Advent is now white and pure.  Red poinsettias decorate the altar and while they are beautiful, an explosion of color, there is, in that juxtaposition of red on white, a reminder of what Jesus was born to do.

He was born to die.  He was born to shed his blood, to sacrifice himself for all who had lived and for all who ever will. 

And so every Christmas there must be conflicting emotions.  There is joy, sheer pleasure and joy at the birth of Christ.  Who among us, even those of us with the hardest hearts, doesn’t feel happiness over the birth of a child?  I like to think of Jesus, the baby, as a giggler, one quick to smile and let out big spit bubbles with each laugh.  I like to think of him, grabbing onto Joseph’s finger with his tiny hand, bonding with his human father.  Was there ever a child so loved?

Or so hated?

Remember Herod’s decree that all boys under the age of two should be killed?

Before Jesus said his first word, he was already hunted and his family on the run.

So it’s okay to feel conflicting emotions at Christmas because, as I said before, Christmas is, at its core, a story of both hope and suffering.  It is perhaps the only holiday that speaks to who we are, our essential selves, because we too are creatures who experience great joy and great heartache. 

That God so loved the world, He sent His only son …

Not just so that we would know Him but so we would know that He knew us.

Do Not Be Afraid!

Though I have never been as big a fan of the Lord of the Rings as I have of the Narnia series, I suppose I do feel a bit of kinship to Bilbo Baggins, the hero of The Hobbit.  Bilbo is as sensible as they come.  When Gandalf stops by to recruit him for an adventure, Biblo is hesitant.  Actually he flat out turns Gandalf down, but Gandalf being the crafty, manipulative wizard he is, doesn’t take no for an answer.  He plays to Bilbo’s curiosity and his pride.

At one point in the trailer to the new movie version of The Hobbit, Bilbo asks Gandalf, “Can you promise that I will come back?” 

And Gandalf replies, “No—and if you do, you will not be the same.”

Such is the case in every adventure.  We do not know how the adventure will end.  We only know that if we survive it, we will not be the same.  Faced with such knowledge, it may be easier to hole up in a little Hobbit hovel and leave the rest of the world on the other side of the door.  But if we’re willing to take a risk, the rewards could be amazing. 

But fear is our greatest stumbling block.

Fear immobilizes.

I think about the night I had my flat tire on the highway.  It was really such a great story, involving prayer, angels and the presence of God.  But the rest of the story that night was much darker.  While my Road Ranger/Angel got me to class, I still had the long, dark journey home to come.  I was riding on two bald tires with no spare this time.  It was late and when I pulled onto the highway, it began to rain.

I was terrified I would blow a tire.  I was so scared, I almost pulled over.  Now what would pulling over have accomplished?  Well, nothing.  It made no sense to pull over when my tires were still functioning, but the thought of what might happen nearly made me do something completely irrational.  Instead, I prayed without ceasing the entire ride home.

And I made it.

Fear paralyzes.

I’ve written many times this past year and a half about fear.  I’ve written how opening myself to God and agreeing to say “yes,” has allowed me to move past many fears.  I’m doing things I never would have dreamed of.  Someone once asked me if God had taken away the fear.  And I think my answer surprised her.

No, God has not taken away my fear.  If I had no fear, I’d have no need of faith.  I wouldn’t have to depend on God.  So I still fear, but I also listen and I follow when God motions me into the deeper end of the pool.

Why do I do these things?  Why do I roll over fear?  Because like Bilbo, I understand that there is more to life than the four walls that I call home.  There’s something else out there, something that calls to me and encourages me to be more than I could imagine. 

Think of the shepherds watching their flocks that night.  With all due respect to shepherds, they didn’t lead exciting lives.  They minded sheep.  They watched for predators.  Their days were all alike.  Again and again, nothing changed.

And then, that night, angels appeared.

They appeared to the lowest of the low.  They didn’t appear to men and women already looking for them.  They appeared to the Bilbo Baggins’ of the world, good, sensible shepherds.

And what was the first thing they said?  “Do not be afraid—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:10-12)

The angels then glorified God and then *poof* were gone.

Now if you’re a shepherd, what do you do?  I can almost see them, staring at the now empty sky with their mouths hanging open.  It’s silent.  No one dares to breathe.  What just happened?

And then one guy says, “We should go check it out.”

What do you do when confronted with angels or mysterious wizards?  What do you do when the challenge is set before you?  How do you ignore the chance to change your life forever even if it means leaving the safety and security of where you are?

You can’t ignore it.  You have to follow no matter where the journey leads you.

Such is life.  It is filled with heartache and bitterness.  It leaves scars and wounds so deep you think you’ll never recover.  It’s nothing that you can hide from.  Agreeing to take the journey is not so much about abandoning fear as it is agreeing to hope.

We take the journey because we hope.

And faith rests in hope.

A Voice in the Wilderness

A few years ago, there was a very popular grammar book (sort of seems like an oxymoron doesn’t it) entitled Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss.  The title itself emphasized the importance of punctuation.  Does the panda on the cover eat shoots and leaves or does he bring a gun to the party, does he eat, shoot and leave?

We see some interesting punctuation placement in the Bible as well.  In Isaiah 40:3: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare a way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”

But in Mark 1:3 the same phrase is rewritten slightly and changes the meaning completely.  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

See the difference?  In Isaiah, the voice itself is not in the wilderness.  In Mark, the voice is most definitely residing in the wilderness, which as Biblical scholars will tell you, was an effort to link the passage to John the Baptist who, of course, lived in the wilderness.

Regardless of the changes made in Mark’s gospel, and the reasons for the change, I find the idea of a voice in the wilderness, crying out, to be much more moving.

It’s moving because we all live in the wilderness.  We do not live as John the Baptist did.  We are not dressed in animal skins (well most of us aren’t).  We aren’t hunters and gatherers, living off the land.  But we do live in a metaphorical wilderness, a cold, sometimes desolate, barren and lonely place.  It’s a place of struggle and suffering. 

Imagine a desert as far as the eye can see with the heat rippling in waves off the ground.  This place is our wilderness, a place of hunger and thirst.  And the scary part is that it is a place of mirages, a place to be fooled, a place to wind up like the cartoon characters, drinking sand we think is water.

But then out of this wilderness is a voice crying out, “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

What does this voice tell us?  Oh, many, many things.

It tells us we are not alone.  That has always struck me first about that line “a voice crying out in the wilderness,” that we are not alone.  There is someone else out there, someone who knows something about the world that we do not, a voice that even if the only thing it said was “hello” would still offer us more hope than we could dare to imagine.

But this voice offers something more.  Not only does it tell us we’re not alone.  It tells us that someone is coming.  Please note that the voice doesn’t tell us to go to the Lord, to try and find Him, the voice tells us that He is coming to us in the midst of our suffering and abandonment.  He is coming.

How beautiful.

A voice crying out …

You are not alone.

The Lord is coming.

There's a Snake in my Boot

One of my favorite lines from Toy Story 2 is Woody’s exclamation at discovering all the toys and accessories connected to the Sheriff Woody brand.  He is overjoyed and overwhelmed to discover that the world he thought he knew is so much larger.  Though he loves his owner, Andy and his friends like Buzz Lightyear and Bo Peep, it’s as if Woody has finally found his family.  He has a horse, Bullseye, and a new friend Jessie.

He has a whole world created just for him.  And when he explores that world he finds a toy boot with a spring loaded snake.  And here comes the line, delivered with perfect pausing by Tom Hanks:  “Oh look, there’s a snake … in my boot.”  It’s silly and I don’t know why I love the line so much.  Again I think it’s how Tom Hanks says it.  It’s cute.

I was thinking of that line today when I was walking the labyrinth at church.  I’m used to having things jump out at me or run from me.  I’ve startled my share of rabbits and lizards and birds and they’ve startled me right back.

But today was the first time I had seen a snake.

At first I thought it was a lizard, rising up out of the grass and slinking onto the six inch high fencing that marks the path.  But then I noticed the head was too flat and too round for a lizard and then I noticed the body was way too long.  The snake was only about a foot and a half long.  It was mostly black with a gray mottled head.

It looked harmless, but snakes in Florida scare me, so I kept my distance and just watched it.

It really was a beautiful thing.  At first I wanted there to be some message there.  Here I am walking a path, trying to be there with God and there’s a snake preventing me from getting to the center of the labyrinth.

But the more I watched the snake, the more that connection faded.  The snake was beautiful and lithe.  It rose up, peering up over the fencing and then twisted its way through a Simpson Stopper, hiding for a second before moving on through the path.

Because of the snake’s size and because of the fencing, the snake was really forced to “walk” the labyrinth with me.  It could only move in the same spiral pattern I was moving in.  And I wondered if snakes could think, what this one would be thinking. 

I’m sure the snake didn’t feel trapped, but I’m sure he probably wondered why he seemed only able to move in one direction.  Perhaps that’s why he stopped and climbed the shrub, so he could see just where he was.

And then, of course, I started thinking about perspective.   How are we similar to this poor snake?  Are we trapped by repetitive behavior?  Are we lost in a maze and don’t even realize it?  What does it take to change our behavior when it seems like we’re in rut, when we keep making the same mistakes over and over?

It takes perspective.  It takes focus.  It takes centering ourselves to God and allowing Him to guide us.

In the end that was what both the snake and I were doing, though the snake couldn’t have known.  We were both moving to the center of the labyrinth, searching for God.

Giant Yellow Flashlights

Henry is on an adventure.  We know this not just because he is headed deep into a darkened, abandoned, mine shaft, but because he has brought with him his trusty flashlight and not just any flashlight, but a giant, yellow Eveready, the kind with a battery seemingly large enough to power a small car.

When I was watching this episode of my new favorite show Once Upon a Time a few weeks ago, I felt an immediate kinship to the boy Henry because of that giant, yellow flashlight.  Months ago, I told the children at church during a Kid’s Talk, that I own many, many flashlights and I told them the reason was because I was afraid of the dark.  And while that statement was 100% true, my fascination with flashlights comes from more than just a fear of the dark, it comes from a love of adventure.

Every child is born curious.  Curiosity leads to exploration and while that exploration can sometimes be dangerous, we only grow when we explore, when we test boundaries and see what lies on the other side of the woods.

In Once Upon a Time, Henry doesn’t have to seek adventure; he lives it, unwillingly drawn into a fairy tale that has gone horribly wrong.  While the town he lives in, Storybrooke, Maine, seems like every other small town in America, Henry knows it is very different. His adopted mother is the evil queen from Snow White.  His teacher is Snow White.  His therapist (because really who wouldn’t need one at this point) is Jiminy Cricket.  Every person in the town, with the exception of Henry and his biological mother, is a character from the fairy tales trapped in an enchantment that has caused them to forget who they are.

Henry takes it upon himself to try and free the residents of Storybrooke by reminding them who they really are.  He is relentless, almost obnoxious in this quest.  He will do anything, lie, run away, cry, laugh, smile, and plot to free them.  It’s a difficult task because you can’t just go up to someone and tell them they’re Snow White.  Really.  No really, you’re Snow White—and not be thought crazy.  But Henry doesn’t give up even when the journey takes him to some truly frightening places.

When I was a kid, my thirst for adventure never got much farther than the backyard.  Lucky for me there was an abandoned hotel that sat smack up against our yard.  Those darkened windows, padlocked doors and burnt siding were a siren call for adventuresome children—namely those not named Kendra.  I wanted in the hotel.  I wanted to see what was inside, but I was scared to death of getting in trouble.

So I called my friend (we’ll call him Andrew) and told him I had found a way inside.  That was mostly a lie on my part.  I hadn’t really found a way, but I was sure Andrew would.  And sure enough, about five minutes after arriving at my house, he found a way inside the hotel through the rotted out cellar doors.  He took a candle down into the basement with him and I remember wishing he would take a flashlight, but when it came to adventures, flashlights were my thing and candles were Andrew’s.

He disappeared into the shadows.

A few minutes later, he raced back up the steps screaming.

“What?  What?” I asked him.

He gulped for breath and then started laughing.  “I sat on a frog,” he said.

I never made it inside the hotel, much to my parents’ relief I think.  The hotel was torn down a few years later.  And I had to be content to listening to Andrew’s tales of wonderment.

I wonder if I’ve changed any since childhood.  I think that I still long for adventure, for quests, for discovering new things, but I’m terrified too.  I wonder if I had been alive when Jesus was alive, if I had seen him collecting disciples and followers, would I have dropped everything and followed him or would I have worried about what my family would say, or who would take care of my cat while I was gone.

Quests and adventures come in all sizes from sneaking into spooky old buildings to saving a town from an evil curse.  And we have to weigh the call.   Perhaps trespassing doesn’t past the test, but surely saving thousands of people does.

I have my own giant, yellow, flashlight.  It’s sitting on the desk next to my computer.  It gets so little use it’s more of a decorative object.  It’s also a reminder.

To be ready.

Tent Pegs and signs of God's Awesomeness

One of the stories I still remember from Sunday school when I was a teenager is the story of Deborah and a woman named Jael. 

Deborah is a Judge.  She is the leader of Israel and a prophet.  Israel is being oppressed by the Canaanites and when the Israelites cry out to God to help them, God responds through Deborah.

Deborah calls to Barak and tells him that God is commanding him to take ten thousand men and meet King Jabin’s army led by a man named Sisera.  God then promises to deliver Sisera into Barak’s hand.

But for whatever reason, Barak isn't particularly anxious to rush into a battle, even one commanded to him by God, so he decides to test Deborah and God in Judges 4:8: “If you go with me, I will go: but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” 

In other words, Barak is saying to Deborah to put her money where her mouth is.  If she really believes Sisera’s army will be defeated, then she should have no problem coming with them. 

Deborah agrees to go with him but for his lack of faith, she tells him this in the very next verse: “I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”

That woman turns out to be Jael.

Jael is the wife of Heber the Kenite and since her clan has peace with King Jabin, when Sisera’s army is defeated, he seeks solace in Jael’s tent.  She gives no indication that she is his enemy.  She gives him milk to drink.  She puts him to bed, covers him up and seems to soothe him.

And then she takes a tent peg and a hammer and drives the peg through Sisera’s skull while he sleeps.  (Judges 4:17-21)

The Old Testament is filled with these sorts of stories.  From the plagues of Egypt to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, to the fabled walls of Jericho, the world of the Old Testament is a savage, frightening place.  It’s such a bloodbath, I have to wonder how anyone choosing sides, could have chosen anyone but God to stand behind.

Which is why the reading today from Isaiah surprised me in its tone.  Isaiah 40:1-2 says, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term ….”

And then later these words in Isaiah 40:5: “Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Do those words sound familiar?  They sing for me.  I can’t hear those words without hearing them sung.  Handel used them in his Messiah.  We hear them every Christmas. 

In the midst of stories filled with one horror after the next, we have Isaiah, a book of promises, that in the darkest times, our God is less a wrathful, vengeful God and more a God of redemption and salvation and restoration.  He is both all-powerful—no enemy can stand against Him—and all-loving—there is none kinder, none gentler, none more forgiving.

It sometimes hard for me to see that the violent, wrathful God of the Old Testament is the same gentle, loving, forgiving God of the New Testament.  But Isaiah, I think, acts as a bridge.  God is all these things and more.  He is an awesome God.

Lost in the Shelves

Recently, author Ann Patchett opened a bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee.   It used to be that opening a bookstore, even one that was financed by a well-respected author like Patchett, wouldn’t be news.  But in an age when large bookstore chains like Borders are closing their doors, Patchett’s store, named Parnassus Books, is making headlines.

Patchett decided to open a bookstore in Nashville after discovering that the city itself didn’t have a bookstore other than several university stores.  It’s shocking to me that a city as large as Nashville could be without a bookstore and it saddens me even though I myself have contributed to this scenario.

I haven’t been to a bookstore in months.  These days I do all my shopping online either buying digital copies on my Kindle or physical copies off of amazon.com.  It used to be only a few years ago that I would make a trip to Barnes and Noble three or four times a week.  Even after I purchased a Kindle, I would still make that trip to B&N, bringing my Kindle with me.

Eventually my addiction to Barnes and Noble waned.  I wish I could say that I miss it, but I don’t.  Sometimes I get wistful for the days when I would peruse the shelves and find a book that I hadn’t been looking for but couldn’t live without.

Even though I have moved on from physical bookstores, it still distresses me that they are disappearing at an alarming rate.  I worry especially about small towns who are thrilled to have a Walmart, but have no place to get lost in among thousands of books.  Even libraries are having a hard time with funding these days.

I grew up in a small town.  We had a library and one bookstore, a small used bookstore named First Edition.  I still think that name’s priceless.  About once a week, or once every two weeks, we would make the hour drive to the mall and visit the tiny bookstore there, Walden Books.  And about once a year or every two years, we made the trip down I-95 to Florida, stopping at the same Little Professor that first night at the hotel.

Most of the books I owned as a kid were used books that I purchased or traded for at First Edition.  School Book Fairs, much more than they are now, were precious things.  Having so many new books right there at school—there is nothing better in all the world than new book smell.

The town library was a good size—it even had a second floor—but it was never large enough to get lost in.  That was what I wanted as a child.  I wanted a library or a bookstore that I could get lost in, that I could hide in, that I could find a nook to curl up in and read without worry of anyone bothering me.

It wasn’t until we moved to Ohio when I was sixteen that I got my first taste of the large chain bookstore that I could get lost in.  And a few years after that, I would wind up working in one.

Now those stores are dying and I’m at a loss as to how to save them.

Though I love the convenience of having a Kindle, I worry about a world where we are beholden to technology.  My books, my own written words, even my photographs do not exist as hard copies.  They are stored on technology that goes obsolete every few years.  Think about it.  A few months ago, I wrote about seeing a Fore-Edge Bible that was around 400 years old.  I personally own a Jules Verne book that was published and printed in the 19^th century.  We have books that are hundreds of years old, but I can’t even find a computer to play a floppy disk from ten years ago.

I worry that the death of the bookstore says something less about how we interact with the written word and says something more about how we interact with each other.  Places like Barnes and Noble thrived, not just because of their large selection of books, but because they offered a place for the community to gather. 

Years ago, people met in churches and community centers, at lodges and libraries.  Then they migrated to bookstores.  Both young and old gathering to play chess, to hold political debates, to finish math homework, to be tutored, to date, to write that first novel, to linger over a steaming cup of a coffee.

Where will people meet now?

I can only hope they would head back to church, but that is probably unlikely in the near future.  I can only hope that people will not substitute real human interaction with Facebook, email or cellphones.  Because we need human interaction.  We need to meet with people face to face.  The world is far too big and far too lonely to do it any other way.

And so I pray for Ann Patchett’s bookstore.  And I continue to have my own dreams of returning to my hometown one day and opening up a bookstore there.  I pray that people will continue to hunger for books.  I pray that everyone will one day know what it feels like to hold an old book in your hand, run your fingers along the brittle pages and tremble with this knowledge: Carlos Ruiz Zafon wrote in The Shadow of the Wind, “Every book … has a soul.  The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it.  Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”