Memory and Hope

It was Christmas Day and the morning news shows were on the television. Meredith Viera was interviewing Rick Warren, the pastor of the Saddleback Church in California. Warren spoke of how his family asks two questions on Christmas Day: what am I grateful for from the year past and what will I give Jesus for his birthday in the year ahead?

I loved these questions and I began to think about the answers for myself. I found myself enumerating things like--opportunities to practice fearlessness and undaunted courage, chances to know the pain of grief and the powerful ways that people I've lost have touched my life, moments of sheer faith when I trusted so completely that all I needed was for God to show the next step; loving parents who take their wayward daughter in and love her no matter what!; flailing that reminds me of my humanity and calls me to live more as the spiritual being having a human experience that I am; forgiveness from special friends who suffer the flailing with me and still remain on the journey when they could have easily run away; new perspectives; lesson of love and the chance to wake up!

The Biblical narrative is full of stories that speak to the value of memory. The Hebrews understood memory and hope as inextricably linked. Their hope for the future was founded on the very testaments of faith that God had given them in the past. What, then are your memories of 2009 and how will they inform your 2010? What gift will you give God this next year?

I am resolving to give up my proclivity toward competition! I'm notorious for that! I am resolving to have a little more faith than last year and to know that God provides everything we need and more for us when we just let go and enjoy the journey. I am going to strive to keep waking up to the lessons God is seeking to teach me, to keep growing and to hope that somehow my faithfulness will make a mark on my tiny corner of the world.

Christmas always brings a time of new beginnings so this year may we not forget the people that are important to us and the lessons God wants us to employ in our living. May we be faithful and faith-filled souls who use our memories of God as both comfort and fuel for our hopeful living in the days ahead! Amen.

The Birthing of Love

Every year we celebrate the Christmas season, we do so with our regular traditions. Some of us traveling, some staying home to await Santa's arrival. Most of us focusing on family while others focus on the family we've created wherever we may be. I would venture to guess that all of us focus at one point or another on the traditional Christmas story.

In Luke's story, we are told about the shepherds hurrying off to find the baby and there he was "lying in the manger." Matthew reports simply that Mary gave birth to a son and they called him Jesus. Neither Mark nor John really focus on Jesus' birth and thus from these four stories we get a picture of this family in a stable with a baby resting peacefully in a little manger.

I can't shake the thought that this wonderful, picturesque family experience isn't at all the way it happened. My more realistic mind's eye portrait is of a family in a cave since that was where the people tended to live in those days. Maybe a cave is wishful thinking on my part. Maybe they really were outside in the cold. I do think it was cold as desert nights do tend to get fairly chilly. The joyful images just aren't there with me. I think of a woman in tears and not tears of joy. I think of her sheer pain! Her wonder as to when the pain will stop and why God did this to her! I think of screams and lots of them--almost the blood curdling kind. I think of poor Joseph who likely had to play midwife to a woman he loved and whose pain he could not silence. I think of the whole situation being so far less than the ideal we've created for our traditions. And yet, it is equally as beautiful because in all of these painful and wrenching moments, love at its essence is being birthed.

Love says the scripture, "is patient, kind, not envious or boastful, not proud, rude or self-seeking, not easily angered, not a record-keeper, rejoicing with the truth, protecting, trusting, hoping and persevering." I have to think though that before we get to experience the picturesque qualities of love, we like the holy family must go through the pangs of birth.

I've run into so many people this season who haven't known the Christmas spirit, (I include myself this year). The things of our lives may be causing us to experience flailing, painful birth-like pangs. But, this I know. Those trying experiences of our days, the stresses brought our way, are simply gifts of birth that lead us to the idyllic picture of love at work in our lives.

So my prayer for each of us this week, whether we are able to claim the spirit of Christmas or not, is that we will claim the spirit of love! Happy Christmas to all and love to everyone! Amen.

Rejoice!

"Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice!" So said the pastor of the Mount Pleasant Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant, SC, yesterday as he read the scripture and talked with his congregants about tapping into God's strength. "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice!" So said the pastor of First Baptist Church in Indian Trail, NC when I flipped through the channels last evening.

Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when there are 12 warring conflicts going on in our world? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when Osama bin Laden and his groupies are on the loose? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when we discover that a loved one's life has been lost? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when a significant relationship has broken or wounded us at our core? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when our business is not making money and we are afraid of being dependent on our children or our parents? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when we've been diagnosed with a physical disability or potentially fatal disease? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . when our hopes show no indication of manifestation? Rejoice in the Lord always . . . seriously?!

Seriously! So suggests the Apostle Paul who found himself in jail experiencing all manner of suffering. It was he who wrote those words "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice!"
What Paul understood that is so hard for we humans to grasp in the face of our trials is that just shifting our focus to what is good changes us. But to shift that focus we have to have a belief that God is able and not just able but more than able to deal with whatever war, relationship, disease, financial challenge, etc. may come our way. We have to believe when everything around us looks impossible that God is the one who makes the possible palpable! God can do it! We can trust God! God is a God of Hope and a God of Peace! If we know that and claim that, then we have only to celebrate that!

I don't know what struggles are yours in this advent season. I do know my own way too well and I realize that if I will rejoice in all things, then somehow not only will I be transformed but I'll be able to move beyond my struggles to that place that will transform others and together we will find that the joy of the Lord is our strength!

May we indeed, "Rejoice in the Lord always and again . . . rejoice!" Amen.

The Gift of Peace

I feel certain that my friend must get tired of hearing it from me. Regularly I affirm to that person how much peace enters my life because of that person's presence in my life. What I mean by that is that first of all I feel a tranquility in my spirit but that tranquility is really only reflective of deeper gifts provided by the friend.

The Hebrew word Shalom and its varied meanings reflect what I mean. In our friendship there is a safety, a security unlike the conditional gifts that we tend to offer each other in most interactions that we as humans have. Shalom suggests that there is welfare, prosperity, fortune and friendliness. Shalom suggests a lack of hostility, equality, fairness, a lack of conflict and simply a healthy relationship. My friend might question these sometimes but wrapped up in peace, I would submit, is a level of forgiveness that allows us to see each other with God's eyes. This to me is the greatest gift of a peace-filled friendship--one that lets you be who you are, struggle with your own demons and yet know that you have a safe place to fall Peace reminds us that the person won't turn away from us but is choosing to be present for us and allow us the same opportunity to provide peace for them.

This is the week of peace in the advent season. This is the week that we begin celebrating that facet that an infant brought to our world. It is the week when we can look at all of the fractured relationships around the world-the wars, the separation, the lack of love and appreciation for other humans and be called to realize that we can offer a serenity that is profound. Our ending the conflicts around the globe aren't about engaging in war or even signing on with well meaning peace centered organizations. Peace will come in our world when we learn to act in relationship as my friend acts toward me--with equality, fairness, provision of safety to be our flailing selves and still be loved and accepted. Peace will come when we project our calm, serene ways of being friendly to EVERYONE around us and when we honor them as the God-created humans that they are with the respect that they deserve. When we pay it forward by changing ourselves first, we find that we can make a difference in a life that will in turn pay it forward.

In this week of peace, I am grateful for my friend. I am grateful for the lessons that my friend's life teaches me. I have not lived a life of peace but I am reminded this week that we are called to strive for this and so with hope I look to live toward peace and pray that together our peace-seeking lives will begin to transform our war-ridden world simply because we are reminded of the testament of a baby's life some 2000 years ago.

Peace be with us all this day and in each day hence. Amen.

Questions of Hope

This particular week of every year in the Christian Church is celebrated not only as the first week in Advent but specifically as the week of hope. I have noted before that the Hebrews understood hope as a waiting in anxious anticipation. If that is true, then they had to be waiting for some thing in particular. As a result, this week is also known as the week of expectation in some traditions. An expectation suggests that there is a specificity in what one is hoping/waiting for. As we know, the expectation on the part of the Hebrew people was that a Messiah was coming. They knew this because a prophecy had been made that a Messiah would come to save the people. Thus, this is also known in some traditions as the week of prophecy.

These words hope, expectation and prophecy are curious words to me. We use them as separate entities but I wonder and am wondering out loud with with you, if they weren't meant to be used together. They build on each other. First there was a prophecy that people chose to believe and then they turned toward expecting with hope (that kind of "on the edge of their seats' anticipation") that the prophecy would come to fruition.

For them the prophecy was clear. There would be a Messiah. Then they inserted their own perspectives of what that Messiah would be like. They came to agree that he would be a great warrior king coming to fight off neighboring nations and ensure their security. Never did they dream that he would be a Messiah for their souls nor did they imagine an infant born in a stable or a cave as was more likely.

Somewhere along the way of our living, we have forgotten that prophets still exist even in the old fashion kind of way. There are people with that spiritual gift who know what God tells them about a variety of things. But we don't tend to believe them because we are too scared of that ancient idea. Even people who understand that they have this gift are often scared of it because they don't want to confuse what God tells them with their own way of being in the world. It makes me wonder what God is telling us that we refuse to listen to or what God is telling us that we know in the pit of our stomachs is pure truth but we have this incessant need to run it by other humans who don't have the gifts we do instead of just trusting God and the way that he's gifted us to know this truth for ourselves.

So my first questions for us in this week of prophecy are: what promises has God made for you? Are they promises that you can allow yourself to trust? Are they promises that you can allow God to unfold for you in his own way just as he unfolded the coming of the Messiah in a way the Jews could never have fathomed?

Expectations tend to get us in trouble because we decide that something will be a certain way. It got the Hebrews in trouble and some were so caught up in the belief that the Messiah would be a warrior king that they refused to accept that Jesus was the Messiah. So it seems that the call of the Christmas story and as we prepare for its advent, is to believe in the prophecy but to take care to not paint the picture of its happening for God. Simone Weil once wrote, "in what concerns divine beings, belief is inappropriate, only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God. God calls us to expectations. God calls us to expect that He will fulfill his prophecies but God also calls us to detach and let God unfold the picture of his prophecy as he designs.

So my second group of questions for you are: What are you expecting this season about the promises God has offered? Are your expectations fair? Are you able to let go if they don't pan out the way you hope?

Hope is that certainty that is worthy of God. It is that thing that says, "God you've made a promise to me. I know you are faithful to fulfill that promise, that you don't need my help in designing it or implementing it but you do need me to claim the assurance that it is coming, to practice gratitude for it even before it shows up tangibly and to honor your word by trusting in what you say!"

I was visiting in the hospital one day and I remember the woman that I visited talking about how God was so faithful. She began to tell me how she regularly thanked God for things he hadn't even done yet, "Thank you God for the parking space that you are about to give me." I realized that what she had done was to hope. She had said to God, "I'm not asking you for this thing because I know you know that I need it and that you are faithful to provide for all of my needs. So I'm just going to thank you for the gift of the need that I see as if you've already fulfilled it." That is the certainty worthy of God. That is hope.

Can you claim hope that God's promises for your life are sure? Can you expect God to be the faithful God he is without defining for him what the picture must look like on your terms? Can you wait with anxious anticipation and gratitude?

May this week of hope call us to accept with joy the prophecies God has for each of us! May we expect them with detachment! May we await their arrival with anticipation and with gratitude! May we have the same perspective as we celebrate the advent of the Christ Child! Amen.