Merry Christmas. Today I would like to speak to those who just do not feel all that merry. I'm just going to lay it all on the line today. I hope that is okay.
For the last few months, it has been harder and harder for me to write. Hope deferred has made this heart sick and shame has surrounded me as I should know better. I have been in what I call my Elijah season. Hiding in a cave, going through the motions day to day, taking care of the people and things entrusted to me but my heart has not been in it.
I sat down this morning, after a night of thoughts whirling through my mind. After days of pondering so much about the Christmas story.
You see, I have been on the verge of walking away. The enemy has played with my mind and emotions so much in the last few months. The messages repeatedly taunting me, "you were not good enough", "you are unlovable", "what a mess you have made", "there is no hope', "what is the use?" "look at all you did and where did it get you?", "there is no justice" and "even God has abandoned you".
It has crossed my mind on more than one occasion in the last few months to completely walk away from organized religion. Shocking? Maybe to most, but I'd be willing to venture that if truly honest, many people have felt the same way at some time.
It has even crossed my mind to completely abandon my faith. The enemy's message, "this faith that you have clung to has done you no good" and "all things work together for those you love the Lord, except me".
In the last few years I have seen the righteous fall, I have seen the self professed Godly, do the most ungodly things. I have seen those that claim Christianity ruin the lives of so many without the blink of an eye and it has made me sick and weary and question this .god that I have served. Does he care? Is he really there? How could He allow all of this and so much more?
So I entered this Christmas season trying to fill the void with all the trees and trimmings, baubles and bows, greenery and gifts. And yet nothing seemed to lift the sadness that has overwhelmed me. Please do not misunderstand me, I am more than grateful for all that I have. I love my children dearly and the Lord has allowed me a good job and a decent home, yet in these last days I feel so much regret for wasted potential and so much sorrow for what might have been.
I have sat down several times to write to you what the Lord has been speaking to me in the last few days. Over and over in my thoughts and mind he has brought to me just how much we have gotten wrong. I'm not just talking the commercialism we will all admit has gotten out of hand, but of how we have lightened and diminished the enormity of the sacrifices made for the redemption of man.
How it was not a silent night in Bethlehem. How Mary was just a young frightened girl risking her life for a plan set in motion thousands of years before her birth. How Joseph made a choice to do the right thing when he had other choices. How Jesus left the glory and splendor of Heaven to come to Earth as the most helpless of creatures, mercifully given the gift of not remembering all that the planned entailed for just a little while. How the angels first appeared to the lowliest of an entire population to show that the plan of redemption and salvation was for all. Not just kings and queens, the educated and the lofty but for the meek simple man, men whom the whole world would pass by as insignificant. Men who spent a life of loneliness and solitude.
I have started four attempts at a Christmas message. Each is a few paragraphs in length, some a little more, but getting the words adequately on the page has been more than a struggle.
Last night in between writing I read several other blogs I follow, read a couple of devotionals and even listened to a sermon by a friend's pastor. Each with the same theme as the thoughts that have consumed me for days. We have it so wrong.
This morning I attempted two more posts and still could not get through them. Frustrated, I arose from my perch and went to linger in a hot bath. As is my ritual so often I took my mobile device with me and while soaking, I listened to last Sunday's sermon from one of my favorite preachers.
Sometimes God does intervene. If I had not slowed down for that bath, if I had gotten right into the hustle and bustle of making cookies I would not have stopped to listen to this very real, very timely, sermon that apparently I needed to hear this morning.
Perhaps some of you are where I have been this morning. there must be a reason, huh? And so today, leave you with someone else's thoughts. 30 minutes of your time is all I ask, I promise it will be worth it. Merry CHRISTmas dear friend. May the enormity of the price paid for you overwhelm you this Christmas season.
Good morning readers, all four of you. I'm sitting here this morning among the unfamiliar. Oh I have my fire going in the tiny little fireplace and I have my worship music in my ear buds so I do not disturb the children but the only familiar icons this Christmas are the steady Georgia rain pouring on the roof and the familiar brown elixir in my cup. Now, don't jump to any conclusions. In my cup this morning in the place of my usual cream laden coffee is a cocoa cola, also as iconic and as familiar to Georgia as peaches and peanuts.
Scattered about are a few other familiar items, my great grandmother's churn and various pottery jugs adorn the hearth, my aunt's antique tea table serves as a side table and my great grandmother's crescent side table is my new entry table. The only piece of furniture from my past life , my hall tree, creamy yellow, tall in the entrance of my hallway, is the only link to my previous life in this tiny little living room. The first Christmas gift bought for me by my husband for the new house we had dreamed of for so long and finally built in 2003. Every other piece is new to me. Even the tree and its trimmings are new this year. Once again the precious keepsake ornaments have been carefully and loving boxed away. It is still too painful to even unwrap them from their cocoons of dainty white tissue paper.
New furnishings, a new tiny, cozy cottage of a house, new decorations and as I sit here in the dimly lit morning I cannot help but ask the question, "how did I get here?'. Not just to this little house, but to this life that it now appears is mine. A life as unfamiliar to me as the surroundings in which I find myself. This was not the plan.
My "plan" was to watch my children grow up in that house along side their father. My plan including many family Christmases in that big 3000 square foot house, built by my design and with alot of the work being done ourselves. The plan included the two of us sitting in our porch swing watching children and grandchildren come and go, through the years to come. But Satan had a plan as well.
And so it has been all this season, my mind and heart have been focused on the unfamiliar. The things that come up into your life to disrupt the normal. The detours that take us down uncharted paths. The chaos that interrupts our plans.
In my mind's eye, I see poor Joseph. I see him sitting there in the dark, quiet of the stable. Mary lies at his feet, asleep from exhaustion in the soft clean straw he has just gathered for her. Cradled in her young, tiny arm, wrapped in scraps of cloth, sleeping soundly, seemingly and mercifully unaware of his destiny, the son of God, the Savior of the world, Emmanuel...God with us.
I would imagine this was a sleepless night for Joseph. The very presence of God, entrusted to his care. The look on his face one of excitement, bewilderment, fear, amazement, worry and worship all at the same time. I imagine his thoughts to be "how did I get here? "This was not the plan'
Suddenly, inconveniently just months before, his plans were interrupted and a new plan began.
" an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy spirit"" Matthew 1:20
A contemporary Christmas song was written years ago, it has always been one of my favorites. It's lyrics make the characters of the Christmas story seem so much more human. We tend to take our Biblical characters and give them superhero status. We forget that Joseph, the man, was just that...a man. And if Mary were here today in the same circumstances, DFACS surely would have started an investigation by now.
The lyrics to this simple song remind me that the stories we are so detached from involved humans just like us, people with doubts, fears, dreams, hopes, insecurities and chaos.
"why me? I'm just a simple man of trade
why Him, with all the rulers in the world?
Why here, inside this stable filled with hay?
Why her, she's just an ordinary girl?
Now I'm not one to second guess what angels have to say,
but this is such a strange way to save the world"
I identify with this Joseph, the one sitting there with his head in his hands trying to absorb and make sense of all that has transpired around him. I imagine it all felt so surreal to him. He had a plan. He had chosen his bride, as was customary to his people and was waiting out the time of courtship until the day of the wedding feast. In the midst of his planning and celebration, what seems like a sucker punch to the gut. His chosen one is pregnant, it is not his child. How did I get "here"? This was not the plan.
I will never be known as the mother who did everything right and that's okay, as long as my children remember me as the mother who did the right thing. It has not been easy. To tell the truth it has been down right hard. Every morning instead of having help to get two kids out the door, its just me. Every month, instead of two salaries to pay all the bills and provide for my little family, its just mine (and while there is a tiny amount of support that comes in each month, it is not nearly enough to touch our monthly expenses). Every time one of the kids over steps their boundaries, it is I alone, who determines the consequences of their actions and when they are sick it is I alone who nurses them back to health. Now I don't say all of that to gain sympathy or put myself on a pedestal. I am in far better shape than that of some single parents on the same path. I say it simply to say this, sometimes in life our road is chosen for us and our plan is altered not of our own choosing. But like Joseph, it is the man or woman who does the right thing that has my respect.
Joseph had a choice in all of this. His circumstances had been altered without him lifting a finger. Nothing he had done had brought him to this place. He could have walked away, he could have called off the wedding, for that matter, he could have had Mary killed, her punishment for betrayal could have been death. Yet poor Joseph was a Godly man, a man who when the Holy Father spoke to him, in the form of the angel Gabriel, chose to do what the Father asked.
And here tonight in this dark, cold, damp stable, smelling of animals and without what little comforts he would have had at home, the enormity of his earthly purpose must have shaken Joseph to his core. Can you imagine the weight that was on Joseph that night? I can. I can imagine just how overwhelming it all must have been for him. That among the blessing of being a part of the greatest story every told, the realization of his responsibility left him breathless.
When we envision the Biblical characters, we tend to forget that they too were made in the same image as we. It's easy for us to think that God told Abraham to sacrifice Issac and that Abraham had no questions, he just got up and took his son to the mountain. Or that God called Moses and that Moses, the man, didn't lay awake at night and wonder how this insurmountable task placed before him was going to come to fruition.
We sing Silent Night, Holy Night, however if we truly considered the circumstances, this night was anything but silent and holy. The little town of Bethlehem was not decorating in greenery and bows awaiting the birth of their Savior. It was a night like any other, busier than usual as the descendants of David crowded the streets from all over the realm of Herod's reign to be counted in the census. Telephones, internet and Travelocity were not in existence during this time and in this tiny town no reservations had been made in preparation. Like locusts, the droves of weary travelers descended upon a town ill prepared to accommodate them. This night would have been busy, bustling and noisy, first come first served, often is.
There was nothing Holy about this night either. We sit in our padded pews and pretty walls which we consider Holy and not unlike us, everything the people considered Holy during their time consisted in the gold and marble confines of the temples. The damp, musky, moldy and mildewed walls of the stable, most likely carved into the rocky hillside was in complete opposition to the opulent temples where the Holy One was thought to dwell.
Even the fact that the babe was wrapped in strips of cloth was a sign that the birth itself came more quickly than either expected. Had they been expecting his birth anytime soon, there would have been blankets and provisions, or had they had time to seek out family members or friends living in the village, there would have been a midwife to help with the delivery. And yet, in here in this small cave of a stable, among the dirt and the dung, sat Joseph, watching his young wife sleep, the son of God sleeping soundly beside her in a town that had no room for the one who came to save it inhabitants. This was not the plan.
It would not be far fetched to imagine that Joseph felt like a failure.
Joseph knew that his plan was not coming along as he had hoped.
We are quick to say that everything happens for a reason, and I do believe that this is true, but when you are the one walking this journey it is very difficult to remember this. You begin to believe it may be punishment. It is easy to allow the circumstances to overwhelm you. In the midst of your pain, it does not feel like a plan. It feels like chaos.
When your spouse chooses to leave, when the diagnosis comes, when your finances take a devastating blow, when death rears its ugly head, it does not feel like any plan you want to participate in. When well meaning people are quick to tell you that God had this in his plan all along, you begin wondering just how much does God hate you, that this would be His plan for you. When Jeremiah 29:11 is offered to you from those that are surely well intentioned, it is easy to think surely no good can come of this.
I can imagine Joseph sitting there in the cold dark night, travel weary and worn, afraid and overwhelmed. I can see him reach into the recesses of his mind for the promises from the scriptures that he would have set to memory in his youth. I can see the tears run down his dusty cheeks, falling in droplets to the dirt floor of the cave, asking the Father, "are you sure this is the plan?" Then quietly he stokes the small fire he has built, he gathers more small pieces of wood to keep the fire burning. He feels the brow of Mary to be certain she is well, he leans close to the small infant who now is his own and he listens for the tiny breaths like all new fathers do. He settles himself back down to watch over his new family and his choice is made.
This will not be easy, in fact, it will be hard. This will be tumultuous. It will not end well, most likely and yet like all the men of God he is descended from, he will be obedient to the call placed upon his life. Despite his questions, despite the lack of answers, in spite of his fears he will do the right thing. He will obey the voice of the Lord and trust that while this was not in his plans, the Father had set a plan in motion. One prayer, one act of obedience at a time the promise will unfold for Joseph and his little family.
And so dear friends, here we are, another Christmas. For many of us we find ourselves on journeys we did not plan. For many of us, the path we are on is not one we would have chosen and it is hard to see how good can come from our circumstances and that is okay for today. It is okay if we don't have it all figured out. It is okay to be human and feel what we feel.... our God understands this. He understands the doubt, the fears, the bewilderment we experience when our surroundings are unfamiliar to us. He understands the questions after all it is He who created us, formed in His image.
Our part of the plan? Like Joseph, to heed the voice of the Lord. To be obedient to His voice. To do what is right, when another path seems so much better and so much easier. To trust that ultimately, He, the Father, does have a plan of redemption for those who are faithful to His call. This morning I am overwhelmed by the knowledge that God will honor our obedience just as he did noble Joseph. The Glory of Heaven came to Earth, in human form, entrusted to a lowly carpenter for just a little while. An earthly father, chose do that which God deemed right, though it wasn't in his plans.
Oh, wash yourselves! Be clean! Let me no longer see you doing all these wicked things; quit your evil ways. Learn to do good, to be fair, and to help the poor, the fatherless, and widows.
Come, let’s talk this over, says the Lord; no matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can take it out and make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you white as wool! If you will only let me help you, if you will only obey, then I will make you rich! But if you keep on turning your backs and refusing to listen to me, you will be killed by your enemies; I, the Lord, have spoken. Isaiah 1:16-20
I have never been one to be a big collector of themed items. Okay, there was the unfortunate unicorn phase of the 80s and the cliche Gone With the Wind phase of the 90s, but in my defense, it wasn't really me collecting them, most were gifts from people who knew I liked them. So it has never been my practice to really create themed Christmas decor.
My kids have usually had their favorite things on their trees. John Paul had the GA Bulldog tree for a while, Chrissi's tree was a mixture of the obligatory girlie Barbie, Disney Princesses and Wizard of Oz. Stanley Chris has always loved wild life and then there was the tree of hunting and fishing decor in the upstairs living room in our old house. For the most part, however, Christmas decor was a mixture of what ever shiny object, bauble or ball caught my attention.
For the last four years, I'll just be honest, if I had not had small children, I would have skipped Christmas and hopped a plane to the nearest warm climate at 3:45 on the last day of school before Christmas break, only to return the night before the first day of school in January with a nice tan.
This year my children and I have finally begun to get into the spirit of decorating again. And I must make another confession, I have overspent incredibly this year on new Christmas decor. I hang my head in shame (insert shameless snicker here) somehow I do not know that we will ever be able to unwrap the treasured yet painful memories of Christmases past in the form of delicate ornaments that were collected for 20 years. The stories collected with them are bittersweet reminders of empty spaces and empty places that may never be filled again.
I began my morning as I often do on Saturdays and days off. A cup of coffee, a fire in the fireplace and my devotions. I go to my social media and visit the devotional pages I frequent there as well. My friend Troy Davis has posted a good word this morning (I always enjoy reading his posts and those of his wife Shannon. There is much truth, learned the hard way, as mine was, in their posts)
This morning Troy is discussing the little sins. I sit here in the early morning and my heart and mind begins to ponder his words. I look around my dimly lit little living room, the one that I would not even possess if it had not been for those little sins. (you can scratch your head here, I promise I will get to the point in a moment) Here in this cozy little space we are decorated for Christmas. Hanging from the tree and from the mantle this year, we once again have a theme, purely unintentional I promise, yet a significant life lesson.
The theme this year? Snowflakes
So now you may ask, "what do snowflakes and sin have in common?" I'm so glad you asked.
Troy's post was on how even a "little sin" can separate us from God and how sinful patterns are dangerous.
Now if you know me at all, you know that I am NOT a cold weather girl, but I do love a good snowfall. For about a day, then I'm over it. But.... did you know that it is estimated that there are over 1 billion crystals in a cubic foot of snow? That's a lot of ice....Brrrrrrrr!
My northern friends know just how dangerous cubic foot after cubic foot of the beautiful, fluffy white layers of ice can be. In March of 1973 and 1994, we here in central Georgia experienced a relatively small experience of what an accumulation of snow can do. For days our worlds came to a stand still as we all stood in wonder, trying to figure out how to get out of this mess we were in.
So it is with the sin that so often separates us from our Heavenly Father. Often times it begins with something that may not even appear to be sin or something we can easily justify and rationalize away, yet left unrepented it can escalate into an unrecognizable and overwhelming situation before we know it. We can find ourselves in situations that we would never have thought ourselves capable of. The enemy's plan is complete in one small act of disobedience.
Our enemy has one purpose, that is to destroy the Kingdom of Christ and he does this one person, one family, one church at a time. As we look around in the media and even in the pews of our churches, where families once filled the empty seats, it would be easy to believe that the enemy is winning.
I fully believe that those of us who have had a true salvation experience with Christ are granted the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and I believe that He will warn and convict us at the thought of any "tiny sin" that may open the door for destruction and damage down the road. The enemy of our souls does his best to speak lies to our circumstances and all he has to do is great doubt.
The very first sin began in this way. In Genesis we have all heard the story of the fall since childhood. Even the unbeliever is familiar with the story of Eve and the serpent. God had commanded Adam to eat of all the trees of the garden with the exception of one. There are over 2500 known species of fruit bearing tree in the world today, so it is safe to assume that each would have been present at the creation of the the Earth. Adam as the head of his home has passed this knowledge to his wife Eve. Each have been told that surely they will die if they partake of this tree, never understanding that death would not be immediate, but eventual.
In John Bevere's book Good or God, he delves into the truth that often times sin appears to us as something good and that our enemy presents sin wrap in a pretty package, a possibility of all that we think we desire and doubt begins to form. We begin to trust our own judgement and latch on to what we deem as good, while what we really need to do is wait for God's best.
This one event sent the couple, who walked daily with God himself, (the only two mortals to have been granted the earthly privilege of looking into his face) spiraling into the very first family mini drama. Think about it, The Kardasians had nothing on this family, Genoa City couldn't hold a candle to the land just outside the Garden. Eve, the first "Real Housewife" began a landslide for her family, and the rest of mankind, that could easily have been avoided. One generation later and we see greed, envy, murder, and deceit enter into the world and so it has been ever since.
One tiny sin...pride. The tiny sin that can separate us all from the Father. The sin that leads to all others. In this one moment, Eve thought she knew better than God and in the moments when we choose to ignore the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit, we are saying in essence that we know better than God and we are willing to accept temporary good in the place of His plan.
I have seen this play out in my life all too painfully and it is with deep regret that I would beg the reader standing on the edge of decision to heed the nudging of the Holy Spirit to turn from, confess, repent this tiny sin that like one small snowflake can accumulate, easily and inevitably, until you are left standing blindly in a blizzard of sin, shivering in the cold recognition that you do not know exactly how you got here in this place so far from the promise. One tiny sin can begin a storm that leaves you trembling hopelessly, stumbling in hapless direction, aimlessly make one more poor decision after another until it seems that all hope is lost.
Pile one blizzard onto another and another. Add a hillside and one small catalyst and you will have an avalanche. One tiny sin can lead to an avalanche of sins that leaves us unrecognizable, can change us in ways we never thought. Can alter our landscape until it seems our story is nonredeemable.
In 1962 , the largest avalanche ever recorded occurred in the country of Peru. The ice cap of a mountain, Huascaran, Peru's highest summit at 6768 meters, broke away creating an avalanche that dropped 13,900 feet. It traveled for 9 miles until it reached a tiny town of 6000. Rescuers searched for days in the devastation only to find body after body. The landscape changed for ever. All signs of life gone in an instant. There were no survivors.
I think back to a movie that I once saw, One of the Love's Journey movies. In the scene, a violent and sudden blizzard begins while Marty, the heroine of the movie is out on a bluff praying. In the scene, though she is not far from the warmth of her own cabin, the snowflakes are circling, whirling crazily around her to the point that she cannot even see inches in front of her. She has lost her way in the circumstances. Her husband has gone out to search for her and he too becomes lost in the thick white mass of ice hanging in the air. Realizing that her parents are not coming back quickly the daughter goes to the cabin door and begins banging on a pot, giving them a point to focus on in the blinding blizzard so that they may reach home safely again.
One thing the enemy never counted on....generations later, the Son of God, who had been there at the time of creation, came to Earth as redemption's plan. The babe lying in a manger, whose sole purpose was and is to redeem the lost. To right the wrong. To shepherd His own to eternal life with Him.
This is not your warm fuzzy, feel good Christmas blog, just a sincere plea from one who has personally experienced the devastation of one tiny sin. My landscape forever changed by the choices of myself and others. As we begin this holiday season, if this is you this season dear friend. If you find yourself on the edge of a decision that the enemy is telling you is okay. If you have settled for the world's good instead of God's best. If you find yourself stumbling blindly in the midst of a storm caused by one tiny sin, I urge you to find your focus. Heed the voice of the Holy Spirit, surrender it to Jesus. Let Him lead you back home.
