The Reason

Some Christians argue against celebrating Christmas. He wasn't born this time of year, they say; or He never suggested, much less commanded, that we should observe His birthday; or Christmas is overwhelmingly secular in our culture, so isn't this "reason for the season" stuff a little disingenuous-- especially since it is not His birthday and so many of the people celebrating it are not His people? Fair enough. If anyone has convictions against keeping Christmas, they shouldn't do so. Romans 23b says, "Whatever is not from faith is sin [whatever is done with doubt is sinful]" (AMP 2015). 

But what if we approach this by taking a look at the Resurrection? Resurrection Sunday (more commonly called Easter) is the most important date on the Christian calendar, and rightly so. Without Christ's resurrection, his death doesn't save us. Without Christ's resurrection, His birth doesn't matter. 

Which means His birth matters a whole lot; His resurrection makes it so. Our births matter, too, because He is risen. Without the resurrection, the fact that any of us were even born would be cause for relentless mourning and weeping, because we would have been born only for destruction. Jesus died and rose to redeem us, yes, but also to make sense of human existence. 

So, because we celebrate the resurrection, we can celebrate events that take on meaning because of it. Birthday parties now make sense, because the fact of our births has been made worthwhile. Yes, His birthday may not be December 25, but how could He have saved us if He'd never been born as a man? No one can re-surrect unless He first surrects, to use an archaic term that means rises. If the resurrection makes the birth meaningful, then the birth makes the resurrection possible. 

And besides all this, Matthew and Luke, in their first and second chapters, were inspired to record the details--the most important of which is that Jesus was born of a virgin whose pregnancy was caused by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. A supernatural star appeared. Angels sang the good news. In the face of such miracles, how can we not sing the news, too? And as lovers of the Lord, how could we let others rejoice that Jesus is born! while choosing to sit it out? I can't imagine doing so. 

And so, I wish you Merry, Merry Christmas, to you and your house. 

   

Foretaste

When I smile at what I create, and I think, "This is good," I give thanks that it's only a shadow of the beauty He has made.  

How much more beautiful the beauty of what God creates?

How much homier the home we have with Him?

Encouraging Yourself in the Lord

We all welcome encouragement, especially when things aren't going well. But when things really, really aren't going well, or maybe it's that we have a really, really big task to face, and we know we're not enough, the world's platitudes, such as "You got this," can fall flat. What do we do then? And what do we do if we're all alone, with no one there to even urge, "Believe in yourself!" 

We can follow David's example and encourage ourselves in God.

David was Israel's most prominent king ever. He was called a man after God's own heart. He fathered the wisest, and perhaps richest, man who ever lived. He killed a giant in his youth, after the entire army of Israel couldn't do it. He was blessed with undying friendship from the man who in the natural should have inherited the crown: Jonathan. He was Jesus' most auspicious ancestor. But David also lived years and years of going through the absolute ringer.

One such episode is recorded in 1 Samuel 30. David and his men returned to Ziklag, which was his home for a time, to find that the Amalekites had raided and overthrown the city, setting it on fire. They enslaved every single person there, male and female, adults and children, including David's two wives, and carried them away. Ziklag was empty of life, and nothing was left but a heap of smoking ashes. 

David and those with him wept until they could weep no more, verse 4 tells us. For some time, then, they did nothing but mourn. To add to this, David's men began turning against him, blaming him for the tragedy and talking of stoning him. But David, says verse 6, felt strengthened and encouraged in the Lord his God. He immediately asked the priest for an ephod, and sought the Lord as to whether to pursue the band of raiders. He was given the go-ahead, and he recovered everything that had been taken.

The story in 1 Samuel doesn't tell us how David became strengthened, but we see David's process of encouraging himself in several of his psalms. In Psalm 22, for example, he begins, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" (Psalm 22:1 AMP 2015)? He is, of course, prophesying of Jesus through the first 18 verses of this psalm, but he's also expressing his own sense of separation from God during a time of anguish. The tide starts to turn in verse 19 when he writes, "But You, O Lord, do not be far from me; O You my help, come quickly to my assistance." From vv. 19-21, he prays for help and expresses confidence of an answer. Verse 22 begins, "I will tell of Your name to my countrymen..." Now he's sharing the good God has done for him in the past when he cried for help.

David takes yet another step forward when he says, in verse 25, "My praise will be of You in the great assembly." By the end of the psalm, in verse 31, David has the entire world and those yet to be born praising the Lord, having come quite a distance spiritually from feeling forsaken. I like how the Amplified version ends with its bracketed note, bringing the psalm full circle back to the voice of Jesus: "They will come and declare His righteousness to a people yet to be born--that He has done it [and that it is finished]" (Psalm 22:31 AMP 2015). 

So how does David encourage himself in God? He: 

--Starts by laying out his full lament. He gets it all off his chest and tells God exactly how he feels.

--Asks for help.

--Expresses confidence that this help will come.

--Tells others of God's goodness.

--Recalls answered prayers of the past.

--Praises the Lord.

--Declares God's goodness in all the earth.

You know--after one has done all that, it becomes a perverse kind of pride to feel that maybe you will be the first person ever that God didn't help. When we belong to Him, go to Him, ask for help, and remember who He is, we too can encourage ourselves in God. Because of who He is, and because He never leaves nor forsakes, we will get through it together. 

The Body

 No stitch too small

no thread too fine

for its unique space

its singular place

in the whole.