A really long list

Two days, folks.  Do you have your resolutions ready?

Is it even worth making resolutions this year with so many still left over from 2017?  Is it like making a wish list for Christmas?  Maybe I’ll get it, probably I won’t?

We tend to look at these waning days of the year and resolve what we want to do –  or need to do – in this coming year.

Again, we confront the reality:

If things are going to be different,

          something has to change.

And so, we set out with an overweight backpack crammed full of really nice resolutions and coordinating intentions, until there are three baking sheets of proverbial -- or actual -- chocolate chip cookies 12 inches away from me an hour before supper.  And who is to know?

That's why January 17 was established as National Ditch Day for New Year Resolutions.   Most resolutions, no matter how noble, possess a very short expiration date.

A true resolution is not just a desire to do, but the courage and audacity-- not just  to walk away from, but-- to run toward something different, deeper, or that which seems a stretch.

If things are going to be different,

      something has to change.

And that would be me.  

It is far too easy to blame others, my ever-shifting circumstances, 
or my self-excavated ruts, 
as I scamper like a mole 
from one muddy tunnel to 
                     yet another,
leading to dead ends, 
or even worse, 
right back to where I started.

Change doesn't just suddenly arrive on the doorstep one morning like a package from Federal Express . It starts with little tiny choices, one incredibly small step at a time, each one layering and building on the previous one.  You are going to have to work at it, sweat with it, and learn to trust God in it.

The story of real change comes to a sudden halt on about the second day of effort with one of three iconic exclamations: The first speed bump is gasping "I can't do this."  The dazzling showstopper is the audible cry, "What in the world was I thinking?"  And the final nail in the coffin of all resolutions, one size fits all,
               "It doesn't matter."

The whole desire to be different, to do differently, to be a better person, to be changed,

                       is wired into us

       by the God of new life, 
new nature, 
new heart, 
new vision.

The  basic truth of all Scripture is                "you can change."
Things don't have to be this way.

You are not defined by your past,

      nor your present situation,

nor your failures,

nor your really really bad choices, 

nor your selfishness,

nor by what others think of you.

But you are distinguished and designed and redeemed by God,

      Who loves you more 
                than you can know.

So we can fail even with 
every good endeavor, 
every good intention, 
every good resolution,

                  and God still loves us.

His love is not based on our performance,

                         but on His grace.

That is why Jesus came, 
because we can't do it 
on our own.
God never intended us to.

I cannot know what is ahead in this new year.   I cannot even fathom what will happen in the next minute or two.  But God meets me in my deepest need, a really dark place, 
and even surrounded by
what appears to be
barbed wire barricades.

What appears to be
     immovable in our sight,
is not just removable,
but always redeemable
             through God's grace.

He redeems a miry bog of trouble and despair,

"transforming the valley of trouble
       into the door of hope."
(Hosea 2.15)
  
We are looking for exit signs

when God is trying to lead us       through, 
not just to a better place, 
but to His redeeming
            right where I am.

I cannot do it
     through a list of resolutions,

nor by a mantra 
                  of religious rules,

nor by means of a prescribed list 
            of impossible behaviors, 

but by His whisper to 
               "Come, follow Me.”

The newness of the new year 
is not determined
by what I resolve,

     but to what God is calling me:

                  To Himself.

Behold,

I make all things new.

                Revelation 21. 5

Something Better

(The posting today is in honor of my mom.  Today would have been her 98th birthday.)

From the time my mom was very small, it was obvious that she had been granted an incredible talent in music. She was a child prodigy on the violin.  My grandmother was a piano teacher.  She recognized her giftedness, and taught her as much as she could. There was no money for lessons.  Actually, there was very little money at all in those days.

Even as a very little girl, mom played at church.  She won contests as local fairs.  Once, when she was about five years old, she won a pony which they had to sell, because they needed the money to buy a stove. 

They lived meagerly in an apartment above a small grocery, behind a mattress factory. But she was destined for something big.  Everyone knew it, but that path looked pretty bleak.  Her father died, after a long disabling as a result of a stroke, when she was just a teenager.  There was no money to go to college to study music. 

But with the urging of her hardworking mother to not to give up, Mom found a job at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas, during the graveyard shift from 4 to 8 in the morning, a time slot when it appeared no one listened.  And as Mom did throughout her life, she took a lemon and made a lemonade, turning a lowly invisible job into something spectacular.   

She called herself Cowgirl Bessie and played her violin – well, now, fiddle -- on live radio.  It became a very popular show, and it granted her time to both play and perform.  She finished up work in the morning in time to go to her classes at Texas Christian University.

She graduated, and then performed as a member of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, taught music as a professor at Southwestern Theological Seminary, and continued her radio show.   

She met a wonderful man who was an airman on a nearby base.  They were engaged hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. They married, and then, less than a year later, he was shot down over Germany, and she became a young war widow. Life was not turning out as she expected.

One day, she received a phone call from a man who heard her on the radio.  He offered her a steady job as a performer with an even bigger radio show produced in a church building in another city.  But mom’s sights were set higher than going to a sleepy southern city like Nashville.  New York is where you went to become a celebrity.  She turned him down.  The man’s name was Ernest Tubb, that little radio show was the Grand Ol’ Opry, produced in a creaky old church, now known as the Ryman Auditorium.

Mom took the next step in pursuing her music by getting a Master’s degree from Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, a long long way from home.  Afterwards, she arrived in New York City and started working as a regular on early television on a show called the All-Girl Orchestra, produced by NBC.  She was achieving her dreams.

She married a research scientist, had two children, and continued her career. My widowed grandmother moved up from Texas to help with the household and kids.  And when dad’s job took him to faraway Chicago, she chose to move too, to give up her career, and see what God had up His sleeve.  Two more sons were born. 

But just as it appeared that her ambitions were narrowing, God enlarged her vision.  She went from pursuing achievements to seeking God’s appointments.  And she found that she had not “given up” anything at all.

It was what God was doing through her music.   She became aware of what I call “proximate.”  What  God placed on her path, who God put on her path, and how God could use her in situations right in front of her.   It was not about abilities, but about availability. 

 

God had something much more profound in mind.   It was no longer just about the stage, but all about relationships .   God gave her a new story.

And she began to see and realize that there was not just a connection  between faith and work, but a seamless weaving of the two.  As Os Guiness says, “Living before the Audience of One transforms all our endeavors.” 

  

Times were hard when I was in high school, and my dad was out of work. Mom stepped to the plate to help make ends meet and began teaching violin to students from the high school across the street.  We awoke every morning, not to an alarm, but to beginning violinists scratching away.  

Mom encouraged students not just in music, but in life.  It was a rare morning that we did not find at least a couple of students sleeping on our living room couch with nowhere else to go.  Almost always, we had students sharing our supper, or going through the fridge for leftovers.   It was not about music.  It was about relationships.  It was how she lived out the gospel.  No matter what God gave her to do.

And in her spare time, she gave violin lessons to her 96 year old friend Electa Santacrocci, who had outlived four husbands and who once mentioned to mom, “I always wanted to learn how to play the violin.”  Not about ability, but about availability.  Mom taught her for free a couple of times a week.  And when Electa died, mom and her pianist not only played at her funeral,  they were the only ones there.

Mom had not reached a dead end in her musical career, but simply a change in direction and a change of heart, pointing others not to herself and how great she was, but doing all work – no matter what it was – with great excellence to point others to God. 

  

In her later years, she played her violin at nursing homes, for the elderly and veterans, and at other small hidden venues.   Nurses often remarked about unresponsive patients tapping their feet to the music, and even singing along to the old tunes.  It was not Carnegie Hall, but she brought joy to people who were mostly forgotten.

Because there is God, because you are made in His image, it is not that your work matters, but YOU matter.  All work for the common good has dignity.  No. Matter. What.

When your significance is in Christ, rather than in your work, it changes how you see God, how you see others, how you see yourself, how you see your work, and how you see the work of others.

Mom ALWAYS spoke to the “invisible” people around her and thanked them for their work, be it a cashier at the grocery, the busboy at Old Country buffet, or those who cleaned bathrooms at the airport.    But she could also sense the invisible desperation and loneliness of even those who ran in high society.  People were the same to her, as we used to say, whether the queen of England or a maid at a motel.

When you know your significance, your dignity, is not in what you do, but who you are in Christ, and because you were created in the image of God, you can serve God in every workplace, in every endeavor and bring Him glory in anything you do.  There are no small tasks.  There is nothing insignificant.

A heart changed by Jesus responds to life with more than a different worldview. 

            

My mom has been gone for thirteen years now.  And when she passed away, among some random papers, I did not find her name in a program from Carnegie Hall, but I found a scrap of paper on which she had jotted:  “I always wanted to be famous, but I think better things happened because I’m not.”

With us

With all of the splendor,
the lights,
the programs,
the concerts,
the giftedness,
the real Christmas story can be condensed into two simple words:
                                 with us.

The good news of the gospel did not just suddenly appear, but seamlessly woven throughout the Old Testament, from the beginning of time itself.  Written eight hundred years before the birth of Christ, the prophet Isaiah promised:  

Behold,

 a young woman shall conceive

                   and bear a son,

and shall call his name

                 Immanuel,

which means

                   God is with us.

                            Isaiah 7. 14

Amidst the suffering and pain in this world,

right in the thick of this messy broken world,

                    Jesus was born.

"We sometimes wonder why God doesn't just end suffering.  But we know that whatever the reason, it isn't one of indifference or remoteness.  God so hates suffering and evil that He was willing to come into it and become enmeshed in it," said Tim Keller in a Christmas sermon in 2001.

With us.

And the Word became flesh

     and dwelt among us,

full of grace and truth;

we have beheld His glory...

   

                            John 1. 14

Please make sure that your little ones know

    --and even the bigger ones around you--
that the Christmas story is not just another "story"
      but the truth about Jesus
who came to change the world,
one life at a time,
         oh, so precious in His sight.

And the angel said to them,
"Be not afraid;
for behold,
I bring you good news of great joy
    which will come to all the people;
for to you is born this day in the city of David
a Savior,  
         who is Christ the Lord.

                        Luke 2. 10-11

Be not afraid.
REJOICE!
He has come.
Immanuel
            God with us.

   

          

A place for the tree

Somehow impossibly this month, the house was decorated, gifts were purchased, and (shocker), our Christmas cards were actually mailed BEFORE Christmas.

I have been buried alive by some editing work that had to be finished before the end of the year.  Far too many important things were pushed to the sidelines, including Nightlytea,  to accommodate this act of restoration.  A long long story is woven in that adventure.  But yesterday afternoon, the last line was edited, submitted, and tied with a bow. I'm ready to enjoy Christmas.

Last evening, over long-simmering soup made by my gracious husband, there was talk of Christmas trees -- what fits and where to put them.  Coming from New York City, where every square inch of living space multi-tasks, one of our daughters remarked, "You always have to move something to have room for the tree."  In her tiny urban apartment, she had to adjust and rearrange to accommodate even her tiny prelit tree, which stands proudly this season on her windowsill.

In all that reorienting, the light greets her in the darkness of the evening. And it shines brightly through the window, uncontained. Light of any sort in every grace and kindness pushes back the shadows and gloom.

Our daughter's words kept echoing through my thoughts as I made dough for the family gingerbread creations to commence construction this evening.

"You always have to move something to have room for the tree."

When Christ dwells in us, He is not relegated to the back room.  He is not a guest, but He lives in our midst. And that changes everything.  He doesn't just redecorate. He lives here.  He makes all things new.  The love of Christ moves the furniture around, removes what we have been stumbling over, redeems all things, and the Light of the world incredibly dwells with us. 

As in the Christmas story, there was no room in the Inn for the savior.  What do I need to reorient, adjust and move, not for a tree in my living room, but make room for Him in my heart and in my life?

 "For lo,
            I come
    and I will dwell in the midst of you," says the LORD.

                                         Zechariah 2. 10

And nothing will ever be the same.

Getting ready for Christmas
             is just a reminder,
not for a season,
          nor an event,
but Immanuel,
                    God with us.