Christmas on the bottom shelf

I stopped by Target yesterday for a few things, including the Fisher Price Little People nativity set for our grandchildren.  The toy department was daunting, to say the least.  After looking up and down the aisles for a few minutes, I spotted an employee wearing the familiar red Target shirt.  I told her what I was looking for.  She looked quizzically at me.  “Fisher Price,” I repeated.  She started to lead me down an aisle.  “What was it again you were looking for?” she asked.  “The Fisher Price nativity set,” I told her.  “What is a nativity?” she asked me.  “You know, Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus,” I explained.   I could tell by her face that my explanation meant nothing to her at all.  “The Christmas story,” I emphasized.    “Is it a Christmas toy?” she asked.  We were surrounded literally by a canyon of toys, threatening to bury us alive.

At that point, I saw it, in the middle of an aisle, down on the bottom shelf, by itself.  

And I was hit broadside by two things:

1.  This clerk had NO idea that Christmas had anything at all to do with Jesus.

2.  In the entire store, including a whole section devoted to holiday decorations, this plastic nativity set was the only thing I saw that represented what Christmas is really about.

When our oldest daughter was just a toddler, we had some friends nearby who recognized even then what was happening to Christmas.  And so, as soon as you walked in their door, there was a nativity set, front and center, situated so that it could never be overlooked.  I have never forgotten that.  Make it the first thing you notice.

Christmas can be fun.  But it is also a time of great joy and hope in a world that has no idea that joy and hope even exist.  Never assume that someone you meet or someone you love knows that Jesus has everything to do with Christmas and everything to do with the cries of the human heart.  “He is here!” the angels shouted with glee.

For you with young children, read them the Christmas story over and over, until they can recite every word.  Let them play-act the story, over and over, costumes and all, yes, even if they make a huge mess.  Invite the neighbor children to join them.  Let them play out the story with a nativity set, so that they physically see what happened.   Memorize with them the account from Luke 2.  You would be amazed how quickly they can do that, verse by verse, even at an early age.  It will be engraved in their memory forever.  One of our girls memorized it at age five, and twenty years later, she can still recite it.

And above all, make sure that your children KNOW the difference between what is pretend and what is real.  The Christmas story is not just another “story.”   It is unlike any other made-up tale like Dora and Curious George.  Because Jesus is REAL.  This is Truth. 

For unto us a Child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be upon His shoulder,

and His name will be called

Wonderful Counselor,

Mighty God,

Everlasting Father,

Prince of Peace.

                       Isaiah 9. 6

A Gentle Reminder

My grandmother could grow anything in any type of soil or container.  Anything.  She came to live with my family before I was born.  When I was very young, she staked out the entire length of windows in our family room and planted a huge indoor garden three feet deep.  After all, as a Texan, she was used to a long growing season.  We lived in Chicago.  So even when the permafrost had set in and we didn’t see the ground from the beginning of November until the end of March, we had an indoor jungle.  Wherever we moved, she planted and transplanted, no matter the climate, no matter the soil, whether sand or clay or rock.  Nothing stopped her.  She had a green thumb, a large dose of stubbornness, and she delighted in God’s creation.

But of all the traits that she passed on to me, her green thumb was not included in my DNA.  Plants do not thrive under my care.  Actually, most of them do not even survive under my care – or lack thereof.  (Did I water that plant sometime this month?)

So much to my surprise this week was an actual bloom on my African violet that has been in need of life support for some time now.  I take no pride in what has happened.  Actually, I chuckled when I saw it.  This is seriously something that only God could do.  And I give Him all the credit.

There are times when God sends me a gentle reminder of Who He is and this is one of them.

Let them know that this is Your hand;

You, O LORD, have done it.

                       Psalm 109.27

Make It Work, People

The commuter train system in Japan is known for its accurate schedules and efficiency, despite transporting about 21 million people daily with more than 12,000 trains running.  In reality, its infrastructure is considered so overtaxed that logistically the system should not work at all.  But it does brilliantly, in spite of disruptions.  Trains arrive on schedule every two minutes.  Its success, however, is not based on perfection, but the opposite.  To make this system work, a recent article in The University of Chicago magazine reports that “unpredictability must be a part of the transit equation.”

It is the recognition of that unpredictability, the acknowledgement that the system is not perfect, that actually allows the Japanese train system to work so well and so efficiently.

How do the Japanese engineers do it?  By “…creating an environment where technology incorporates irregularity rather than trying to eliminate it,” according to Chicago anthropologist Michael Fisch in his book about the Japanese commuter train network. 

I think about how much energy, effort, and frustration that we invest in trying to make our lives at work or at home “perfect,” as if that is an attainable goal.  What if we approached difficult situations not from a perspective of perfection, but from the lack of it? 

There will be difficulties.  Count on it.  We live in a fallen world, not a perfect one. So as Fisch says, incorporate the reality that there WILL be problems rather than trying to pretend that they either do not exist or hope beyond hope that everything will go smoothly THIS time.  The trick is having a system within the system so that glitches are expected and already accounted for.  As I have told many young moms, “From now on, flexibility is your middle name.”

Ask God to help you see these road blocks and variables, not as obstacles but as opportunities in disguise.  Make it work with what you have before you.  The biggest problem may be that we have stopped trying to do just that. 

And I will lead the blind

in a way that they know not,

in paths that they have not known

I will guide them.

I will turn the darkness before them into light,

the rough places into level ground.

These are the things I will do,

and I will not forsake them.

                         Isaiah 42. 16-17

Woman Hit By Train

My clothes were set out like a fireman’s.  My favorite pink shorts, faithful grey tank top, a pair of well-worn socks, and my running shoes.  We pinned 29594 to the front of my shirt and looped the timing chip through the laces of my shoes.  I wanted to minimize any surprises in the morning.  The alarm was set for 4.30, but I lay awake a good part of the night, just waiting for morning, waiting to run.  Four and a half months and 581 miles of training were stored up in these legs.  It was still dark when we arrived in downtown Chicago, but the sidewalks already were teeming with people.  When the sun arose, 45,000 runners were corralled into the starting area like cattle going to market, so tightly jammed together that there were people as far as I could see in front of me and behind, too close together to even lean over and re-tie my shoes.  The gun went off, but it was a full eleven minutes before I even reached the starting line.  It was like being caught in the current of a fast moving river.   

A marathon is a grueling endeavor which takes you to your limits, and sometimes beyond that.  It is a surreal journey through a canyon of cheering crowds and on roads sticky with Gatorade.  In Chicago,the pavement rolls through an endless tour of ethnic communities vying for attention: China Town, Little Italy, the Polish neighborhood, and the Hispanic barrios, people shouting, singing, and cheering absolute strangers.  People came out of their houses with little cups of water and dripping bags of ice.  One man handed out popsicles from a plastic bag, a woman and child offered fig newtons on a paper plate, and an old man joyously sprayed water on the sweaty runners out of his green garden hose.  The last six miles was littered with runners who struggled even to walk to the finish.  This time, that was me.

My excitement surged when I realized near the half-way point that I was on pace for a Boston qualifying time.  And then, within another few miles, the wheels began to fall off my wagon.  I began to slow down, a couple of blocks at a time, gradually to a walk.  My legs had cramped up to a point that I struggled to run at all.  I walked a little and ran a little.  I tricked myself to keep going, “Just run until the next corner…or the next traffic light…or the next water stop.”  There came a time when I thought it was over.  I stopped altogether at the aid station at mile 20.  I lay face-down on a cot drenched in the sweat of other runners and I did not even flinch.  A volunteer placed large bags of ice on my legs.  She offered me some water.  Minutes passed.  “Well, we can get you on the transport bus back to the finish,” she said.  And I lifted my head.  I was down, but I wasn’t out. 

That old familiar voice of stubbornness that has pushed me into a lot of trouble through the years shouted at me, “You came 20 miles just to ride a bus back????”  I gulped down the water, limped back on the course, and shuffled and ran the last six miles.  I finished.  Pathetically, to be sure, but I finished.  And when I crossed the finish line, I raised my arms as if I won a gold medal in the Olympics.

I came home with a finisher’s medal and a few more lessons in marathon running.

Problems:  As in life, I should have admitted earlier when I needed help.  Most problems don’t just go away on their own or dissolve with pride.  A big glass of water earlier in the race would have kept me going.

People:  A running buddy in a race (or life) makes a significant difference.  At mile 10, one of my daughters jumped in to run with me for a few miles.  Because I was having problems, she ended up encouraging me for 16 miles.  She wore a hand-lettered tank top that said, “Cheer for Karen,”  with an arrow pointing toward me.  And total strangers became my personal cheering squad. 

Pressure:  As in your teenage years, peer pressure runs rampant in a race.  I started out too fast, and it caught up with me. Always run YOUR pace, no matter what others are doing.

Perspective:  One of the sights that kept me running that day was seeing a teenage boy in a wheelchair with a microphone and loud speaker, cheering on runners he didn’t even know.

Prize:  Keep your eyes on what really counts.  Years ago, a friend of ours went to Europe to race bicycles.   He didn’t do well against the other cyclists.  But he learned one thing far more valuable:  “God doesn’t need us to win to bring Him glory.” 

Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,

let not the mighty man glory in his might,

let not the rich man glory in his riches,

but let him who glories

           glory in this,

that he understands and knows Me,

that I am the LORD…

                                  Jeremiah 9.23

There comes a time…

In any endeavor that stretches us beyond the boundaries of our own imagined strength, there comes a time when we suddenly realize our dependence on what we do not control.  And we make the tragic mistake of either looking back or looking down or quitting altogether because the uphill was, well, a little more uphill than we thought it would be. “What was I thinking?” 

Passion and adventure are hard-wired within all of us.  But complacency is an idol that binds our feet and repeats over and over “you can’t do that,” until we not only believe it, we stake our lives on our fears.  We become disabled souls, paralyzed by a maligned self-diagnosis.

On almost a daily basis, I hear people say, “I could never do that,”  about something good that might stretch them just a little bit.  Our reluctance gives birth to a million excuses.  “It will be hard, it will hurt, I will probably fail,” we whine.  And the lies we believe keep us in a place where we choose to do nothing at all, held hostage in our own windowless temperature-controlled comfort zone.

Are we so afraid of being dependent on God?  Of what amazing things He can do with our lives, if we let Him?  As my friend John Bryson says, “What am I doing that if God was not in it, I would fail?” 

I contemplate these thoughts on the eve of the Chicago marathon, coming up now in three short days.  It is a rigorous physical endeavor, that is to be sure, but for me, it has become a different kind of exercise, a stepping out and trusting God to move me beyond the limitations of my own wisdom and strength to a scary place where I finally acknowledge my dependence on Him.   Over the 18 weeks of marathon training in heat, rain, and the daunting fragility of old age, sometimes slogging  along by myself and sometimes eating the dust of those much younger and faster than I am, I have both thought and verbalized, “Why am I doing this?”  And I sense God replying, “Trust Me.  Let Me use this in your life.”  There is meaning.  There is purpose.  The marathon is not an end in itself and, indeed, may not be about running at all.  But perhaps, it is just getting out the door for what lies ahead.

 

Therefore, since we are surrounded

by so great a cloud of witnesses,

let us also lay aside every weight,

and sin that clings to closely,

and let us run with perseverance

the race that is set before us,

         looking to Jesus…

                         Hebrews 12.1-2