And Here All Along

Last weekend, we dragged our Christmas decorations out of the attic, purchased a tree in the Costco parking lot, and cast aside several strings of lights that no longer worked.  Hanging the ornaments on the tree always makes us miss our girls.  We always had so much fun decorating the tree with them.  But instead of dismay, we smiled and laughed as our favorite ornaments came out of the box:  a coffee filter angel made by a preschooler thirty years ago,  a golf ball painted by one of our teenagers, and a handcrafted clay angel dated 2001. 

And we scattered about in a few rooms nativity scenes to catch our attention and remind us of the reason for our celebration. 

The next morning, at the desk where I do my morning reading, I looked up and saw a little decorative door before me. I had almost forgotten about it, about what was always there in December and July, what has been there year by year, even through the pandemic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advent does not announce, "Jesus is coming,"  but Jesus has come, Jesus is already here, even when we are not aware, even when we live as if He is not.  

I opened the door.  He has been here all along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fear not,

   for I am with you,

be not dismayed,

   for I am your God;

I will strengthen you,

I will help you,

and I will uphold you

  with My victorious right hand.

               Isaiah 41. 10

 

Because This Is What Christmas Looks Like

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every year, I try to track down yet another book about Christmas to read during Advent, a book that points to the significance of Christ's coming.  Last week, I read Timothy Keller's book Hidden Christmas, published in 2006, a short but poignant reminder that Christmas is not an event or a national holiday, but about our own desperate need and His life for our own. 

Christmas is all about God setting things right again in unexpected ways and through the most unlikely people.  Keller emphasizes: 

"Over and over and over again God says, “I will choose Nazareth, not Jerusalem.  I will choose the girl nobody wants.  I will choose the boy everybody has forgotten.”  Why?  Is it just that God likes underdogs?  No.  He is telling us something about salvation itself.  Every other religion and moral philosophy tells you to summon up all of your strength and live as you ought. Therefore, they appeal to the strong, to the people who can pull it together, the people who can “summon up the blood.”  Only Jesus says, “I have come for the weak.  I have come for those who admit they are weak.  I will save them not by what they do but through what I do.”

…Here’s the comfort:  I don’t care who you are; I don’t care what you have done; I don’t care if you’ve been on the paid staff of Hell.  I don’t care what your background is; I don’t care what deep, dark secrets are in your past.  I don’t care how badly you have messed up.  If you repent and come to God through Jesus, not only will God accept you and work in your life, but He delights to work through people like you.  He’s been doing it through all of world history."

And He still does.

God did not leave us in our desperation.   As Keller says, "He came to fetch us."

He is here, the angel chorus sang.

He is here, our lives should reveal. 

 

And the angel said to them,

"Fear not, 

     for behold,

I bring you good news of great joy

  that will be for all the people.

For unto you is born this day

in the city of David

       a Savior,

       who is Christ the Lord."

                   Luke 2. 10-11

 

Because We Are Changed By It

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have all been told through the years in a parental kind of way that exercise is good for us.  And there is no quicker way to make exercise into something gruesome.  No quicker way to drain the fun out of it.  Just let me run and enjoy it.

But whether exercise is fun or a chore, we are changed by it in incremental ways.  In a New York Times article last weekend, author Gretchen Reynolds expounded on the physiology of physical exercise.  In all of its forms -- cycling, walking, running, hiking, swimming, whatever-- exercise is not just what we do, but what it does to us, cell by cell, minute by minute, step by step.

"But we still know surprisingly little about just how exercise changes us for the better," wrote Reynolds. "What are the many, interconnected biological steps and transmutations that allow a walk today to add to our life span decades from now?"

And it made me think how even more we are changed too by intentional and interconnected spiritual habits, transformed by God day by day, minute by minute, step by step, even when we don't realize what God is doing in our deepening intimacy with Him.

When I read that article about exercise, I immediately thought about a friend of mine long ago who battled cancer for a number of years.  Instead of being defeated by her dire circumstances, she was instead an immense blessing to everyone around her.  I heard that when she went to the hospital for her treatments, nurses would fight over who got to be assigned to her.  She was that kind of a joyful person caring for others, even as others cared for her.  Even as she lay on the gurney receiving her painful radiation treatments, she did not grumble.  She sang hymns as she lay there, thinking she was singing only to herself, but the melodies infiltrated down the hallway.  Her strong resolve could not be explained away as if she was just naturally strong and cheerful.  She had been trained for this hard place through the every days --years of seeking and serving God, praying, marinating in His Word, and loving others well. 

And those things can't help but do something to you.  She was changed by God in tangible ways. 

In his classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers points out:

"If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis."

God changes us, day by day, step by step, verse by verse, prayer by prayer, grace by grace, even in ways we are not aware.  Strength does not come suddenly, but built over time in layers.

Every time we exercise, our cells change a little bit more.  We don't "just" exercise.  Every day, we follow God into what He lays before us, He strengthens us not just for today, but building His strength in us for decades from now.  Not just for the finish line, not just for ourselves, but the strength to help others along the way, for His glory in every step.

 

Train yourselves in godliness.

For while bodily training is of some value,

godliness is of value

             in every way,

as it holds promise for the present life

   and also for the life to come.

                         1 Timothy 4. 7-8

 

This much I can do

I have the privilege to run almost daily through a sanctuary of trees, season after season, a changing landscape, embracing the shade of these towering giants, contemplating their innate majesty, and seizing a glimpse of the glory of God in their uplifted limbs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am blessed by someone's hard work of planting trees that grew and bore fruit beyond their lifetimes.  I am blessed by the generosity of others, now long gone, who had the vision of preserving some land they possessed and letting the trees of the forest thrive for the enjoyment of people they would never know.  I am one of them.  

Did those people realize how their ordinary efforts would have taken root?  They could have harvested the trees and sold the land to a developer.  But they didn't.  They chose a different legacy -- to be a witness of what they were able, to be faithful with what God had given, even when it may have seemed at the time something as ordinary and mundane as letting a tree grow.  These were average people who practiced beauty in their spare moments.

I want to whisper back to them:  "Well done, good and faithful servant."  (Matthew 25. 21)  God redeems in ways we cannot know.  The forest testifies before me what faithfulness looks like.

In her fifty year old book Especially at Christmas, author Celestine Sibley wrote:

“Ma had a calendar a patent medicine salesman give her with pictures of Great Americans on it.  She always though every last one of us would be Great Americans.”

He grinned.

“None of us ever got our pictures on a calendar that I know of.  But I have a sister that’s a missionary, three brothers that are preachers and one that’s a doctor.”

“And you?” I asked.

“I plant trees,” he said with dignity.

And what do we do?  Watch the two-minute video on this link if you want to be reminded how God is using you to restore and change the world.

We can be faithful in whatever He has given us to do. Mundane does not appear in God's dictionary. We have no conception of what God is doing through this.  Just that He is.

Faithfulness has no concern for celebrity or recognition or success.  Just responding to God's divine appointments of which we are surrounded day by day, most of which we are unaware.  Would we hesitate if we knew what God does with that kind word that sticks in a heart sixty years later, an encouragement that changes someone's day or direction, the restoration God brings through a single act of grace, or someone observing a hard job well-done?  Or even the planting of trees?

And what about today?  

I can't do everything,

      but I can do something.

I don't need big wins

         or even small ones,

but taking step by incremental step,

    following Him into it.

God never works in singular outcomes.  Faithfulness always results in a million galaxies exploding in the heavens, in which His glory is revealed. 

Later in Sibley's book, she quotes that faithful tree-planter once again:  “You do what you can to help when you see the need,” he said simply. “What happens then is up to the Lord.” 

There is nothing but nothing

         God does not multiply for His glory.

Not the path we would have chosen

Today is the last day of November, and when I arose, it was the fresh beginning of advent and suddenly winter,  the temperatures actually plummeting from hour to hour, the misty rain turning into a light snow, the skies a dense steel gray.  Perfect weather for a run, I thought. I changed from my sweatshirt to a fleece jacket and dug through a basket in the back of the closet for gloves and a hat.  

It is all in what you are wearing, I have learned over the years, sometimes the hard way. 

And in this preposterous year of 2020, we've all had to change what we have worn, changed our expectations, put on His strength, and carried pockets full of grace.

I love a winter run over the river and through the woods.  The path I usually take is not straight, but curves gently around the hills and enlarges the view on the ridge, a crooked way up the slopes complete with some dirt trails, potholes, cracked pavement, but never boring.  And sometimes I am surprised along the way with shy deer peeking out in unexpected places.

I ran under the black lace of tree branches against the leaden sky.  By all appearances, the trees look dead, but they are only resting from a busy autumn and sending down roots deeper in the soil.  

And I am reminded that wilderness in the Bible is not a fearful place, but where God's glory grows, where His paths lead us to another dimension of Him, a deeper abiding, and outcomes we never could have expected.  "Yes, you can trust Me in this too." The unknown is not unknown to Him.

Eight hundred years before the birth of Christ, the prophet Isaiah wrote, not realizing that almost three thousand years later we would still be cherishing his words:

A voice cries,

In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; 

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

and the rough places a plain.

And the glory of the LORD

             shall be revealed...

                           Isaiah 40. 3-5 

There is immense beauty around us, even in the really rough places and uneven ground, even when the trees no longer provide shade, even when these hills seem to go on forever.  Because God is with us.

How can I prepare Your way, O LORD?

        Guide my steps.

        Align my heart with Yours.

        Open my eyes

           to Your majesty all around me.

This year of 2020 was not the path we would have chosen,

                    but still there is Your glory in it,

                    Your incredible designs,

                    Your love and faithfulness,

                                       more than we can fathom.

I was only slightly reluctant to step away from the warmth of the house this morning, because I knew, while it may be really cold, His beauty would astonish my fear away.  And I would return a little bit different, reminded of Who has prepared His way for me in this day.  

The wilderness is not marked by absence and affliction, but filled by His Presence.