In Matthew, chapter 2, we read about the wise men and their journey to the manger.  This night contained their long awaited joy.

(my grandson Travis in the middle, with his two buddies)

The wise men came a long way.  They had been watching the stars, searching the heavens, for a long time.  Why did they come?  What do you see in your mind when you picture the wise men?  Were they “rough and ready”, tough, desert travelers, kicking dust, out to conquer any terrain?

Were they sages and seers, those who diligently studied the stars and sought the deepest truth through the signs of the heavens?

(from “The Story of Christmas” by Felix Hoffmann)

Were the wise men royalty, dressed in regalia, a presence of power and influence seeking to encounter  a greater mystery?

(from “The Indescribable Gift” by Richard Exley, artist Phil Boatright)

 

We can only imagine.  But here is what we do know.  There are two words which stand out in this scripture.  “We have SEEN his star in the east and are COME to worship him.” ( verse 2).  In the original Greek language, the word used here for “see” is not merely to observe or see with the eyes.  It is to see at a deeper level, to see also with the mind, to understand, to personally experience.  When the wise men saw the star, “his star”, it was not just any star, not just a special star with an exceptionally bright light.  What they saw was the light of Christ, and they KNEW.  They would follow this star to the ends of the earth because they had personally experienced the light of their salvation.  Their lives were changed forever.

So they came to worship the Christ Child.  The Greek word used here was not just to travel from one place to another.  The word here, “COME” was equivalent to “BELIEVE”. Worship then becomes a natural response to coming to Jesus and believing.  They were Kings who came because they believed and could do nothing less than worship the true King.  The Greek word here for “WORSHIP” is to fall prostrate in reverence and awe, and to adore.  ” And when they came they saw the young child…fell down and worshiped him, and opened their treasures.”

When we, by God’s grace, truly COME and SEE, would we not also fall on our knees before this child who is God and with everything in us adore him?  I want that!

nk

Pondering…

How do you picture the wise men?

How might you and I adore the Baby Jesus?

What treasure might we bring?

 

This Advent Journey won’t let me proceed to the manger without first hearing clearly what Mary said after the Angel appeared to her and announced that she would give birth to the Messiah.  Out of Mary’s mouth poured these words found in Luke 1: 46-55, often referred to as “The Magnificat”. (Painting, “Gentle Virgin” by Rogier van der Weyden, 15th century Columba Altarpiece)

The coming of the Messiah was about love and light and mercy and grace and salvation.  It was also about JUSTICE.  So as much as the birth in the manger was about peace and love, it was also challenging and unsettling as it proclaimed justice.  The hand of God would be reaching out to the world to bless in unexpected ways.

(Photographer Dave Budnik from Magnum)

There have been times in my life when God has called me to step out into new territory to understand more deeply, to see more clearly, and to take a stand in some form or fashion for justice.  Mostly that has come through mission trips.  The following photo is from Corozal, Belize.  My friend is a pastor’s wife there.

Last summer our family gathered for vacation in Colorado.  My son, who is an architect, got me aside for a quiet moment.  I could tell there was something on his mind.  Quite intently, he said, “Mom, remember the church I told you about…that I might be doing a design for their new building.  They had told me all about their vision for the future.  Well, we were set to go when I read about their beliefs.  They do not believe in ordaining female clergy.  I sat before their council along with the contractor for the project, and told them I could no longer continue as their architect.  I told them my Mom is a minister and that I have seen lives touched by her ministry.  I told them I could not do this project because of their stand against female pastors.”

I was overwhelmed…with pride at the strength of my son’s conviction…with admiration of his courage and determination to step forward and speak out…with love in his sacrificial gift to me and other women called to ministry.  This cost him a significant job that he had been excited about. My son was doing this in the name of JUSTICE.  And today’s scripture in Luke, Mary’s words from God, say that Jesus’ birth is about justice!  If we look at Jesus’ life, it was very much about justice.  He stood for and with the lonely, the lost, the outcast.

I have to look at our world today and ask myself,  “Where would Jesus be born today?  How do I come to the manger?”  Lord, help me.  I want to be your servant.

nk

Pondering…

Where might God be calling us to justice?

 

 

 

The very spot in the vastness of all the universe, where God came to be born as the Christ Child, was on planet earth, in a small town called Bethlehem, in a stable with animals, on a bed of hay called a manger. Wow!

(painting from “The Stable Where Jesus Was Born”, artist Susan Gaber).

 

( from “The Very First Christmas” artist Francisco Ordaz)

Today we enter the final week of our Advent Journey.  I would encourage us to watch, anticipate, become aware as we are awakened to the presence of God in ordinary places.  I was just reading this poem by Roberta Porter…

The poem nudged me to again think of the ordinary place in which the Christ Child was born.  I remembered the grocery store just yesterday…. As I was contemplating the homemade soups in the deli section, a woman pushing her cart stops and says, “Try this one!  It’s delicious!”  She goes on to tell me about her friend whose son just committed suicide, “I took her this soup, along with this bread.” (She holds up the bread in her cart).  “I was thinking she could just eat this wherever, even in her bedroom, with a glass of wine…or the whole bottle.” (She holds up the bottle of wine in her grocery cart).  She went on and on about how much her friend enjoyed the soup.  I began to realize that in this moment, it really had little to do with the soup.  It was about this woman’s need to tell me about her friend.  It made me think about the extreme sorrows that exist in our world.  Ah…God present in an ordinary place.

On a different aisle in the grocery that day, an older gentleman in a motorized wheelchair began to tell me about how frustrated he was….”I can’t find anything!  I have been shopping here for over 10 years.  Now they have changed everything, and I can’t find anything!”  (He was looking for the BBQ sauce).  He is right.  It has all changed, and it is very confusing!  I began to realize that his conversation wasn’t so much about the BBQ sauce as it was about having someone hear and understand.  Change can be so difficult…and this is only the grocery aisle!  What about the world outside these doors?!!  Ah, God is present again in this ordinary place.

One more thing….I found this wonderful creamy rich ice cream which I am having right now!

They certainly were correct to title it “White Chocolate Raspberry YUM! “.  As much as I enjoy this ice cream, perhaps the manger is calling me to get on my knees and watch for God in the places of pain and struggle, the places beyond the YUM!

nk

Pondering…

Where have you experienced God’s presence lately in an ordinary place?

 

 

 

Christmas is all about LOVE, really.  In I Corinthians, chapter 13, the apostle Paul talks about the Love that comes from God as seen in the Christ Child…“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.”.  One of my favorite children’s books is entitled “All the Places to Love” by Patricia MacLachlan, paintings by Mike Wimmer.  The story is told by a small boy at the birth of his little sister.  He remembers his own birth..

He recalls his granddad carving his name on the rafter of the barn along with the names of other family members…

Eli explains the love he feels through his grandparents sharing their favorite places with him…the field, the barn, the river, picking blueberries, turtles and toads crossing his path…

When his little sister is born, Granddad carves her name on the rafter beside Eli’s name…

Eli decides he will show his little sister all the places to love, and tells her that she will find them all right where she is, no matter where she lives.  “Where else does a turtle or a toad crossing your path make all the difference in the world?”

On our Advent Journey we discover that all our names are carved in the rafters of the stable where the Baby Jesus was born, Savior of the world.  We are all part of the family of God.  And out of that gift comes all the places to love, wherever we might be.

nk

Pondering…

If you were to show someone your favorite places to love, where would you take them?

 

I have always loved the shepherds.  Perhaps it is the West Texas in me.  San Angelo, my home town, was the wool capital of the world!  (It’s a shock I know!).  Or perhaps it’s because that frowzy, scruffy crew were the most unlikely characters to be visited by the Angels and featured in the story of that holy night.  They were “out of the box” sort of people and I love that.

(from “The Story of Christmas” by Felix Hoffmann)

Frederick Buechner, in his book “The Magnificent Defeat” imagines a first person account of the night the Angels came…

The shepherd goes on to say that the emptiness of the air suddenly became brightness everywhere.  Silence turned into the beating of thousands of wings…and voices like trumpets.  “The words were something like what I’d yelled with my mouth full of bread.  ‘By God, it’s good brothers!  The crust.  The mud.  Everything.  Everything!'”

The scriptures tell us in Luke, chapter 2 that the shepherds took off running to Bethlehem.  I can only imagine their unhindered, uncensored release of emotion at the joy of experiencing Angels and seeing the Christ Child in the manger…knowing their Savior!  Perhaps it looked like this…

Or like this…

(from “My Son, My Savior” by Calvin Miller, artist Ron DiCianni)

Or even like this…

(from “The Nativity”, illustrated by Julie Vivas)

Now, in case you are wondering about the title of this blog post…I evidently signed up for Dictionary.com and new words come to me each day.  Many I do not recognize, but when “ripsnorter” popped up one day I had to smile.  It was a term I knew well.  Out in West Texas we might say, “It was a ripsnorting good time”.  You just let go and have the time of your life.  Well, yes!  The shepherds…the unabashed joy of it all!  They left that cradle to run tell the world with exuberance, glorifying and praising God for all they had seen and heard.  “By God, it’s good!  Everything!”

I say, let them ripsnort all they want!  Their joy is contagious!

nk

Pondering…

Are you in any way like the shepherds?

 

 

 

An angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds on their night watch.  With the angel came GLORY.  This wasn’t just a special light, it was the fullness of God that is present in the person of Jesus Christ.  Written in the gospel of John, chapter one… “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”(verse 1)  “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” (verse 9)  “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (verse 14).

(from “My Son, My Savior”, written by Calvin Miller, artist Ron DiCianni)

The Angel announced the birth of the Savior.  Then a multitude of the heavenly host came proclaiming GLORY. My friend has a beautiful small white porcelain nativity with wonderfully expressive angels bringing glory.

It seems that the angels just flew in through the window straight from heaven.  My friend explained that the angels had belonged to her mother.  “There are only seven.  I am thinking there were probably eight and one may have gotten lost”, she said.  “Well, here is another thought”, I offered.  “In the Bible the number seven means complete, a fullness, a fruition.  It is the same as God creating the universe in seven days.  It was complete.”

It was fun to imagine those seven angels represented the entire host of heavenly angels!  I wonder if the angels ever got weary of their night calling?

(one of 12 angels in a triptych painted by Fra Angelico in the 15th c. for the Linen Guild of Florence, Italy).

Maybe angels even babysat for Mary when she was exhausted and couldn’t stay awake any longer! GLORY BE !

( “Angels and the Holy Child” by Marianne Stokes)

nk

Pondering…

Have you ever experienced an angel?

 

Advent is a time to wonder.  Who of us can truly fathom that Almighty God came to earth as a baby born in a manger? How can we begin to comprehend that the Christ Child is both fully God and fully human?  In the song, “I Hope You Dance”, Mark D. Sanders writes, “I hope you never lose your sense of wonder…I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean…”.  Wonder is quite critical in our journey to the manger.  We will see Jesus and awestruck, we will rejoice at the wonder of it all.

Recently I participated in a time of “wondering” at Lanier Theological Library.  A panel of theologians and Hebrew Bible scholars discussed the meaning of the Hebrew word “Hesed”.  There are 169 different translations for this word,  and it is used 245 times in the Bible.  There is not an exact word in English, but those included might be loving kindness, grace, mercy, faithfulness, steadfast love.  Hesed is a relationship term and it is always something  God gives.  Hesed incorporates the understanding that we have no right to expect anything, but God gives everything.  God will give Godself.  The strong commitment by God to deliver God’s people is wrapped up in the word Hesed.

All of this wondering about the truest meaning of the word took place in a chapel which is a reconstruction of a 500 a.d. church in Turkey.  The view in the video is the altar as seen sitting in the pew.  In closing, we all sang “El Shaddai” in unison.  The Hebrew words in the song are “God Almighty, the Most High God, O Lord, we will love you!” (You may need to turn up the volume to hear)

Voices proclaiming together the magnitude and timelessness of Almighty God seemed to join in chorus with voices of 500 a.d. in a breathtaking stillness.  Above the altar the arms of “Hesed” reached out to embrace us all in one holy moment.

A few days later I returned to the chapel with two friends. The three of us were alone there.  As they sat in different pews and contemplated the beauty all around, I laid down on the floor, flat on my back in the center of the nave.  I looked up at the dome above me.

(chapel paintings by Richard McCluskey)

I was embraced by stories of the scriptures portrayed in beautiful paintings.  I was held in the wonder of Hesed!

nk

Pondering…

Consider a moment when you were held in the wonder of God.

Most of my memories of Christmas Eve include a marathon afternoon and evening filled with several worship services.  I loved every minute!  It began with a Children’s Family Worship and concluded with Midnight Candlelight.  What I loved most about the late worship was the singing of “Silent Night”, blowing out the candles, and then experiencing the first breath of Christmas Day together singing “Joy to the World”.

The emphasis here is not only the joy that the Christ Child brings, but also that this joy is for the entire WORLD.  “God so loved the world that he gave his Son that the world might be saved!” ( John 3:16)

Recently I ran across this photo and story on Facebook…

In “About the Name”, Official Ubuntu Documentation, the word is defined as a “belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.”  To me it seems to incorporate Paul’s writing about the body of Christ together…“If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (I Corinthians 12:26).

This morning in worship, the message was about JOY.  The pastor asked us to quickly turn to someone we did not know and share our greatest memory of experiencing joy.  I turned to the young mother sitting next to me and asked about her moment.  After a long pause and a blank stare, she said, “I can’t remember any joy.”  I tried to encourage a little, gently, but nothing changed for her.  Again she said, “I don’t remember having joy.”  I felt so sad.  I said, “I hope this Christmas brings you joy.”  She responded, “I hope so too.”

The pastor went on with the message.  I could not stop thinking about this young woman beside me.  As the worship service came to a close, the children’s choir sang, “Are you ready for the light to shine upon you?”.   Then we all joined hands, singing together, “Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love…” .  As we were leaving, I gave her a piece of paper with my name and phone number.  I told her I would be praying for her. All the way home I thought about UBUNTU.  I saw in my mind the photo of the children.  She is in my circle.  She is in my heart.  I thought about the body of Christ.  I heard in my heart the words of Jesus, “My joy will be in you, and your joy will be full” (John 15:11).

Come! Lord Jesus, Come!!  I want my friend to experience JOY this Christmas!

nk

Pondering…

Is there anyone you might help bring into the circle of  JOY?

 

In Luke 2:1-5 and Matthew 2:6 we read that prophecy was fulfilled with the Christ Child  being born in Bethlehem.  Mary and Joseph had to venture from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  Into the Judean hills they set forth to travel long days, night skies, danger among those hills.  The birth was to take place in another place.

Mary and Joseph were being “set apart” to be used by God for something very special.  There needed to be a time of preparation, a journey into the wilderness alone with God.  Their lives were being transformed.  Their journey, led by God, was to make them ready for new birth.

Three years ago I felt God might be calling me to retire from a full time appointment to a church.  I hadn’t planned it.  I wasn’t sure it was the time.  Yet I understood the stirrings of being called to something else.  I went away for a week into the “wilderness” by myself to pray and listen to God.  During that time I wrote lots in my journal.  Here are a few notes…each new paragraph is an excerpt from a new day in the wilderness.

I love the simplicity of the wilderness.  Trying to make a fire…wish I had paid more attention along the way…like in Girl Scouts or something!  Finally, I got it!  Ah, the intimacy of tending a fire.  It is good.  It is my companion right now.  Don’t want it to ever go out.  I remember a note from my friend and her wish for me, “I hope your new time is one to dance.”

My writing continued..

I am surrounded by darkness as if in a cocoon.  But I am not afraid.  I am safe, secure, being HELD.  I feel like I am unwinding at 90 miles per minute.  How could silence be this invigorating?  It’s just You and me here God.  Nothing else.  No one else, but Your creation.

I feel like I am starting over with my life.  I don’t know what it looks like.  I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like.  What would make me dance?  It can only come as a GIFT.  Right now I don’t even want to move.  “Be still and know that I am God”.

Which road leads to finding myself?  again? anew?  I can’t figure it out.  I don’t want to.  I want  You to reveal it to me.  I need  Your WORD?  Help me listen!

Listening is so slow and hard.  Am I not working at it?  I thought I wasn’t supposed to work at it.  I don’t know what to do!  “Do nothing.”  Well, it seems that is what I am doing.  When are  You going to bring my answer?  

It’s a beautiful day…cold, but sunny this morning.  I feel Your PEACE streaming in through the window in that sunshine.  Here I sit, outside in my big fluffy bathrobe and my boots.  In the wilderness one becomes real, and knows that God is God in the beauty of creation.  

I ended my wilderness journey with the four Haiku writings I had just completed in my 4 week Advent Journey…( a Haiku consists of the first line- 5 syllables, second line- 7 syllables, third line- 5 syllables.

I wonder what happened for Mary and Joseph on their passage to Bethlehem.

nk

Pondering…

What questions do you have for God?

If you’d like, try writing a Haiku.

In the Bible, book of Matthew, chapter one, verses 18-25, we find the story of Joseph.  He was to be married to Mary, but learns that she is pregnant.  The “just” thing to do, according to the religious law in his time,  would be to have her stoned out in the streets!  But Joseph, being a “just” man (verse 19) did not want to put her to shame and was going to divorce her quietly.  Then he had a dream in which the Angel said, “Don’t be afraid!”.  Joseph was to take Mary for his wife.  She was conceived by the Holy Spirit  and will bear a son.  “Call his name Jesus.  He will save his people from their sin.”

Here are some artist’s images of the dream…

This is the earliest painting, located in Florence, Italy, artist unknown and from the 10th century b.c.  The Angel is shot down from heaven like a lightning bolt and Joseph appears to be knocked out cold, perhaps even dead in his coffin.  Well, those very early Christians probably understood best how devasting this news would have been for Joseph!

( from “My Son, My Savior” by Calvin Miller, illustrated by Ron DiCianni)

It seems here that the young teen Angel is sent on his first tough mission.  He is whispering, trying to break this news gently, but Joseph is in real pain over hearing it, grasping his pillow tightly.  NO, it can’t be true!

(from “The Story of Christmas” by Felix Hoffman)

Here the Angel is doing her best to get Joseph to open at least one peeper and pay attention to the news.  Joseph seems to be at peace, but out like a light!

I love this one from “Voices of Christmas” by Nikki Grimes, illustrated by Eric Velasquez.  In the text is the voice of Joseph who has awakened from his dream saying,  ” I awake, certain as sky that I’ve had more than a dream.  I wait for this mighty mystery to unfold.  For now, this one thing I know:  I am ready now to do whatever Jehovah tells me to.”

Yes!  Joseph has been called!  And as crazy and uncertain as any call can be, the one certain thing is that you have to do what God is calling you to do.  You can do nothing less.  Step out and trust that God will see you through.

(from “Mary’s First Christmas” by Walter Wangerin Jr., illustrated by Timothy Ladwig)

nk

Pondering…

Can dreams  be real?

What does it feel like to follow the call of God?