Ponder

So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.  Luke 2:16-20

I take heart that the first Christmas was far from perfect.  It was messy and inconvenient.  It was stressful...and I thought I had it bad making sure the bulletin was error free and all the candles were ready to be lit!  The first Christmas was not perfectly wrapped or a Norman Rockwell painting.  To quote the Grinch, the very first Christmas, "Came without ribbon, it came without bags, it came without packages, boxes or bags!"  Good to remember when tonight, someone cries because they are tired, or Aunt Bertha has a bit too much liquor, or life does not seem to go according to the script you wrote in your head over the last four weeks.  Take heart... Jesus' birth was not exactly picture perfect despite all that great religious art.  God works with our best intentions, God works with the messiness of our lives.  God rolls up God's sleeves, sinks God's finger tips into the over cooked turkey and the bad Jell-O salads and all the other miscues of life.  

But somewhere, we've taken all the messiness out of the manger.  We've taken all the drama and tension out of the first Christmas and left only a soft-focused Hallmark cards of sugary sweetness.  Can we, to quote Elsa the Frozen Princess, "Let it Go!"?  

I love that Mary ponders all this in her heart.  Ponders the dirty, drafty, dusty stable.  Ponders Joseph over there wondering what in the world he has gotten himself into.  Ponders shepherds standing there before her talking too fast about angels in the field (Yeah, right, angels appeared to you shepherds, my sarcastic side would say, were they riding ponies??).  To ponder is not just to contemplate or to act like I did in my Philosophy 101 class, stroking my chin and saying, "Ah yes, Plato's ideas shed light onto the depravity of the human condition...got an A for comments like that!  No Mary's ponder is not the image of the Thinker...it is the ability to hold together two complex, even contradictory, ideas with grace.  To hold together that God would enter the world in this way, to these people is a contradiction that needs some serious pondering today.  

I pray tonight you will find ways to sit with Mary and ponder.  Ponder how God is moving in your life, maybe in ways that cause you to scratch your head.  Ponder the ways you hear God's voice in that annoying neighbor, who makes good points.  Ponder the ways God is calling you to do something new and different and even bold in 2015.  And let your pondering open you to the traces of God's grace that are all around us.

Merry Christmas!  May the hope, peace, joy, and love of this season sustain you and guide you every day in 2015.

Many blessings~

How does God overcome divisions?

Click here to read Isaiah 7

On the surface this passage feels pretty ho-hum.  Sure, there is verse 14 about a young woman (which is a more preferable translation of the Hebrew) who will bear a child and the child will be named Immanuel (a name that means 'God is with us').  In these weeks after Christmas that is familiar to us and maybe we even heard this passage at the Christmas Eve service. Matthew in his narrative of Jesus birth actually quotes that verse.  What Isaiah is saying is that the birth is a sign.  But what is interesting to me is the way in which Isaiah names this birth as a sign.

In verse 1, we have a very short history lesson.  Israel (remember is the Northern Kingdom of the Promised Land) makes a political alliance with the nation of Aram, together they go into Jerusalem (the holy city) and try to over throw it.  Essentially, it would be like Wisconsin pairing up with Canada and trying to overtake Washington D.C.  The Promised Land was deeply divided in the time of Isaiah, North and South.

Within our own United States history we know that kind of division during the time of the Civil War, which is what is going on here in Isaiah.  For the Northern Kingdom to pair up with a foreign country and march into the city of Jerusalem where the temple was and where King David had ruled a united country is just painful, gut-wrenching and pretty well summarizes what I feel every time I watch the news recently.  How in the world can people continue to say and do things that cause such deep division in our country?  At the same time I know that it is not so much that history repeats itself as we never quite completely solve and resolve the problems of the past.  A professor of mine once told a story about speaking at a conference in the south and talking about the Civil War, only to have a participant come up afterwards to tell him that in the future he should call it "The War of Northern Aggression."  And that was a recent story!

The brokenness shakes us still today and Isaiah tells us the actions of the North shake the king and the people of the south like the wind shakes the trees.  And so God says to the king of the southern kingdom, "Go ahead and ask for a sign."  And the king essentially says, "Oh, I am not falling for that trick!"  In the midst of the fear it is hard to trust others and it is hard to trust God.  So God sends Isaiah and Isaiah's son, Shear-Jashub (a name that means a remnant will return) with a message about this child about to be born to a young woman.

One of the reasons why Christmas is so compelling is because there is such hope and possibility that we see in a tiny child, one who has her whole life before her.  Yet, I also know that having a baby is a LOT of responsibility.  To say God enters our world in the birth of a child is not just sappy sentimentality, but it is an almost radical statement about the 'weak force' of God. That God does not come into our lives like a bull in a china shop, but sometimes in the midst of quiet, subtle, and ways we often miss.  Isaiah promises the birth of a child.  It is up to discussion about whether Isaiah was referring to Jesus, or his own second son who we will meet in a coming chapter.  Yet, what Isaiah is reminding us that God's presence in our life does not always come in ways we can anticipate or in ways we can control.  I am sure the king of the southern kingdom would have preferred the sign of God be to increase his army or help him invent a weapon to protect.  But the 'weak force' God comes in the sign of child.

May we continue to ponder that mystery and truth prayerfully in these days after Christmas.  And may we be open to those subtle signs of the traces of God's grace.

Blessings and peace!