My fond memories as a child were mainly focused on the love during Christmas. We decorated the tree early and took it down late didn’t share many Christmas cards. My mother a great cook, was particular about using the best chocolate cookie recipes (even though I don’t like chocolate, I pretended a lot while eating them), and ate our handiwork all month long. Money for presents was a bit tight, but that didn’t stop us from giving each other homemade, inexpensive gifts usually made at school.
The art of handwriting letters, notes and Christmas cards is a dying art. I’ve watched my wife for over forty years send Christmas cards. Her ritual involves not only selecting each card from the box, but it has to be scriptural and must include a hand written individual message. The great pleasure in sending those cards is matched by receiving them in turn with a graceful smile on her face.
Just recently, I took time to re-read a small collection of letters and special mementos from this year’s Christmas cards. It brought out such a great joy to read about our friends and family. Notes, words of encouragement, the happiness they brought to our lives. For a moment I remember the individual beings and pondered on some distant remembrance before saying to myself, “Ahh, how I long for those simple days not as I feel in this short poem:
I'm an artefact of your hate today
Just the one that you'd made a fuss
Is anybody listening to a word I say?
why hate today
You edified us with hope and change
The blame will surely show,
I try to believe it
Days have taken years
To conquer all my fear
I stand before you now
Sickened and cut-down
“In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:7-8)
As the autumn leaves dance and twirl, and we get our first twinkle of snow I was reminded truly of our Christian “Why” today with a question from my Friday morning men’s bible study on zoom from Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Lakewood, Colorado; Would you think about an Advent or Christmas memory you could share in sixty seconds? This not only made me think how could I spread the, “good news in simple terms,” as I ruminate of Advent/Christmas memories during covid. This also made me think about those we may label as enemies our “beloved children of God.” Divisions of politics, race, class and even theology are transcended by a love that will not be limited by our human grudges, fears and distrust. At Christmas we celebrate a love that refuses to be bound by COVID — a love that reaches even beyond death, answering, the “why” of a believer, to submit to the will of God and walk in the Spirit everyday throughout the year?
Would it be an opportunity to refresh your perspective that God has a grand plan for history that is so much larger than just you and your kin. For all the emphasis on gift-giving and sentimentality that characterizes our cultural holiday, we can tend to focus on our small circles of friends. So, in the midst of a season that might shrink our gaze, This short celebration should remind us to pan the camera back out to the larger scope of God’s purposes for us daily.
As we walk in the spirit, we find that the sinful appetites have sixty seconds to interrupt, “What would you say”? You don’t have time to civically embellish your political clan. No time to elaborate or explain with contentious words. Just spit it out. How would you cut to the chase? Obediently, here’s an idea. Start by taking a page from the Gospel according to Luke. Luke tells of a blind man who was able to get the attention of Jesus one day. Jesus for me, ever the down-to-earth person, is captivatingly blunt: “What do you want me to do for you?” (Luke 18:41). The man replies in the simplest, most direct way imaginable:
“Lord, please let me see” (Luke 18:41). There you have it. If you are wondering how to begin to pray, how to express what is in your heart, how to express what seems inexpressible, look no further. This is how it is accomplished The blind man uttering his innermost petition— “Lord, please let me perceive”— is each of us voicing our own ensuing pleadings simply.
Lord, help me empathize.
Lord, please call my fretfulness.
Lord, please make what is mistaken-true.
Lord, help me with my Humility and Humanity.
“Please let me see” is a fervent prayer of petition, and it is strikingly, even stunningly, down-to-earth. It also gets results. Jesus acknowledges the blind man’s faith and heals him.
Now the season of Advent, what a four-week mystery for me. My in-laws put the tree up on my wife’s birthday in December and took it down usually on Epiphany or when the tree dried out. In the beginning, I thought what is so important about “The Coming on, Advent”? The “arrival” or “an appearing or coming into place.” Christians often speak of Christ’s “first advent” and “second advent”; that is, His first and second comings to earth. His first advent would be the Incarnation-Christmastime.
I’ve come to be grateful of my spouse’s family examples of celebrating, Advent keeping me from missing out on a beautiful season of love in the church year. You see now, I often wonder, “it should be more. Not just a season to wait — to count the days. It should be a daily time of preparation. A time to re-order our lives and prepare for a fresh incarnation of God’s reign among us. Perhaps in the midst of this wilderness time with the virus and political divide we can look for new ways to practice the justice to which God calls us with a mighty fresh invitation to share the hope, love, joy and peace, giving it a VIP during Advent with a stranger, family or friend.
As John the Baptist quotes Isaiah: “In the wilderness, prepare a way for the Lord.”
So, light one of those candles and artfully send a handwritten letter on Advent each Sunday: One, two, three, four, a reminder of an everyday Noel. Strike a chord to the community, of the stunningly magnificent truths of the birth of Jesus. When nearly every cherished tradition is upended and characterized as a “Wilderness Year!”, may we be called to reflect humbly on what it means for God’s love to enter the world again — making all things new. This Jesus child will grow up to proclaim: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, as we go forth daily, moment-by- with holiness, just as Jesus did when he was “full of the Holy Spirit, into the wilderness to be tempted”. Luke 4:1
God Bless You And This Ministry!
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