Advent Week 1: Hope

When my husband and I decided to start a family, a fear crept into our minds that many parents-to-be have felt down through the generations. It goes something like this...We love each other and we want a family of our own, but how can we think of bringing a child into this world? With all the violence, all the corruption out there, isn't it more humane, more responsible, to spare a child exposure to such evil? Plus, with overcrowding and depletion of resources, wouldn't we just be adding to the problem?

What parent hasn't had such thoughts? Ultimately, my husband and I decided that to give in to that fear would mean turning our backs on life. It would mean giving in to the corruption of our world, rather than embracing the good in it. It would mean denying ourselves the joy of a child born from the bond of our marriage. Simply put, we chose hope over fear - hope that God would grant us the strength and perseverence to raise our child to be honest, responsible, and compassionate, thus adding weight to the goodness in the world.

Whether it is having a child, escaping bondage, or being delivered from the ravages of disease, we are hard-wired by our Creator for hope. There are times that we are mad at God or we can't understand why He permits some things and disallows others. There are times that we cannot envision an end to the gloom and rain, and it seems the finish line is a million miles away. But if we are faithful, we have hope that God will keep His promises. In the distant past, generations of slaves and families living in godless conditions longed for the Savior spoken of through the prophets. Today, many of us long for the return of Jesus for the same reasons. But regardless of what generation we belong to, we can have hope in our Lord and trust that He keeps His promises. We have undeniable proof that Jesus came as the Savior, so there's no reason to doubt His eventual return.

One of my favorite movies is "Shawshank Redemption," starring Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne, a soft-spoken, intelligent man wrongfully imprisoned for murder. Despite enduring abuse, cruelty and corruption, Andy never gives up hope that he will one day be both free and redeemed. In a debate with a fellow inmate, Andy says, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things." The other inmate argues that hope can drive a man mad. I don't know about you, but I tend to think the absence of hope results in madness.

In this first week of Advent, let us remember that God has fulfilled our greatest hope by giving us a Savior to set us free and redeem us. If the corruption of our world gets us down, we can not only hope for Christ's return, we can count on it. The freedom found in Christ surpasses all human strength, all chains and prison bars, all bodily ailments. Having hope means having faith that God keeps His promises, and friends...He does.

Giving Thanks

As we celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends, stuffing ourselves with delightful dishes and desserts, most of us will feel a sense of gratitude for the many blessings we enjoy. Even for the busy cooks among us, juggling giant turkeys and the countless sides that accompany them, there is at least one moment in the day that gives us pause. There's a moment, perhaps when the kids or grandkids are wrestling apart the wishbone, that we feel in the depths of our hearts the blessings we have.

Maybe we think how blessed we are to have a family at all, or how blessed we are to be able to enjoy such a bountiful meal in a safe, warm home. While we don elastic-waist pants to accommodate our overindulgence, there are many who would give anything just to come in from the cold and rain and eat the crumbs left on our plates. While we watch football on TV and contemplate that second slice of pumpkin pie, there are those too sick and frail to even get out of bed. While we make our Black Friday shopping lists, there are children for whom Santa Claus and Christmas gifts are faraway fantasies. While we enjoy a good slumber with full bellies, there's a soldier standing guard a world away from all that's familiar, having long forgotten what a good night's sleep feels like. While we dream, the families of fallen soldiers from generations past and present quietly shoulder the sacrifices made so that you and I have the freedom to celebrate Thanksgiving at all.

We know we are blessed, and our gratitude is abundant on a day such as Thanksgiving, but what do we do with our gratitude? Serving others, perhaps in a homeless shelter or by inviting a lonely neighbor to dinner, is a lovely way to reflect God's command to love one another. But even if our observance of the day is confined to the walls of our own homes and families, we should take time to be kind to one another, choosing compassion and forgiveness over rivalries and resentments. Above all, we should remember the most important of dinner guests, our Lord Jesus. Christ broke bread with His disciples before sacrificing Himself on our behalf. The least we can do is make room for Him at our table of abundance.

This Thanksgiving, before we partake of the Great American Feast, let us remember the One who has granted us the blessing of such an occasion. Let us remember the One who has blessed us in life on earth, and has promised blessings beyond our imagining in eternity. Let us give thanks first, last, and always to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Happy Thanksgiving with love!

Why Did Jesus Feel Forsaken?

There are many aspects of the crucifixion of Jesus that are haunting, too many even to list. Despite the beauty of God's ultimate sacrifice on our behalf, the event itself is eerie, disturbing and viscerally painful, as it should be. Such a monumental sacrifice, the ultimate act upon which our redemption is born, cannot by its very nature be palatable. Sin is ugly, and the culmination of the sin of humanity in its entirety goes beyond anything that ugliness could suggest.

For me, the most haunting aspect of the crucifixion has always been Jesus' question to God, "Why have you forsaken me?" When you momentarily disregard the visceral aspects of the crucifixion (if such a thing is possible), the question is perplexing from a logical standpoint. Jesus knew what He would face on the cross long before He arrived there. He knew how awful it would be, yet He also understood both the importance and the ultimate benefit of it. Did He truly feel abandoned by God, even though He knew that He would soon be reunited with His Father? If so, what does that mean?

I had always reasoned this to mean that God cannot be in the presence of sin, therefore He could not be present with Jesus while He was bodily taking upon Himself the sins of the world. But Jesus understood this, so it still does not explain His question. Perhaps there is another explanation that beautifully clarifies Jesus' question, yet makes it no less haunting.

The explanation? God purposefully allowed Jesus to truly feel forsaken because we know what that feels like. After all, Jesus was sent to earth in human form not just to minister to the sinful and broken, not just to preach the news of God's kingdom with His own lips, but also to experience the human condition. God wants us to know that He gets what it's like to be us. He wants us to know that He understands what we face - the good, the bad and the truly awful. He wants us to know that He gets it, and He has a way for us to overcome it.

Who among us has not felt forsaken by God at one point or another? I know I have. What would Jesus' "human-ness" mean if He had not also felt forsaken, as we do? How would He fully understand the human condition if He did not also feel abandoned by God? Physical pain can be horrific - the word "excruciating" clearly indicates Jesus' understanding of that - but there is perhaps no pain worse than feeling abandoned by God when you need Him most. I have known that feeling, and it is equally heart-breaking and reassuring to accept that Jesus knows it, too. He felt it because I do, because you do.

In our darkest times, when it feels as though God is unreachable, as though He could not possibly know or want to know what we are suffering through, we need only remember that He knows all too well. Jesus was sacrificed for our redemption, but that was not all He did for us in His life on earth and in His crucifixion. He felt everything that we feel, no matter how hard or unspeakable, so that we may know one important truth: God gets it and He wants to heal it. He cares so much for us that He not only allowed His beloved Son to be sacrificed on the cross, but He also allowed Jesus to feel abandoned in the midst of that sacrifice. If that does not speak to the depth of God's love for us, nothing can. In the end, we can trust that just like Jesus, we will one day be delivered into our Father's hands and any feelings of abandonment will be replaced by unspeakable joy. Amen!

The Blessing of Silence

"I'm finding myself at a loss for words, and the funny thing is it's okay. The last thing I need is to be heard, but to hear what You would say." ~ from "Word of God Speak" by MercyMe

If there's one thing that could be said with assurance about me, it's that I am a woman of words. I write for my job, I write here, and by simple virtue that I'm a woman who enjoys people, I love to talk. I'd rather communicate with someone than almost anything. So it goes without saying that for me to have a head cold that provides me with intermittent bouts of laryngitis and unending coughing is, well, annoying to say the least. There are self-deemed brilliant things that I long to add to conversation and can't. There are song lyrics I want to sing spontaneously and at prescribed times (such as at Christmas cantata practice) and I can't. I want to read to and with my daughter, an activity we both greatly enjoy, but I can't.

This is hardly the end of the world, I realize. Some might even call it a blessed time! When I take a step back to appreciate the virtues of voicelessness, I would tend to agree. In the past couple of days, I have discovered that there's a lot that I miss out on when I'm either talking or thinking about what I'm going to say next. The fact that my husband and I tend to laugh at exactly the same things at exactly the same time is one of those little jewels I miss when my laughter (which is louder than his) is all I hear. It reminds me that we are the perfect match for each other, as God intended all along. When I come home from being out, our dog - a truly delightful laborador/golden retriever mix - regales me with a chorus of happy howls. Normally, I howl right back at her. When I was unable to do this Friday afternoon, she howled a second and third time, a priceless canine cantata I would have missed otherwise.

Perhaps the sweetest lesson I've learned in all this came from our 6 year-old daughter, Sarah. Each night at bedtime, we read from her children's Bible. We recently finished the third time through it, so Friday night, we started again at Genesis. I told her she needed to read it, since my voice would not cooperate. When she read, "Let us make people in our likeness," I stopped her and pointed to the words "us" and "our." I had spoken about the importance of these words before and wanted to see if she remembered, but my voice gave out before I could finish asking the question. She said, "I know, Mommy. It's talking about God and Jesus together. Pretty cool, huh?" I was deeply touched by her steel trap of a mind, and by the delight she found in demonstrating her knowledge of God's Word. Had I been able to speak, I probably would have interrupted such a special moment.

The world is full of a lot of noise, isn't it? I was reminded this week of just how much needless noise I create. Sometimes we need a dose of silence so we can hear the sounds we've been missing. It can be simple, like your spouse's laughter, or it can be profound, like the blossoming of God's Word in a child. Keep watch over my tongue, Lord, not just to keep from saying something I shouldn't, but to keep me from missing something I should be hearing...like Your voice, alive and well in my little corner of the world.