Sometimes Christmas isn't "the most wonderful time of the year" for everyone. But as Jamie "the very worst missionary" says, "Jesus didn't come to fix it all.  He came to be with us in it all." Christmas is a story of love come to earth. Check out her post on "The Fall of Christmas" here.

The Advent of love

Recently I found myself listening to old Christmas carols, many of which speak of the coming of our Lord, and as I did so all the cliché sayings came to mind and I found myself asking, “What is the reason for the season, Lord?  Why is Christmas so important?”

As a child I had often wondered why Christmas was so widely celebrated and why the festivities surrounding it seemed so much more important than one of our other significant faith days: Easter. I often found myself wrestling with the idea that Christmas is important because it leads us towards Easter. Easter has always been my favourite holiday, and yet I wondered if really the heart of Christmas could only found in its ties to the death of our Saviour and redemption of all humankind. Or is there something more here, something unique to its meaning and significance that makes it the most widely celebrated holiday in both Christian and secular spheres?

Sometimes we have missed the mark. The anti-consumerists have often told us this. It’s about being with family and friends. It’s about spreading joy. It’s about peace.  And oh, it is so much about all those things, but I fear even the anti-consumerists have become too cynical and still missed the point. All of those things seem secondary when we consider the real reason for Christmas; the reason that we prepare for a single day with 4 weeks of anticipation.

Advent is this season of anticipation; our time of waiting. In Latin, the word is Adventus means “arrival” or “coming,” and it is in this word that we find the true meaning of Christmas.

Christmas is more than just the insinuator of Easter; it is more than just the first step towards the cross. Christmas in itself is about an arrival; an arrival of the greatest love our world has ever known. Christmas is about God humbling Himself to become as one of us; weak, feeble, vulnerable, physical... human. The God who is love came to earth. Christmas is about God incarnate. It is about love incarnate. Christmas is the beautiful story of a God who persistently pursues the ones He loves.

Sitting in the reading room at my college a few weeks ago I spoke this revelation aloud to a friend and though it sounded oh so cliché, talking about “what Christmas is all about,” I remember my heart feeling different. Because we all know that God loves us and draws us into a relationship with Him, but do we ever associate this with Christmas? Love as the true meaning of Christmas? Isn’t that better suited to St. Valentine’s Day? Joy, peace, harking heralds and decking halls – isn’t that more what Christmas is all about? But no, God shows us that it is absolutely all about love. By sending His Son He shows us that He will stop at nothing and spare no embarrassment to demonstrate His love for us. This is what makes Christmas such a joyous, peaceful and magical time. Tales of love always encompass these things.

That Jesus was called “Immanuel, God with us,” is no small thing. That God would make His home on earth as a tiny baby child is no negligible event. That love became incarnate is a big deal, the biggest deal. It is huge. It is enormous.  It is possibly the most important thing. Isn’t that why we celebrate Christmas with such cheery grandeur? Yes, it leads us to Easter; of course it is a season of joy, of peace and of generosity, but most of all it is a season of love. We spend time with our families and give gifts and eat coma-inducing meals. But those who have no families, or who have experienced deep hurts at the hands of loved ones; those who are poor and oppressed and starving, even they can experience the true meaning of Christmas. If Christmas is a season about the arrival of love then it can still be celebrated amidst sorrow, amidst pain, amidst poverty and loss because love transcends all of these. Love is what brings true joy and true peace and what moves us towards generosity. That is why we give gifts. Yes, perhaps the cynics are right and we have lost a bit of the essence of that. But it is my belief that it is not the gifts themselves that are the problem, rather it is the how and the why where we get a little lost.

And so maybe this Christmas, instead of getting caught up in the usual holiday trimmings or getting hung up on taking a stand against our cultures consumerism, let’s take a stand for love. May we aspire to become love incarnate to those around us. May we forgive old offenses and pursue our enemies with humble grace. May we offer hope for healing and unconditional thanksgiving. May we not be cynical or bitter because generosity, the pursuit of love, joy, peace, thanksgiving and providence: these are the reasons for the season. May we remember the story of Jesus birth and what it means, and may we remember that God pursued us while we were yet still His enemies and then be determined to do the same.

This Christmas, may we pursue the love of all humankind. ‘Tis the Season

I think that I am beginning to surrender to the idea (and reality) that I do not need to be besties with everyone. My purpose in life is not to be well-liked or much-loved, but instead it is to love God and by extension love others, and to perhaps end up at a point where I am able to love others better than I love myself. 

“Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.” ― Andrew Murray

The Art of Thanksgiving - Part 1

Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren't satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other. --Ann Voskamp

How many of our problems are rooted in our desire to have more? More power, more control , more things. We always want that which we do not have. Isn't that why God commands us to not covet? Isn't that why He commands us to have no other gods before Him? Because He knows that we are prone to wander; to think that we can do better and have better things than what He has done for or given us. 

I have been reading about David and the other Israelite Kings, and have often found myself wondering why it is that King David was called "A Man after God's own heart." How did a man that murdered and committed adultery gain this name? Why did God, even when faced with David's disobedient offspring, still choose to honour the legacy that David left behind?

I have read these stories, gripping the pages as though my life depended on finding the answer to these questions. I know it is because I myself want to be a woman after God's own heart. I want to find the answers, I want to know how to be something better than the me I am now. 

But the more I read the more I begin to realize that though part of the answer is in The Book, most of it is not contained in the weight I hold in my hands. Few things worth finding ever are able to be held. The answers I seek are not in the words I underline or the pages I mark. David's story points me to something other than the Word of God as my answer; my Salvation is not found in those pages.

My Salvation is found in God Himself. Though the Book holds many answers; though it has told me most of the things I know about God and life and love, it is not God Himself. The World became flesh. The Lord speaks to me in that moments of realization: You are looking for answers when you should be looking for me.

I ask myself what made David's heart different from the hearts of those around Him, what made it different than mine. And I find that the answer lies where my allegiances so often do not. 

In God.

David, though a great King, knew himself not to be The King; never tried to play God because he knew that someone else already had that job. Even when his son died David praised the Lord - because He was confident in who God was in and what He was doing. David was a man who was fully satisfied in God. Read the Psalms and you will see the beautiful relationship that David had with his Provider.

It seems like such an easy answer - trust God, be humble, be satisfied in Him. The answers are easy but the questions of how are what make things difficult. We now live in a world where every day there are thousands of things screaming at us, telling us that our lives are not full yet, that we need more, that we need to be more. We somehow come to this understanding that who we are is not enough and that what we have is not enough - we need to do and be and have more. And so we lead busy lives, we hoard things and we constantly try to improve ourselves mentally, physically and spiritually. 

We believe these things because, in essence, they are true. Who we are is not enough, what we have is not enough, what we do is never enough - because only God is ever enough; only He can ever truly tell us who we were meant to be; only He can completely satisfy. 

But most of us are content, at least momentarily, with finding our fulfilment in things other than Him. That is why there are addictions, that is why we date the wrong people, why we spend endless hours at the shopping mall (guilty) and the gym, that is why there is war. It is because we are looking to others, or to the world or even to ourselves for the things that we need, rather than to the Lord. We are not satisfied with God. We are not satisfied with the Creator of the universe! Or perhaps we are to easily satisfied with other things, things who's satisfaction is neither eternal nor all-encompassing. 

We have believed a truth, and answered it with a lie. We have believed in our nothingness, but have failed to believe that God is everything.

"They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator" (Romans 1:25). Soon we begin to serve the things that God has given us rather than God himself. We even begin to look to books written by intelligent pastors or to music for the answers, rather than to the very God who created the questions. We aren't satisfied in God. Instead we try to make our own gods, or become our own god. 

And lately I have come across many situations or conversations or books where there is this idea that the lack of satisfaction we feel is rooted in our unwillingness to the thankful, because if we were thankful for what we had we wouldn't feel the need to ask for or work for or even want more.

I have been a pessimist much of my life. I have tended to look at the things I lack instead of the things that I have been given. At Christmas, I noticed the gifts I didn't get instead of being truly grateful for those I was given. But perhaps God is doing something new in me. Perhaps He will take the wilderness of thankfulness that has been hidden in my heart and plant new seeds of thanksgiving. 

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." - Isaiah 43:18-19

I hope that God can teach me how to be truly grateful for everything I have - all of which is a gift from Him and can be taken away so easily.  May I learn to worship the One who creates, instead of the things He has created, and may I find my forever and fullest satisfaction in Him and Him alone. I pray you will too.

photo via (we heart it)

We cross a bridge into the sea - 

we climb a mountain out of the deep.

We live to life;

we smile to happiness;

we're like lovers to love

with expensive tastes of cheapness.

photo via (we heart it)

A mighty pain to love it is,

And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;

But of all pains, the greatest pain

It is to love, but love in vain.

-- Anacreon