What Child Is This?

I thought I would be more frantic by now.

Christmas all by itself does that.  This final week can easily fill up with last minute stressors that crowd out my calm and peck at my peaceful intentions.  But everything's coming together so well that, right at this moment at least, happy anticipation prevails over fussing.

Packing for Thailand all by itself does that.  I leave for a month away not two days after Christmas, something I've never done before, even in all the times before there's been for this trip.  But the planning and packing are pacing themselves quite cooperatively, and right at this moment at least, eager expectation prevails over the finicky.  

It's not that everything's perfect this Christmas, or that there won't be hard things to do when I get to Thailand, far from it.  People I love are missing.  Grief is the uninvited guest at the table.  Others are in the midst of sufferings and treatments and all manner of demands this far-from-heaven reality these past twelve months have been all too kind to remind me of.

Upon arrival in Chiang Mai I will, in a matter of days, travel the difficult road up to the mountains to speak at a new year's festival event in a remote Karen village.  The combination of jet lag, the grueling trip, the 'different' accommodations, and the ministry responsibility will be physically and emotionally demanding.  Then upon returning to Hot Springs, there will be a family of 26 kids, their parents and other caregivers, and a whole community of faith who are still reeling from last September's shocking, gruesome loss.  As am I.  Being there in the midst of that, I will feel it more than I do here, which is already an always-every-day-thing for me, still. 

And yet, even with all that being true, right now, right now I am calm, focused.

It's a focus this past year's struggles have strengthened for me; a focus of determined joy and reckless hope.  It's a calm based not on any confidence I may or may not have in myself, but in the One who has been Fully Present with me every step, every breath.  The One who's fought for me all year long.  The One who now shelters my Christmas.  The One who goes before me on that treacherous mountain road.

How else can I explain it?  I should not be this okay right now.

Tomorrow I will preach a final Christmas sermon about a Messiah who is powerfully sovereign AND mercifully sympathetic.  Abundant gratitude for this truth, and the chance again to direct my praise toward Him together with my incredible family of faith.

Tomorrow Ken and I will sit around a table with our kids and their kids and marvel at how these could have in any way been entrusted to us, and be over the top grateful for them in every possible way.  And the table is already set, and the gifts are already under the tree, and the love is waiting in all the details, waiting for us to just be with each other.

And on Tuesday I will get on a plane and go do this again with another family.

And I ponder the question in an old Christmas carol....What Child is this? 

What kind of Messiah  would lavish me with all of this? 

A Messiah I would follow anywhere.

Unexpected Reflections

I have captured an accidental reflection, and it's inspiring something wild out of me today.

See, words are reluctant things sometimes. Not every day words; I find myself with plenty of those. 

But these words here, the reflective words, the words reserved for plumbing the deeper places of the soul and daring to put them 'out there' like we do these days, on blogs and such...  Words for trying to figure things out.  Those words have been skittish this fall.  So, I have respected their reluctance.

Since posting last (August 15)  the year has stayed true to its apparent determination to press me to the max in almost every way imaginable.  Stress unyielding.  Random, relentless, and sometimes horrific events, and not any of it the result of logical consequences or decisions made on my own part or on the part of others also affected.  Deep, unspeakable losses.   The 'here and now' of life has dished out some pretty wretched stuff.  On many days the phrase 'there are no words' was exactly true.  So I refrained from writing them.

But on Sunday, pre-service, as I received the morning's gift of worship as our band rehearsed, I accidentally snapped a picture of self-reflection that, by this afternoon, when I looked again at the picture, seemed to ask to be expressed.  Because without realizing it, there I was, framed in one of the silver bulbs that hangs on the tree in our auditorium.

And what I want to say about it is this.  You have to really look for it.

There's much about Christmas that's obvious.  You can tell it's Christmas by the way things look and sound and feel and smell.  And I enjoy all of this, for sure.  My home is decked out.  My office is decked out.  The music, the music is so lovely and life-giving.  Missed all this anticipation of Christmas last year when I was away in a culture that does not celebrate Christmas.

But it's not the deeper picture of myself this year.  Upon more subtle reflection, I find myself more fiercely and determinedly joyful.  Not just glad for Christmas, but gladder for Jesus than I've ever been before.  Not just celebrating Christmas, but living it out in the real and anguishing places where hope and peace are so desperately needed, and Christ's coming is so vividly, wildly relieving!  

Oh for joy!  Christ has come!  Deeper ways of knowing this gospel proclamation are swinging me in ecstatic circles of absolute certainty that I would die without this.  God has shown up in ways that take my breath away, and give me strength and courage and fist-clenching resolve to be about His mission, now more than ever.

I am weary from this year, yes.  But upon closer inspection, I find my soul feisty for joy, and receiving it, dancing in it, declaring it loudly, despite the attempts of the past several months to crush it out of me.  But they didn't.  Because....Jesus.  Because....Immanuel.  Because.....Love.

Because this year, this whole beautifully terrible year, represents exactly, exactly why He came.