Christmas

I have memory issues. I can’t remember too many presents that I’ve gotten for Christmas. I remember getting socks and underwear a lot. You might call that cliché, but since it really happened, you would be calling my life cliché, and while that in fact may be true in some; well ok most cases, I know no one that reads this would be so cruel.

Some things that I do remember about Christmas are the trips to visit family like the times we spent singing Christmas carols while grandpa played his guitar, or the trips to play basketball across the street in the frigid Nebraska temperatures with my cousin who was from Florida. That had to be my only competitive advantage. I remember my face and stomach hurting from laughing so much. I remember going to this small town diner every morning to get a cinnamon roll and get the mail and watching my grandpa talk to farmers. I actually have some great memories about Christmas now that I think about it. Here’s the thing that really interests me. I know I got presents. I know my grandparents especially bought a LOT of stuff for all of the grandkids but I just don’t remember it and I’m pretty sure unless something is hiding in a junk box somewhere, I don’t actually have anything that they gave me any more. That is, I don’t have any of the stuff they bought. I have a lot that they gave me as mentioned above.


We’ve been talking at church about how we celebrate Christmas a lot lately since it’s coming up pretty soon. My church does a pretty cool thing around this time of year by challenging anyone who might listen to be intentional about what they do to celebrate Christmas. To “worship fully, to spend less, to give more, and to love all.” The idea is to get people to be more creative about how they give gifts instead of just taking the easy way out and buying a gift card, and then taking the money that they might have saved and use it to do some good in the world. It’s way more than just encouraging a crafting revolution of epic proportions. A bad gift can be made by hand just as a good gift can be purchased.


As a newish parent who is trying hard to navigate how to raise my boys without screwing them up so much that they spend their entire inheritance on therapy (not much so not hard), I am taking this Christmas thing pretty seriously. My sons love Christmas. They love the tree, the decorations, the music, the cheesy Christmas cartoons, the food, everything gets them ridiculously excited. They ask for toys and stuff a lot. The thing that hangs me up about this is that aside from the fact that I don’t have any money, I want to teach them to be intentional about what we are celebrating. If in fact, we were celebrating Macy’s at Christmas and the wonderful things they have given us, the way most do it would make more sense. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars, giving gifts to each other or ourselves (be honest) to celebrate what? For me, I don’t much appreciate the place of department stores or retail therapy in my life. About the only lasting thing they have given me is a headache and an ulcer from the debt I have stupidly racked up. So I don’t want to celebrate them. Also, I believe in Jesus and this is the time of year that we celebrate his birth. The way most of us celebrate, you would think Jesus was not born in a barn while the donkey his mother rode on ate hay around him as he lay in the food trough. Jesus did not value “things”. He valued relationships. He spent time with people, he spoke encouragement and instruction into their lives. When he was down, he went looking for his father to lift him back up. He valued time. The whole reason he came in the first place was to restore a broken relationship. This makes a lot of sense to me because the memories I have are relational. I remember the time that was spent with me. I remember feeling loved and cared for, and I also remember when I didn’t feel those things. That’s where I’m at tonight. I want my boys to remember the time I spent and the things I did with them. I want them to be able to relate to what Jesus prioritized, not because of what they didn’t see and recieve but because they saw it lived well. This is a time of year to love and care for each other. To sit and talk with each other, to play games, to sing songs, to dance, to drink and eat together around a table. It’s a time to talk honestly about what Jesus really wants for his birthday. If I spent a bunch of money that I don’t have on stuff for them that distracted and distanced them from me and didn’t have any significance to them, I feel like I would be missing the point and if I miss it, then they will too. Don’t get me wrong, I will give them gifts this year and I’m sure they will love them but they will be given with the intention of connecting with them and not just something else for them to have.

Worn Well Till Well Worn

So I have this pair of shoes. The kind that everybody hopefully has. They are special. These shoes have taken me to amazing places. They've carried me down the halls at work and through the doors to worship. They have stood in the rain and stuck to the floor of a grungy pub. I was thinking about my shoes today as I looked them over and realized that they are wearing out. They have a bit of a hole forming in the sole and I'm afraid I don't have much time left with them. Seems like a bit of a strange thing to feel sadness over although I would bet that more of you have been sad about shoes than care to admit it. Here's the strange thing though. When I think about these shoes, they mean something more to me than just footwear.

I've been thinking lately and the issue of my role has weighed pretty heavily on my mind. Where do I fit and what does that look like at work, at church, at home, serving others and in relationship with my wife, kids, family, and friends. Those shoes, in large part reflect who I am or at least who I want to be. I don't want to be the fancy pair of dress shoes, pulled out only for special occasions and removed as quickly as possible due to the phenomenal blisters forming. I don't want to be the casual loafer that's good for semi important events but can just as easily be out of place and useless if something messy comes up. These shoes can go anywhere and even if they might look out of place in the spotlight, they are invaluable to the guy doing work in the background no matter how fancy the occasion.

One other thing about these shoes. They are made from junk. Someone took old pieces of recycled paper, recycled wool, and recycled carpet padding, and pieced these shoes together as a way of reusing the stuff. The soles are literally made of old bald tires. I feel a bit of kinship in this too. I feel like I've been gradually pieced together using some stuff that if left on it's own wouldn't really be of much use and probably thrown away, but pieced together can become something loved and useful. That seems to be the way God works usually in fact. He takes something that is profoundly broken and knits together something remarkable. I'm somewhere in the middle of the production line right now but I can't wait to see what the finished product will look like.

He's There

He's there, hidden in plain sight. In the smile of a new bride as she walks with her new husband, in the face of a little boy dressed as a surgeon holding tightly to his mother as the music plays. He's in the lifted hands of the kindly old man four rows up and in the crystal clear sound of truth being spoken in the still air of a quiet chapel. He's in the flickering of a candle and in the piece of often dry bread, dipped in wine from a box. He's there when I hope he's not. He's there when my heart is hard and when it's broken. He's there in the mundane actions of life, and he's there for all the profound experiences. He's even there when I somehow can't find him. Where can I go to escape him? He's there. He's always there.

I think I hurt my hip while wrestling!

Hurting, confused, frustrated, discouraged, all might be words to describe me today. I've been thrashing about trying to find that one thing that seems to be right. That place that I can go and just know with perfect peace that I'm in the right spot. I know people who have that place, allegedly anyway. I don't. I don't know what it would look like if I did and frankly I just might hate it once I found it. Maybe in some sadistic way I enjoy this feeling. Every time I think I might have found it, it gets yanked out from under me. I just know I hate the way life looks right now. Not everything in life. I have plenty about my life that I enjoy and that I'm thankful for. I wish I had some profound way to tie all this together but I don't. This just means that as much as I hate leaving things unresolved, that feeling is the truth right now and anything else would be a lie.