like a child

If I am not poor in spirit, Christmas will not come to me. The other morning, I sat reading from my journal of 2011. I felt sad and perplexed that some of my goals had not been realized. I asked Jesus what is up with that. He answered me in my Advent readings with a quote from Oscar Romero. The poem is below:

No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even for God - for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.

Christmas is a time of giving. We like to think of ourselves as givers. I have been motoring about buying presents, flying through cyberspace bargain hunting. But have I thought of myself as a receiver? 

In Sam’s oral presentation about Christmas for kindergarten, he gushed about how opening presents is our favorite Holiday tradition. He has no misguided self-concept of being a giver. This boy knows how to receive. Tear open the package and dig in. 

As I have grown up, I have forgotten what it is like to receive. If I want Christmas to come, I must open my arms wide to receive the bounty that Christ brings. I must empty myself of all my vein notions and haughty thoughts that I am generous. The truth is that I am needy, broken, destitute. I need grace. 

I want to recover the child-like joy of receiving the Present this Christmas.

broken angel

Things break.

Here on earth, everything breaks, wears out, corrodes. This morning I found this favored angel from the nativity scene with his wings discarded nearby. Sam owned up to wrestling with Gabriel. A new Christmas scene is written in the McMurray house. 

Last month goes down in history as one of the most horrible in my life. My mother landed in the hospital with a life-threatening MRSA infection. A situation with a family member sat in my gut and my mind constantly replayed the scene. What if I had said that? What if I had pointed out this? Friends in crisis. Conflicts. Disease. Death. Dreary grey weather. November had it all.

Through all of this, God called my heart heavenward. Confident of his presence with me, I breathed prayers like the Jesus one. Inhale and say, “Jesus Christ, son of God.” Exhale and say,  “have mercy on me a sinner.” One day as I ran to my car late to meet someone, a rainbow appeared through the gray dreary clouds. I gasped aloud. Awe. 

On the same day, I drove down a gorgeous Tennessee back road and something at the tree-line caught my eye. A horse? No. I saw the antlers. It was the biggest buck I have ever seen majestically ruling ore the plain. I pulled over and watched it from a distance. Awe.

To see something extraordinary and to try to put words around it is to muse.

Awe is the first step to worship. If I understand something, I will never think myself smaller than it. I am learning that life is hard and there is good in the hard and hard in the good. 

The angel proclaimed peace (wholeness) on earth, good news to men. His wings dazzled the shepherds. They fell on their faces in worship. 

Things may break here on earth but there will come a day when it will all be new.

become small

D sat before me an incredibly beautiful 40 something year old woman with track marks littering her arms. She had come into the clinic to be followed for a hepatitis C infection she contracted while shooting up heroin. She said she knew something was wrong because she no longer felt the effects of her pain meds. See, she has chronic pain. The damage to her liver prevented her pain killers from having an effect anymore. She said to me, “Have you ever known something in your gut yet you didn’t want to know the truth?” Her eyes, dim and tired, bore straight through me. “Yes,” I answered. Yes I have.

On Sunday we (at Fellowship Bible Church) looked at a beautiful passage of Scripture, Luke 9:37-50. This tale takes us from the Transfiguration where Jesus is seen by James, John and Peter chatting it up with Moses and Elijah and spits us out at an argument among the disciples about who is the greatest. In the middle of this saga, Jesus tells the disciples that he is going to be betrayed. They don’t want to know the truth. They can’t handle the truth as Jack Nickolson so eloquently shouted in the courtroom during the movie A Few Good Men.

One of the ways the disciples avoid the truth is by comparing and arguing about who is the greatest. Wow. Toddler-like. And yet, I am like Peter. I just want to build a shelter on the mountain and stay there. But we must come down to the reality of this fallen world. This is where it gets hard. Can I stay present? 

I would judge D with her scarred and hardened veins except for the fact that I get what she has done. In fact, I have done it myself. I have not shot up heroin. But I have used the Word of God - I have used religion - as so much heroin. I have split theological hairs to avoid the darkness of my own heart. I have spouted verses like quick fixes. I have used the Bible as a self-help manual instead of a collection of stories to lead me into the Throne Room of the Present.

How does Jesus handle his disciples, his friends? How does He handle D with her broken liver? How does He handle me with my “big religion?” By bringing a child to His side and saying, “Whoever accepts this child as if the child were me, accepts me. And whoever accepts me, accepts the One who sent me. You become great by accepting, not asserting. Your spirit, not your size, makes the difference.” (Luke 9:48)

See, he knew the disciples puffed up because they were feeling rather small and afraid. And he wanted them to know that it’s ok to feel small, vulnerable. In fact, that is where life is at: remaining vulnerable and undefended in this present fallen world and letting God take up our defense. He hung out with drunks, prostitutes and gluttons because they knew they were broken. The Pharisees hid their brokenness. He called them “white-washed tombs.” 

I don’t have to assert myself and become puffed up and big because the Greatest Man in the Universe became small and died so that I might live. Jesus says, “Become more by becoming less. Accept the least of these and accept Me.”

I only have access to the Spirit in This Present Moment. Can I be aware instead of asserting myself? Can I accept the least of these? Can I understand that the least of these lives in me? When I accept her, I can give grace more freely and genuinely to others.

Recently I have had to look at an argumentative side of me. I had to accept that I still carry around quite a bit of guilt. As I lay the guilt down and acknowledge my powerlessness, God’s Spirit rests on my spirit. I can accept my smallness and know that He is Big Enough. I can be generous in spirit. 

I don’t have to assert, just accept.

I’m so grateful the Word of God includes stories of confused and hardened men who brushed shoulders with Jesus and had their shells blown off. I can hardly follow this story with all its twists and turns! But this I can get...

Treasure and ponder these words! (Luke 9:44)

I will treasure them. I will muse.

e-camp tales

They sat among paper and markers spread about the floor on the final day of e-camp - youth not yet in their twenties possessing a wisdom and presence few will ever know. The older one, tan with chestnut hair tied up in a pony tail, asked questions of her younger friend. The younger, pale-skinned with white-blonde hair and braces with red-rubber bands looked to her friend to explain the mysterious.

“Some people decide they don’t want to do it. But when I was seven years old, I decided to live my life for Christ,” she said as she reached for a pink marker. 

Bodies traced on 5-foot strips of white paper surrounded them. The campers in the Create It section had traced their bodies on white paper. As the girls chatted, the campers lined the halls decorating these sketches and expressing their personalities in ways only the uninhibited youth can discover.

Among them, Claire and Josie sat discussing matters of eternity using words with immeasurable impact like: Have  you thought about it? Do you know what it means to be a “Christian?” Would you like me to pray for you?

The e-camp counselors, haggard and stiff, ferried markers back and forth. As we passed, we relayed an alert to pray. Our smiles belied the muscular soreness and weariness of bone we felt after a week of running after 140 children. As I passed my good friend and fellow accomplice in the Create It section of e-camp, she whispered, “Paydirt!” And we both got it that this is the REASON we are here. Our hope and prayer is that the children would get a glimpse of the God we worship. 

e-camp equals 

1,000,000 strips of tissue paper.

500,000 e-mails.

900 stickers.

500 markers. 

250 pencils.

200 lanyards.

180 t-shirts.

165 paint brushes.

80 bowls of glue.

40 drumsticks.

25 journals.

14 construction paper “chains”

10 trips to Sonic.

1 year of planning and praying.

The planning and worrying. The praying and cutting. The painting and hammering. The setting up and the tearing down. The million pieces of tissue paper glued to the concrete floor. The brand new pedicure now splattered with Kilz primer. The t-shirts carefully designed, printed, labeled and sorted and then sweated in with sweet service to our God. The eight or so thawed gallons of ice cream dripping down the Learning Center freezer. One humble leader willing to clean it up. His wife who stacks chairs and submits to her Father. We would do all this and more for one lost sheep to find her way home. We do it because Our Father said He would do it. Only He said He would lay down His life for one lost sheep. 

It all boils down to a question I saw scribbled in a sketch book by a sage 12-year-old boy. “God, how did you let Jesus die on the cross and not help him?”

How?

How?

Are we really worth that? I did not ascribe that worth, He did. Adonai. Jehovah Raah. Immanuel. Jehovah Tskidenu. 

Later Friday night, I sat in the audience as 140 children under twelve lead me in a worship experience that must have bounced off the gates of Heaven itself. A little angelic blonde girl aptly named Summer danced before me. She personified worship and playing before God and resting in His Sovereignty. 

I mused... Is there any joy greater to our Lord than seeing a child break out in unabashed worship? Is there anything that pleases Him more than 140 children singing His Name in praise? Is there any higher calling than to simply be a vessel for His Spirit to fuel these children?

What will this generation of deep thinkers and passionate lovers accomplish? 

I cannot fathom it. I am changed to have been a part of seeing them worship our God this week at e-camp.