A number of years ago, I wanted to learn about how God speaks to people. I figured that the Bible would be a good source of information on the subject, and that the beginning of the New Testament would be as good a place as any to start. So, I opened the beginning of Matthew and began reading with particular attention to times that God would communicate something to someone. I read through the first two chapters of Matthew, then paused my study (which I never did get around to continuing again in that way), because of my disappointment that I had never been spoken to in a dream as was apparently so common in the Bible.
Indeed, if the first two chapters of Matthew were the entirety of our Bible, we might appropriately expect that if God wanted to say something to us, doing so through a dream would be his favorite means of doing so. It happens five times in these two chapters. What I missed by pausing my study when I did was that those are the only five occurrences in the New Testament of God communicating to people specifically through dreams.
Realizing this helps us to notice the particular way in which Matthew is telling the Christmas story. Whereas the first two chapters of Luke emphasized Mary’s experience, Matthew highlights both the urgency of those messages communicated through those five dreams, and the character of the person who received four of them: Joseph. None of those dreams carried easy messages, nor was any of Joseph’s experience as Matthew tells it the kind of thing that gets printed in images on our Christmas cards. In other words, it’s for good reason that wise Linus went to Luke’s second chapter rather than Matthew’s to tell Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about.
Read MoreIt’s now December 26, which means Christmas in the culture around us is over. Stores that have had Christmas items on sale since at least October have moved on. The “Merry Christmas” greetings I exchanged with a stranger yesterday have stopped until next December. And the irony of perhaps my least favorite Christmas song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” is that as many times as we may have heard it during the days leading up to yesterday, we are much less likely to hear it during the actual twelve days of Christmas–especially by the time we would get to the lords a-leaping, pipers piping, and drummers drumming in early January.
Honestly, I’m fine with that kind of Christmas being behind us until it begins again next year. (Maybe it now begins after Labor Day? I remember hearing a radio station mark when there were one hundred shopping days left, which would have been on September 16.) But the other dimension of Christmas, the one where waiting has now turned into adoration–I feel like I need a lot more of this kind of Christmas, or I will have missed the point.
Read MoreWhen Charlie Brown yelled in desperation, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” his friend Linus calmly replied, “Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about.” Then Linus moved to center stage and quoted from the second chapter of Luke. Linus knew the right place to go, and today–Christmas Day–we go there too as we begin this twelve-day journey of adoration of our Messiah. We do so because it is through the first two chapters of Luke that we get a glimpse of Christmas through the eyes of one who certainly knew what it meant to gaze in awe and adoration at the newborn king: Mary.
Luke alone mentions many of the details of that first Christmas: Mary and Joseph’s travel to Bethlehem, placing the baby in a manger because there were no rooms for them, the shepherds in the fields, and the angelic message of “good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” If I want to complete the move from Advent’s waiting to Christmas’ adoration, and to enter this first day of Christmas with the appropriate awe for what today represents, the words I want to start with are Luke’s, because the eyes I want to see through are Mary’s.
Read MoreToday, Christmas Eve, we turn a long-awaited corner from the “How long, O Lord?” of Advent to the “Alleluia!” of Christmas. We move from the desperate longing that God’s kingdom would come and God’s will would be done on earth as in heaven, into the wonder that the king whom we’ve been awaiting indeed has come, and his will is being done–here, on this earth, in both spectacular and hidden ways, from that night in the little village of Bethlehem, through today, and all the way until he finally and fully joins earth and heaven together as one. We transition from watchful expectancy into the awed realization that Christ the King has come, is here, and “all day long [he is] working for good in the world.” We move from Advent’s waiting in longing into Christmas’ adoration of the one to whom all of our longings point us.
And that is such good news, and the adoration such an undeserved welcome and invitation, that I need more than one day of Christmas to let it sink in and give myself over to it. So, instead of one day, how about twelve?
Read MoreThe reason I haven't been very active on this blog in 2015 is because a great deal of my writing attention and online time throughout the year went to my participation in the CenterQuest School of Spiritual Direction. It was one of the richest experiences of my life–as I don't think I've had any previous year in which I was able to live so openly to God, to the people with me, to myself, and to this good world in which God has put all of us.
Parts of my experiences through CenterQuest are sure to come out in the things I will write in the coming year, but for now, I wanted to highlight a few of the readings from the year that impacted me in profound ways, and which I think anyone who wants a fuller life with God–studying spiritual direction or not–could find really helpful.
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