Hope – Page 2 – Life's Prequel

There are times beauty overwhelms the day’s darkness

There are times in ones life when the beauty of it all is overwhelming.

When, through the cracks in everything, the light gets in …
and the light that brings life shines all around in the darkness, giving life.

Choose life, please, choose life.

And this from the supper table, piped into a fantastic sound system:

Over the Rainbow

and this article as an explanation: Isreal records in one take

Tonight:

Last Saturday, Christmas, I put this together from pieces from my wife and my thoughts and my wife then edited a few times. And it contains the essence of faith; Faith in a gracious God; Faith proclaimed by our church, the Lutheran Church, the E.L.C.I.C.:

Second Reading: Titus 3:4-7
4When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. 6This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Darkness
We wrote to a friend whose wife, Joan, was diagnosed with a really bad kind of dementia:
“Today, as the snow falls on the still dark fields in the view to the west and as single cars traverse the road on this side of the darker trees,
“I’m thinking of you and all the inspiration you have been to us;
“And thinking how [deleted expletive/]unfair and typical it is that you must face this, as you’ve faced so many challenges.”
Christmas Works
Every Christmas we see people, people, people expecting, expecting, expecting, buying, buying, buying, preparing, preparing, preparing, travelling, travelling, travelling, doing, doing, doing, cooking, cooking, cooking, wrapping, wrapping, wrapping, eating, eating, eating, and then we also see people grouchy and pressed, ornery and mean, exhausted and worn, hurting and torn, hungry in body and soul, upset and disappointed, disappointed, disappointed.
Christmas Grace according to God’s Mercy
God comes into our stress and hectic, joins right in with us, walks with us, runs with us to the store, the bedroom to wrap, the kitchen to cook, the living room to deliver, the drive to shovel, the store for the last minute food or gift, … God is with us, and the greatest gift is not any of our hectic, or our doing, or our meeting expectations, or even our great goodness.
Christmas is God’s Gift to us, to remind us: God is WITH us in everything: there is nothing we can do to make God be with us. God has done this already, and demonstrated it with Jesus’ birth more than 2 millennia ago. Demonstrated it because we humans need it made real obvious.
The rest of the world, even other religions and the Christian churches, and even us Lutherans get so lost in trying to be in control that we preach, teach and live that we need to do the righteous things, that we need to say the righteous things, that we need to believe the righteous things,
All in order that God will be with us.
That’s a formula for disaster in our lives. It is the formula of sin: we take over the place of God … and then all hell breaks loose in and around us, and we wonder why.
But the one True Gift that the Lutheran Church offers our members, the rest of the Christian churches, other religions, and all the world is simple:
First we confess: We cannot make ourselves right with God. We are too far gone, lost to sin, even the seemingly ‘smallest’ sin separates us from God. And we JUST CANNOT DO IT RIGHTEOUS enough, none of us, never, ever, no how!
AND
Second we proclaim: we don’t have to make ourselves righteous enough, because God has already made us saints, even as we are and remain sinners. God COMES TO US, each of us. Though we are lost, God finds us every day, every hour, every second. God finds us, comes to us, and God is with us,
Always. God is with us, God makes us good enough to be in God’s presence! It’s a gift! Free!
And the only thing we can do is respond: we don’t have to respond well, but we can. Knowing God is with us can change our lives, what we think, what we say, what we DO, and what we believe. And God IS with us no matter how we respond! Its grace, its free, its life-giving.
Giving as Giving Life; Because God Gives, Therefore We Give
Knowing God is with us can change our lives: we can give freely just as God gives to us, we can give forgiveness and mercy, grace and hope: love! WE can give others unconditional love!!
Story: Giving Freely
Nancy Gavin tells the story of her husband, Mike, whom she refers to as “The Man Who Hated Christmas.” Now it wasn’t Jesus that Mike hated. It wasn’t the Christian faith that he hated. But Mike hated what our culture had done with Christmas. He hated trees, and he hated presents, he hated “Jingle Bells,” and he hated all that stuff.
And he was a grouch every year at Christmas–not because of Jesus and the manger but because of the way we observe it.
One December when their son, Kevin, was twelve years old, Kevin was wrestling on his Junior High Wrestling Team. During that month of December they had an exhibition match against a church team. [A] church team … from … the inner city, a team made up of the poorest of the poor …. When the day came for the wrestling match, Kevin and his team came out in their sparkling wrestling uniforms…. [E]verything was as high tech and glorious as it could be. The [other] team … came with sneakers that weren’t really wrestling sneakers. …they didn’t even have the helmets that wrestlers wear to protect their ears from being pinched and pulled and scraped [while] wrestling.
As the match progressed … the church team [lost] every match. Mike… leaned over to [Nancy] and said, “I wish they could win just one match. They have talent, but they don’t have any coaching.”… [It took some doing but somehow] a light bulb went off in Nancy’s head.
The very next day she went down to the local sporting goods store and bought wrestling headgear and wrestling shoes and sent them anonymously to the church whose team her son had wrestled the day before. Then on Christmas Eve she wrote a little note to Mike: “Dear Mike, I know how you feel about Christmas. … Remember that wrestling team from the inner city church? This Christmas, they have headgear and proper shoes … as your Christmas present.”
She put the note in an envelope and stuck the envelope up in the branches of their Christmas tree. When morning came, the children unwrapped all their presents, and there was the usual festivity. Then one of the children spotted this envelope up in the tree and said, “Look! What is that?” Mike took the envelope down and opened it and read the note. With tears in his eyes, he looked at Nancy and said, “This is the best Christmas that I have ever had.”
It became a tradition in their family. Every year there would be an envelope, with no name on it, just an envelope in the tree. One year Nancy sent a group of mentally challenged kids to camp. Another year she sent some funds to a family whose house had burned down during the month of December. Year after year after year some sort of gift like this was Mike’s Christmas present.
Then, Nancy wrote, there came the fall, about the time their children were grown, when Mike died of cancer. When Christmas rolled around, Nancy could hardly put up the tree. But she did, and somehow in his memory she felt that she ought to once again put an envelope in the tree to make some sort of gift in Mike’s honor, just as she had during his lifetime. The three grown children came home, and Christmas morning came. And there in the branches of the tree were four envelopes. For, unbeknownst to each other, each of their three children had also made a gift in honor of their father.
And that too has become a tradition in their home. Nancy Gavin writes, “For generations … as my children become adults and have their own families, there will be an envelope for Mike in their tree.” And when her grandchildren have families of their own, there will probably still be envelopes for Mike in their tree. For the Gavin family is a family that “got it.” …. (SERMONSHOP December 1999, JOE PARRISH)
They began to understand Christmas, God’s gift of life for us.
Giving as Works
But our giving gifts at Christmas, not even an envelope in Mike’s memory, is not supposed to be our way to earn love from others, or from God. It is supposed to be BECAUSE we love them, and we love them because God loves us first, even though we do not deserve it, never, ever, no how.
Giving as Response to Mercy, to Grace
This Christmas, not in order to gain anything from God, nor from others, but because we recognize all that God has given us, let us Give to others. Give something just because God loves you, accepts you as you are, forgives you, and because God walks with you.
Christmas Grace
But whether you give because God loves you unconditionally, OR NOT; whether you are caught up in the hectic of making it perfect so that the traditions are not lost and are there as a loving structure that gives life to you and yours, OR NOT; whether you have quit giving gifts and you hate Christmas, OR NOT; whether you love the snow and the possibilities of the Christmas season, OR NOT; whether you have or will give all the right gifts to all the right people, OR NOT;
NO Matter What: God walks with you each day, each hour, each minute, and loves you unconditionally.
Christmas Light
We ended that note to our friend with these words:
“As the light of Christmas dawns, and the details become clearer, of the landscape before us, it is with deep gratitude for your gifts, part of God’s gifts for us, that we say,
“Know we pray for you and Joan,
“Know that if you need whatever, we will find it, in ourselves or organize it with others, to provide for you, as you have provided for so many people, us included.
“May the light shine even now brightly for you and Joan.”
Christmas Blessing
Breathe easy; you’re in God’s hands also this day. So let God’s light of love shine through your heart, mind and soul to all those around you.
Have a blessed Christmas!
Amen

Woman in Gold – Gingerbread House

While watching efforts to regain art, the Woman in Gold,
which was stolen by the Nazis,
a gingerbread house is being constructed.

Hope.

Where is the wrong in what was originally private,
then stolen by the Nazis,
and now a national treasure of the Austrian government,
except for it to be taken away from Austria, private again
in a new homeland.

Where is the wrong …

Where is the wrong in cutting off the children?

One Day Things Will Be As They Should Be

That’s raw hope, nothing in the world points to that ever being the case.

But that is hope, to hope for what the world provides no evidence as possible at the time.

The Day of Christmas is quite full of expectations and little leaves one wondering if one can meet the expectations more than taking seriously what could be.

Flowers are not complicated.

They add a flair of hope.

That one day, things will be as they should be.

Look

Look!

Look
At me, here among the many celebrating
Advent in the splendor of a perfect concert hall.
Songs and lessons and organ pieces that rock the hall decorations
of green wreaths, red ribbons and candles.
And me a guest of the sponsors.
With lights and acoustics that rival the best in the world.

Look

At me after being abused: so thoroughly demeaned, criticized and exiled as if there were something wrong with me! As if I were worthless, as if I could be expelled with the sewer.

Look

At those who worked with lies against me. What they said about and did to me says very little about me.
Though hardly perfect I am God’s child,
a saint by Grace alone,
fully worthy of unconditional love and joy.

Look

At all these others, like me,
also controlled, cut off, accused of our partner’s wrongs,
made out to be a monster of evil proportions,
held in captivity, bound by our own principles never to harm those we love, trusting the same of our beloved until it is too late:
and harm is too obvious to us;
and wholly captive we still sought every way to please,
and more to offer health and life to the one we loved.
And we offered our very breath to transform our life to death,
and our beloved’s death to life …
And even then even more was taken from us …
Until. …

And perhaps,
for some of us,
now freed
we still must navigate the landmines,
no
the heart-mines,
that populate our paths.

So we celebrate Advent, waiting
for our Lord to come
and set us free.

Look

What they said and did reflects who they are …
desperately needing the Light of the world to scour
their hearts and minds and souls clean …
the perfect forgiveness of Grace.

Would it be enough …
enough to cure their
disease
and
dis
integration?!

Look

And see the joy.

Look

At the angels,
the Emmanuel,
the Faithful,
the sweet Silent Night,
the manger,
the baby boy,
the wonders of his love.

God be with you all
until we meet again

at Jesus feet.

Forgiveness

It was a mystery me to me, but it is simple, as in simple on the far side of complexity!

I’m talking here about forgiving.

The steps are easy enough to list: Decide, Plan, Do, and then Experience Forgiveness.

Deciding is not as easy as it seems. You will probably need to come back to this again and again. And your spouse has to be number one in your life. It is not possible to forgive your spouse if you do not put them number one. It’s going to take so much more when keeping them in any lower level of priority.

Planning is complicated by the fact that you need to keep up whatever you do for the rest of your life. But you need to plan so that each gift will touch her heart.

Doing is easy at first, but it may get to be nearly, if not actually, impossible. And you will feel the cost of the accumulation of giving long before you feel the forgiveness, the wiping away of her offenses, leaving you seeing how wonderful a person she is.

And then you suddenly one day will look at her and only see how great she is. In spite of all the abuse she is continually doing to you.

And this is as wonderful as the day you fell in love with each other, but this is not a gift of hormones and nature; this is the result of REALLY tough work on your part. So enjoy the feeling. And to keep it up you will need to keep up the giving and forgiving.

Forgiveness is no longer a mystery; it’s just plain hard work!

Colour Blindness and Darkness

There is little that’s heard
and so much to say.
The radio reports a male’s voice about his mother
being beaten by his father, and verbally abused continually, only when he was drunk.
Horrendous … and we meet this with numerous efforts … still hardly enough.
But there is little to nothing said or believed about how
women too often manipulate, control, deride, blame and verbally abuse
the men closest to them in their lives.
And when the woman owns the house, is the sole guardian of the children, and is the boss at work …
the opportunities to manipulate, control, deride, blame and verbally abuse multiply out of control.

And the justice system, well focused at protecting women from violent men,
is so blind to the women that bring false complaints about their men being violent, when this is just yet another lie, a manipulation, a power trip, a derision, a blaming, and real life abuse of their men.
The justice system takes these men, and judges them, convicts them, punishes them (tossing them out of their home, cutting them off from the abusive women and their own children that rely on them) and intimidates them (actively disrupting the process of justice that would serve them well and bring them a voice, a fair hearing) … convicted and condemned without a trial.

The light of truth is obliterated by the deadwood of lies, the colour of the life cycle which could be a delight is hidden beyond the darkness of death.

The signs are everywhere, of God’s gifts of beauty, streaming to us in real life through the huge bandwidth of our eyes and brains.

Even the leaves are weeping at the injustices, even the leaves are weeping at the misplaced condemnations, even the leaves are dancing with colour promising, though the darkness will set in, new life will emerge, new life will emerge!

Among the maze of life turning towards the winter cold, the small birds still sing and seek and dance with joy.

Where are you?

Do you seek to give every abused victim a voice?

Can you tell the difference between a real complaint of male violence against women, and the complaint that is further abuse?

How can you see behind the curtain?

How can you see past the deadness of manipulative abuse, to see the light of hope and love?

Where is your joy today?