"The Best Christmas Pageant Ever"

Tonight, on my overnight, I was looking for a good Christmas movie to watch online. There wasn’t much to choose from but I found a poor quality copy of one of my childhood favorites: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. For those who don’t know the story it’s about this family of six children (the Herdmans) whose father left them and their mother works all the time and are out of control. At attempt to get some free snacks they show up at the local church one Sunday where they hear about the Christmas pageant for the kids of the church. The Herdmans take an interest in the play and decide they want to be all the main parts (and since they are known for being bullies in school, none of the church kids argue). The woman running the pageant naively lets them play the main roles while the rest of church gossips about how awful the pageant is going to be because of these dreadful kids.

           

Growing up I loved this movie. It has lots of funny parts but I think the reason I always loved it was that in the end the Herdman kids learn what the Christmas story is really about: Jesus. However, since I haven’t seen the movie since I was a kid, it brought up a few different emotions and thoughts.

The Herdmans kids are awful, “They lie, steal, cuss, and smoke cigars -- even the girls.” We even see one of Herdmans bullying another kid to get his lunch. But as I was watching this movie I found myself getting angry. Anger. That’s a strange emotions for a child’s movie about Christmas? But yes, anger. I found myself angry at the way these poor kids were portrayed. As wild children whose parents didn’t want to be around them because they were so awful, “Mr.Herdman left when Gladys was 3 and nobody blamed him. And Mrs.Herdman works 2 shifts at the shoe factory so she isn’t home much, nobody blamed her either.”

Hold on a minute! I blame them! Maybe if they were around more these kids would have some supervision and someone to take care of them and they wouldn’t need to bully other kids for their lunches just so they could have something to eat that day.

Ok so all this to say, I feel for the Herdman kids. They’ve been abandoned by their parents and left to their own destructive devices and then on top of it they’ve been marginalized by a school that doesn’t want to deal with them and a church who doesn’t want their “holy” image to be spoiled by some dirty nasty kids. And this is what makes me angry most of all.

It makes me angry because I see this so much in the American church and I am ashamed to admit, in myself, in my earlier years. Unfortunately, the church in American has gone two directions: the “lets be super seeker friendly, water-down the gospel, and never preach anything that will make anyone uncomfortable” and the “we don’t want ‘those’ people in our perfect little church and lets ostracize anyone who might have tattoos, smoke, drinks, has sex, and (here’s the big one) might be gay”.

Let me tell you neither one is Biblical and if you would look at the life of Jesus you would see how wrong both of these perspective are. Do you know who Jesus hung out with? Fisherman, tax collectors, and prostitutes. Do you know who these people are in our society? Jesus hung out with dirty, gross construction workers who hung out in sketchy bars after their shifts. He hung out with people who worked at McDonalds, truck drivers, strippers, prostitutes, “illegal” immigrants, and probably some drug dealers. These are our society’s equivalent. These are the people who have been marginalized in our society. These are the people Jesus hung out with. How many good church do you know who hang out with these types of people? Oh he also hung out with children. Dirty, homeless children who didn’t know how to behave properly. Children like the Herdmans.

Now it’s important to note that Jesus didn’t turn a blind eye to these people sins. He didn’t tell the drug dealers, “yeah go ahead selling harmful substances to people and cheating them in the process.” No, he did call them to repent and live a life of obedience to him but he did this AFTER he built a relationship with them. Once he knew he really knew them, knew their fears and hurts and dreams. And once he had that relationship he asked them to live the life he had created for them.

This is what the church should look like. We should be a place that calls people to live according to plan God has given us in the Bible (which does include abstaining from certain behavior and practicing other behaviors). But we should be a safe place for those who have been marginalized in our society. Unfortunately, these people feel as if church is the last place they would be welcome, but really, it should be the first. Our churches should be crammed full of people of all walks of life no matter what their socio-economic status, race, sexual orientation, occupation, immigration status, political party, or life style.

So what does this have to do with The Best Christmas Pageant Ever? The Herdmans were not welcome in their local church because they were seen as dirty and ill behaved children. And yet, these children needed to understand who God was and what Christmas was all about more than anyone else and they were denied that chance because of the so called “Christians” in this particular church (In the end, the kids do start to understand who Jesus was and the true meaning of Christmas, no thanks to the congregation but rather because of the one woman who choose to take a chance on these wild, neglected kids in the attempts to share the real Christmas spirit with them).

So who are the “dirty, ill-behaved children” in your life? Who are the people who need Christ and his redeeming love in your life? Who are the people who have been marginalized in our society and thus cast from our churches? And how are you going to change that?

This Christmas, may we all remember the true story of Christmas. The story of Jesus. Yes, his birth is important but let us remember the story of his life. How he cared for those around us, how set the perfect example for us on how to love people and bring them into reconciliation with him, how he died on the Cross to redeem us and so that we could have open communication with God the Father, and above all how he gently and lovingly brought ALL people to him. “For God so loved the world he gave his one and only son that WHOSOEVER believes in him, shall have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to SAVE it!” May we be agents of Christ who help save people rather than condemn people this Christmas season!

God Bless!

*** Disclaimer: This is generalization of what I have seen of the American church as a whole. I know many wonderful believers who truly love ALL people the way Jesus did. Zack and I have also been blessed to be a part of body of Christians who have clung to these concepts and live them out on a daily basis. But unfortunately, I find these people to be the exception instead of the rule.***

A Tribute to 25 years

Today I was reading a magazine article about the entitledness of my generation. In it the author gave some practical advice to people in their 20’s trying to make good impressions on their employers: “work hard. Don’t complain about things being “beneath” you. Just do what your boss tells you to do and do it well and you will be recognized for it.” Wow, earth shattering advice. You mean I have to work hard for something? You mean no one is going to just give me what I want? When I read this, I laughed at its sheer ridiculousness. But as I began to think about what the article said it reminded me of where I learned these principles: my parents.

Today is my parent’s 25^th wedding anniversary and this is my tribute to them as individuals, as a couple, but most importantly as my parents. My parents taught me the principle the author was trying to instill in her readers: work hard.  My parents are the some of the hardest workers I know yet the phrase, “they’ve worked hard for what they have” does not apply in the typical way. Let me explain.

By the worlds standards my parents don’t have much. They don’t own a house. They only have one car (and isn’t very new). They don’t have vacation property or a large retirement account. They live without cable (horrible, I know) and neither one shops very much. Looking at the amount of “stuff” they’ve accumulated you would assume that either a) they didn’t work hard enough or b) if they did work hard enough, where they heck did everything they work for go?

But my parents do work hard and they have gained much. See my parents are missionaries. For 19 years of their 25 year marriage they have been engaged in full time ministry. Ministry doesn’t pay well in dollar form but for 19 years my parents have worked hard to bring hurting young people to healing in Jesus Christ. But their legacy is more than the hundreds of people they have mentored. Their legacy is that in everything they do they point people to Christ. 

My mom, Laurie, is one of those people you can count on to get things done. She has the amazing gift of being able to visualize what something should be or could be and then immediately following through to make it happen. This is true not only in her ministry but in our home growing up. If she decided that the homeschool curriculum she was using wasn’t meeting our needs, she would effortlessly throw together a new one she created from several different curriculums.  If the functionality of room wasn’t work she could rearrange our whole home to better serve what our family needed from each room. She was faithful in the little things as well as the small. She made sure every bill was paid on time, that there was food on the table promptly at 5pm (even though she hated to cook), and there wasn’t a speck of dirt anywhere. She did all this while still serving in ministry and mentoring several young women. While all this contributes to my mom’s legacy, these things are not what I will remember her for.

I will remember how she pointed to Christ in all she did. As a teenager, I saw my mother as legalistic but as I began to mature in my faith I realized that there was nothing further from the truth. My mom chose not to listen to secular music, chose not to watch violent or sexual films, and chose not to engage in gossip or speaking ill of people. She chose not to do these things not out of some fear that God wouldn’t love if she did them, but rather out of love and respect for her heavenly father.  She chose to be kind to all she met, chose to fill her mind with the things of God and not of this world, chose to respect my father, and chose to work hard in her ministry and in our home. She chose to do these things not out of obligation but because she wanted to please and show her love for her Lord. It was because of her decisions to engage not in the things of this world, but of God’s kingdom that she pointed to Christ in all she did. And this is her legacy.

My father, Jim, well he’s a special sort of person that can’t be really summed up in a sentence, but maybe a few paragraphs will suffice. My dad works hard at all he does, like, really hard. Maybe even too hard. He’s also a very passionate person which can lead him to be too intense for some people. But I like it. Everything is do or die with him. He always told me, “If something’s worth doing, than it’s worth doing right the first time.” And he was right. As hard as he can work – he can relax hard too. And he can be a lot of fun. He thinks he is hilarious and sometimes I do too, but we don’t tell him that because it would go straight to his head. But a lot of people find him funny and he loves to tell dumb jokes and do bad magic tricks. The Mansion is the perfect place for him because he constantly has new people to use his joke and tricks on.

My dad is a man of the soil. He loves digging around in the earth and watching things grow. He’s always covered in something brown. He has taught me so many things about God by using gardening analogies. He even wrote a book on the topic: Ponderings from the Pumpkin Patch. My dad is also extremely accepting of all peoples. He is so quick to embrace anyone of any culture with no thought of how it might look to others. And while I love all these things about my father, this is not where his legacy lies.

His legacy will be in how he pointed to Christ. He pointed to Christ when he taught me, as a child, about Grace and Grace alone. He points to Christ when he works along aside a resident and informally mentors them as they work. He points to Christ as he is faithful to my mom.  He points to Christ as he chooses to lay down his own comforts as he labors without salary. He points to Christ as he loves all people of all cultures without discrimination.  He points to Christ as he lives in the world but not of it and as he chooses not to embrace the pop culture that rebels so much against our God.  This is his legacy.

My parents have taught me many things about life and God. But the most important thing they taught me is to live out my faith. My faith is not to be something to be reserved for Sunday mornings, but my love for God should permeate EVERY thing I do. This includes my work ethic, how I treat people around me (friends and strangers), how I drive, how I spend my money, what types of media I allow into my life, how I speak, what I speak about. Everything.  My parents don’t always agree on everything, but they always agree on this, “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God”.  I learned this from watching their individual lives as well as their lives as couple.

 My parents have been married 25 years. In a society where divorce is normal and marriage has lost its sacredness, they have persevered. I know things have not always been easy but they trusted God and remained committed to each other even when society told them it was ok if that wanted to give up. Even in this they pointed to Christ and his plan for marriage.  

So Mom and Dad, thanks. Thanks for the example you’ve been in my life and the example you’ve been to the hundreds if not thousands of people who have come through His Mansion’s doors as well as others who have crossed paths with you. Congratulations on 25 years together! 25 years on serving each other but ultimately serving God together. Thank you for the godly example you have been for my marriage and for my life. Thank you for the legacies you have and that you will leave behind. May God bless you both with another 25 years of marriage and may they be even better than the past 25. I love you both very much! Congratulations!

“Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” 1 Thessalonians 3:11-12

Change is hard...

Change is hard for me. Some people love change. Some people hate it. I have a love/hate relationship with it, but mostly it’s just hard.

Growing up I lived in the most perfect little homeostatic environment. Not that things didn’t ever changed just if they did, it was so gradual you almost wouldn’t notice. It was perfect. Then I turned 15. Bam! Everything in my world changed: my friends, my church, my family dynamics, and even me. Everything. It was awful. But then I started to acclimate. Then I tuned 17. Bam! And it all changed again: new state, new home, new friends, new church, (really) new family dynamics, and once again, I felt myself change.

Since that time my life has been a revolving door. When people in college asked me where I was from, I never could answer. “Where am I from? Well, I was born in Chicago, raised in New Hampshire, just moved here from northern Illinois, but my parents live in Ohio (but my younger brother lives in Wisconsin), and I live here in Deerfield, but my grandpa lives in Des Plaines so I go there on the weekend. But oh my boyfriend still lives in northern Illinois – so that’s kinda home too.” People looked at me like I was crazy. But more than that, I felt crazy. (In the six years I have had my driver’s license I have had four different licenses’ due to the constant moving.)  Where was I from? Who was I? Wasn’t your home supposed to help you establish you identity. If so, who was I?

After 3 or 4 years of being unsure of where home really was, my parents eventually moved back to New Hampshire and I felt some sort of normalcy return. I could finally say “I’m from New Hampshire but now I live in Des Plaines.” (I was literally giddy when I realized that now simple answer to the question, “where are you from?” One doesn’t think about these things until they are all of the sudden very complicated.) But then things changed again.

This time really big changes. I got married. So I now I had another new home, new state, new church, and most of all a new husband and a new role as a wife. This change I like. A lot. Except for the new state part.

Now things are about to change again. I’m finally moving home. To Des Plaines, close to the greatest city in the world. And I am excited, but change is still hard.

People say home is where the heart is. I believe that. Unfortunately, I have left pieces of my heart all over this great country. Des Plaines and New Hampshire have the biggest chunks, Deerfield and Berlin Heights, Ohio also have pieces. Harvard, Illinois/Lake Geneva, Wisconsin have a small piece. And with each place I left, I knew I had less of my heart to give to the next place. So when we moved here to Salem, WI. I never imagined I’d leave a piece of my heart here. But I can already tell I am going to.

 As I begin to dismantle our apartment, the same old melancholy of change sets in. This has been my home for a year and half (the longest I’ve lived anywhere since I was 17.) For the first time, this little apartment was mine. Not my parents but mine. I paid the rent and the electric and the cable and the insurance on it. It was mine. Well mine and Zack’s. It was also the first place Zack and I lived as husband and wife. This is where he brought me after our wedding. This is our home. And now a piece of me is staying here too.

And this is why change is hard. Because every time change happens (no matter how excited I am for where we are going) I have to leave. And I hate to leave. I hate to leave because I know a piece of me will stay here long after I have left.

But isn’t this what makes who we are? Are we not the sum of our experiences? If I left without leaving a piece of me here would I remember the growth and insight I gained here? This is why change is hard. It forces me to leave part of myself behind so that I may enter in to person it had helped me become. And this is hard.

Change is hard. But needed.  I have a love/hate relationship with it. But still: change is hard… 

Love.

“If I sing but don't have love, I waste my breathe with every song, I bring, an empty voice, A hollow noise. If I speak with a silver tongue, Convince a crowd but don't have love, I leave a bitter taste, With every word I say.If I give to a needy soul, But don't have love then who is poor, It seems all the poverty, Is found in me"

So let my life be the proof, The proof of Your love, Let my love look like You, And what You're made of. How you lived, how You died, Love is sacrifice, So let my life be the proof, The proof of Your love."

These are the lyrics to a song by artist for KING & COUNTRY. If the lyrics sound familiar it’s because they are almost verbatim from 1 Corinthians 13 (specifically verses 1 through 3). Most of us are familiar with 1 Corinthians 13 – the love chapter. We often hear it at weddings and other happy occasions. And for us Nicholas Sparks fans – it was integral part of Landon and Jamie’s story in a Walk to Remember. The point being, almost all of us have heard these words at least once in our lives. I am no different. I have read 1 Corinthians 13 countless times. Usually briefly reading through verses 1-3 and getting to the “meat” of the passage. You know the “Love is patient, love is kind…” part. You know, the real part of the passage. Or so I thought.

When KLOVE recently started playing for KING & COUNTRY’s take on this passage it reminded me of when God opened my eyes to the significance of these first 3 verses and how erroneous it was of me to only consider verses 4-8 as the “important” verses of the passage.

So lets take a journey back in time, to let’s say April of 2011. At this point in my life I was heavily involved in volunteer work specifically focusing on those living in poverty. In college God developed a passion inside of me to live out his command of caring for the widows and orphans, the oppressed and the broken (James 1). He gave me my life verse of Micah 6:8 (the title of this blog): Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. So in this point of time, I was doing my best to live up to these commands.  I traveled to India to understand what it means to serve his children overseas. And then traveled twice (each time for a week) to South Side of Chicago (for you non-Chicagoans, the south side is home to some of the most marginalized and forgotten people in our society) where I served in a homeless shelter and developed a passion for domestic missions. Upon returning home from all of these trips I immersed myself in my local volunteer work with and organization that served teens living in poverty in the suburbs surrounding my home. I also was given the opportunity to serve in a student group on my campus that helped raise awareness about issues of social justice.

Social justice and serving those in poverty was my life. I talked about it, I studied it, I prayed about it, I lived it. And in the midst of all this I found 1 Corinthians 13:3 “If I give all I have to the poor but have not love, I gain nothing.” Wait a minute, I gain NOTHING?! Here I am giving my whole life to the service of God and those most forgotten and broken – the poor and he’s telling me it means nothing if I have not love?! Wow! Love must be pretty important to God then!

So what is this love? Love is a pretty misconstrued concept in our society. I was recently in a Bible study that pointed out how quickly and easily we throw around the word “love” in our society: we LOVE our moms, but we also LOVE pizza. We LOVE our new car and LOVE The Office. But is this the same love we have for our boyfriend or our pet dog? The point being: Our society has only word for love and it has a variety of meanings. 

Thankfully the Bible was written in a language that had several words for the different types of love. I won’t bore you with going deep into this but I do think it is important to disguish the four types of love. Eros – this is passionate, romantic love. Like when you see that girl for the first time or the way I get butterflies in my stomach when I see my husband for the first time after being away for a few days! Eros can be very exciting but isn’t the love God is talking about here. Philia and Storge – these are similar loves in that they are roughly translated affection and friendship. They are slightly different but for our purposes are basically the love we have for our friends and family. And there is Agape. Most of us are at least a little bit familiar with this word. Agape means unconditional love. This is the love that God feels towards us and is the word that he is specifically using in 1 Corinthians 13.

So now that I gave you a mini hermeuntics lesson (please, scholars out there, don’t be too rough on me. This blog isn’t meant to be theology or doctrine lesson) lets get down to the practicality of what this means. When God opened my eyes to this passage last year and I read that he was asking me to unconditionally love everyone around me otherwise all my volunteer work meant nothing, I was blown away. Could that be really true? All that good I had done in Christ’s name was worthless? And then it hit me. Yes, it was true. And this is why.

The whole purpose of my life (and everyone’s for that matter) is to point people to Christ. I thought the best way to do that was be serving the disadvantaged in my area. And while it was, it meant nothing if I wasn’t loving the people in my life the way that Christ loved me. For example, here I was spending countless hours pouring into my volunteer work but then I was often short-tempered with my husband (fiancé at the time) when he forgot to call me or rude to my brother when I needed to get into the shower or even ungrateful towards my parents and grandfather who had given me so much. What kind of message was I sending? I thought they would see my work with poor and point to Christ but why would they look towards Christ if I was not even being kind to them, let alone loving them. And this is when I understood what Paul meant all my work would mean nothing. A big fat zero.

Even looking at from the perspective of those I was serving, I could see how it would meaning nothing without love. If I was doing all these great things for them, like donating my time and money to help tutor their kids and buy them canned goods to eat, but never took the time to sit down and talk to them and hear their story to really show they that I cared and loved them the way Christ loved me and them, then it meant nothing. I could do all the right volunteer work in the world but if I’m not loving and pointing towards my savior – then it means nothing. 

Have you ever had a friend help you with something but you could tell they didn't really want to or didn't even seem to care? This is what it is like to serve without love, it becomes a hollow shell of what serving really should be and therefore does not serve it's purpose of pointing others towards Christ. Now one disclaimer I'd like to point out, I do think a lot of people do understand this point, but also a lot don't. I have been fortunate to have been surrounded by many godly examples of what it means to serve in love and have been blessed to follow in those footsteps. However, we must remind ourselves of this if we desire to keep growing in the way we serve God and others. 

All this very long post to say, love is important. In fact at the end of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says: “But these three remain, Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is Love”. Love is the most important. It was what compelled our God to send his son to save us, it is  what compels us serve him in return. It is what gives what we do meaning. LOVE never fails!

So this week, go out in the confidence that we have received the greatest love of all! And then share it! 

References:

- klove.com

- biblegateway.com

- The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis via wikipedia.com 

- Jim Ford (who taught me about philio and agape love when I was a small child)

- Dr. Cliff Williams via his Love and Friendship class

- The Holy Spirit who helps us discern all things (1 Cor. 2:12-13)

New Beginnings

Do, Love, Walk, Joy.

For those of you not familiar with me or God's story these words may hold little meaning. To me, they hold my world together. This blog is an effort to show how these four words impact my life on daily level. This blog is also an effort to show what God has been teaching me on this journey we call life. These four words are the foundation of that journey.

"He has told you, O man, what is good. To do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8) Do. Love. Walk. This sums up the Old Testament. This is what God has been trying to communicate the whole time. Do, Love, and Walk. Yet, so often as Chirstians we miss that. I confess, at times, I've missed it. We bring in so much other theology, doctrine, programming, outreaches, missions statments, service projects, sunday school lessons, potlucks, and on and on. While these things may be all well and good in there appropriate times and places, too often they become the focus. They shouldn't.

This is what happened in Israel. They lost sight of what was truly good. So caught up in the ritualistic system of sacrifices - they missed the point. They missed God. They come before him, confused as to why he is upset with him. They ask, "With what shall we come before the Lord with" (Micah 6:6) and then go on to name countless of meanial sacrfices that maybe could appease their maker. And God, in his comapssion, reminds them yet again of what he truly wants - their hearts. And their lives.

He doesn't want our hollow sacrifices anymore than he wanted theirs. He want's our lives. For anyone who complains Christainity is to confusing to follow - it's not. We've made it that way. But it's not. All we're called to do is to Love God and Love Others. Period. (Matthew 22:37-40) All that other stuff - it will fall into place once we get that down.

Joy. My parents, the godly people that they are, sought to give me a name that above being "pretty" had significance in its etymology that would hopefully define the person I would become. Joy. It's more than happiness. dictionary.com defines it this way "the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying". I like the part "caused by something exceptionally good". Joy comes from a deeper place than happiness. Joy comes from God. Joy: my middle name, a fruit of the Spirit, coming from God, something that I experience when I'm doing, loving, and walking. Joy is what makes the doing, and the loving, and the walking worth it. Joy is my reward because God is my reward.

So this is my story of doing, loving, and walking with joy. My frame of reference for all that I do. The theme of my journey. Won't you come along?