When the Wise Become Fools

     Not too long ago, the wisemen came and took over my living room.  The wisemen had hijacked Noah’s ark and held baby Jesus hostage along with his mother Mary.  There was evil afoot.  Every so often, the animals on the ark would walk the plank, and only diabolical laughter could be heard as the ark sailed the living room rug. Jesus and Mary seemed doomed.  The wisemen had not gotten the memo – we are supposed to worship Jesus, not put him in the brig. 

     Even though my children had rewritten the story of Jesus’ birth, I consoled myself in remembering that God’s plan had not been taken out of His hand.  God has already accomplished all He desired without any detours.  No wisemen gone rouge could bother me. 

     There are no guarantees – all of life is a gamble- live today for tomorrow we die – live for yourself.  These ideas reveal what most of the world believes about life.  It sounds a lot like the wisemen taking over Noah’s boat and going for a joyride.  And even though I laughed at my sons’ revisionist history, I too want to take control of the ship and do my own thing.  I am afraid of not squeezing all that I can out of my life.  I want to be like the living room wisemen and write my own story.  I am ok with putting Jesus in handcuffs.

      But even if Jesus is all tied up below deck, He still affects our lives.   He really did live.  He really did die.  And there are too many resurrected people walking around for Him not to have lived again.  I know.  I am one of them.   But I spurn the blood that ransomed me.   I am unfaithful.  I leave Him.

     Every day I find my heart wanting to leave the home of my Father and go find my life somewhere else.  I am lured by the siren song of comfort and ease, of the perfect wrinkle free day, and of daydreams that are full of every imaginable thing.   I take my inheritance and try the road of my own desires.  And I never think of where my choices will lead until I taste the bitterness of the outcome.  Aloofness sets in and my heart begins to cool.  I must turn toward home again to warm my hardened heart.  Yet every time I go back to God I wonder.  Will He take me back again?  Have I wandered too far this time? 

     As He stands with outstretched hands I see that He has come not for the healthy, but the sick.  It is the only place I can go for restoration.  And this pattern is becoming more and more common for me.  The more I walk with Jesus, the more I see my tendency to want to walk through life apart from Him. 

But He has a love that is stronger than the death that threatens my soul and He has a jealousy that is fiercer than any grave that would forever bury me.   There is no place He will not go to rescue; there is no bitterness, no anger, no apathy that His death and life cannot heal. 

     What the wisemen on the ark forgot was that the baby below deck came to die for them.  He came to return blessing for cursing, life for death.  Like the pirate wisemen going back to the crèche to worship Jesus, God will resurrect the curses of my life and make them into the blessings He intends them to be.  This is Redemption’s song.  A beauty for ashes, a strength made perfect in weakness. 

     For that day, my spirit is longing.  And with the Spirit and the Bride, I say come.  Come and take the people of this world who think themselves wise and show them they are fools.  Come and give these fools the gift they need.  A humble heart surrendered to the Love that many waters cannot wash away.  And I, like all the other fools of the earth, will discover that I have nothing to give Him, nothing but my heart.

~Your Fellow Sojourner 

                 The boys reading by the tree (Noah's ark is docked under the sofa table.)

                                     In the Bleak Midwinter

       In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

               earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

               snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

               in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

               Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain;

               heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign.

               In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

               the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

               Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

               cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

               but his mother only, in her maiden bliss,

               worshiped the beloved with a kiss.

               What can I give him, poor as I am?

               If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

               if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

               yet what I can I give him:  give my heart.

                  By Christina G. Rossetti

Don't Skip

     Are you one of those? You know, the ones who like to read the last page of a book first?  As a lover of story I want to encourage you to stay that hand and wait.  Wait for the end.

      When we read the end of a book before the beginning, we are assuming too much.  We want to read the “good stuff” and in so doing, we lose the richness of all the intricate details of the story. We lose the weight of what the story truly means.  We miss the tension that brings fullness and life to the storytelling.

    There are places in books where you can’t stop reading and so you try to stay up all night to read what will happen next.  And then there are times when you put it down after reading one paragraph.  Stories can become redundant or dull.  Excitement can wane.  We forget that excitement has its price. 

     In order for there to be dashing rescues or joyful meetings, there has to be conflict or pain.  There has to be a problem that seems to have no resolution, that looks as if all is lost. 

     When my daughter wanted to read Anne Frank’s Diary this summer I cautioned her.  I warned her that the content and vocabulary may be challenging.  She had a habit of being “one of those” who started a book and then wanted to know what happened in the end by about chapter two.  And so I told her, “You may read the book, but only if you finish all of it, without stopping or skipping ahead.”  “Ok, I will Mom.  I Promise.”

Bella singing stories of Christmas with the Wye Youth Chorale.

     And yes, the moment came when she slumped into a chair one morning to announce that she was done with Anne Frank.  It was too slow, too boring, and much too long.  “Oh no, Bella.  We have a deal, remember?”  And so, week after week, she trudged through the novel.  Sometimes she would enlighten me with what she was reading and other times she would just read because she had to.  Then one day, she finished the book.

     On the day that she reached the end of all 283 pages of Anne Frank, she shared her thoughts on the experience with me.  “Mom, I cried.  It was so sad.”  “I know, but you know what, I am proud of you for hanging in there.  You did it.”  “Why would anyone do that to someone?  Those people didn’t even do anything wrong.  I hope that never happens again.”  And then I had to tell her that people still do that today.  The innocent are sought after and killed just because of their race or their beliefs or because they are inconvenient.  I told her this is why stories like Anne Frank’s are so important.  We must remember.  She realized the value in reading all of a book that day, the boring, the exciting, the long, and the hard.  And much like Bella, there are times when I want to skip ahead to the “good parts” in life, instead of walking through the difficulties. 

     There are moments of great oxygen siphoning pain in life: when you see your husband carry your bloody child into the ER, the moment when you find out about the inoperable brain tumor, or when you hear of two people that once loved each other, now love each other no more.  Who can come and bring help to these situations?  Who can create another eye, or heal a brain, or make two people love each other again? It looks hopeless, and you feel helpless. 

     We know that each day is like another page in a story, waiting to be read.  But we are a weary people and we need to rest from the events of the day.  We turn the light off each night and close the book.  The story must wait until tomorrow. 

     I love the picture of the setting and the rising of the sun.  The sun will set and the sun will rise no matter what has transpired during the last 24 hours.  It is constant.  This cycle brings an end to the harsh sunlight and the heat of the day; and it brings light and warmth to a cold dark night.  It gives hope for another day; hope to remain in the story of life.

     Many times we wake to the same thoughts.  The leftovers from yesterday’s anxious feelings or unexpected bad news that paralyzes.  We don’t see the subtle changes in our character or the small progress in others’ lives.  We assume we know how it all will end.  We are experts at prediction.  Often we go ahead and shut the open book of our lives and walk away.  We have “read” the end of story.  We say, “I know how this is going to go.  No point in looking for a different outcome here.  Why raise my hopes for something that just isn’t going to happen?”

     But faith doesn’t work that way.  Faith keeps working even when we do not see the end.  Faith keeps dipping His pen into the ink to write another chapter, to add the details that broaden and color our lives with grace and mercy and love. 

    We see a girl blossom into young adulthood with 20/40 vision in her one eye, vision that has become clearer and more compassionate.  We find ourselves telling other people with a smile and a tear, about a woman who loved life and loved her God and left us all too soon.  We learn to pray for the impossible.  We ask for a dead marriage to be raised to life again.  We pray that the Author’s pen is still writing.    We long for the story to continue until the good part comes.

    And it will come.  The Author and Finisher of the faith of every believer in His story writes with love and care.  He is not like an earthly writer, scratching out notes, throwing pages of a rough draft into the trash can, or leaving a work unfinished.  He writes truth, ensuring that no word falls to the ground without a purpose.  The goodness in His story comes now, in His Words that are found and eaten; words that are healing, strengthening, caring, and sustaining.  And the goodness that is still to come, when He will make all wrongs right. 

     So we must wait for Him.  Even though we cannot read the last page of our own story, we can trust the Writer.  We become strong as we read the stories of those gone before and those still with us.  He does not write in pain and loss, harm and death without tasting it himself.  He does not call us to walk where He has not gone or will not go.  And in the harshness of life, there is glory.  Such a weight of glory that we need to read every word of every page to soak in every ounce of its richness.

     The glories of Christ have come, are here, and are yet to come.  Hope in God keeps us going and keeps us turning pages.  We want to know if everything will turn out all right.  Yet in our desperate times, we want to rush through the difficult parts and skip to the end, where everything will resolve.   But the stories of our lives are not yet over; there are no final details written down on the last pages of our journey.  And what gets even better is that our story is not only a part of the greatest story ever told, it is a story that has no end.

     His world, His realm, will have no end.  He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last.  The King of all Kings interrupting time and history to come as a man, illuminating God’s glorious plan to save a people for Himself.  A people who will live with Him in a world without end.

~Your Fellow Sojourner

“For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace

there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time forth and forevermore.

The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.”

Isaiah 7:6-7

 Boys and their chalkboard story.