Monday, December 20, 2010

Riparian Christmas

This week has brought a confluence of seemingly unrelated thoughts and channeled them onto a most unlikely Christmas post.

The first rivulet was a guy's general complaint about feeling the pressure of giving. He believed too much is expected of him. His attitude was that if he had money, he could give the gifts that he wanted. Instead, he felt guilty and gloomy.

In real life, my response dripped with suggestions of spending time doing things with and for others. Quality time produces better memories than merchandise. That answer is true enough, but the raw truth is that the guy is clueless. I did not tell him that. What he "feels" is the weight and heaviness of too much expectation is not even close to what God expects.

The next runnel to join my stream of consciousness is something that I am beginning to suspect is a societal myth. Haven't you always heard that Christmas depresses people? Google, Bing or Whatever and you will find many articles that say it is so. You won't find the case studies in their footnotes. It is difficult to find any hard proof of Christmas-caused depression. What you may find is seasonal affective disorder. The Mayo Clinic says SAD is caused by the effect of decreased daylight on neurochemicals and hormones. Blame Winter Solstice, not Christmas!

Another tributary, this time courtesy of a Facebook comment, fesses up to feeling "like I am playing dodge ball" whist Lucifer attempts to lob his munitions of depression.

All of which mingles in the unlikely estuary of finding a Christmas message in the Book of Job.

The setting for Book of Job is one of the most ancient; perhaps only the first eleven chapters of Genesis pre-date it. Near the end of the book are 123 verses of direct quotes from God, ending with a picture of God as Dragon Master. (Revelation, the book that reaches farthest into the future, shows God as the Dragon Slayer. From beginning to end, God has final victory over trouble caused by sin, death, and Satan.) When we see God in His grandeur as Master of the Universe, it helps put our problems into perspective.

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who had suffered more sever affliction than Job. He had lost seven sons, three daughters, 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and the shepherds and servants who managed his livestock. That is a lot of loss of life. Yet Job's deliverance came not in the counsels of his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, nor in the diatribe of the upstart theologian Elihu, but release came in being reminded that God laid the foundations of the earth and set its measurements.

He enclosed the boundaries of the sea and caused the dawn to know its place. He led forth the constellations and channeled the lightning. He provided food for the animals of the earth. He gave the horse its might and caused the eagle to rise upon wings.

Chapter 40 tells of Behemoth. This beastly dinosaur has strength in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly. "He bends his tail like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are tubes of bronze; his limbs are like bars of iron." [...] "Under the lotus plants he lies down, in the covert of the reeds and the marsh. The lotus plants cover him with shade; the willows of the brook surround him. If a river rages, he is not alarmed; he is confident, though the Jordan rushes to his mouth.


As the Lord continues to describe His creation in Chapter 41, He reminds Job that He can strip off the outer armor and come within the double mail of the dragon. (He calls it Leviathan, but it describes a dragon.) Even though the dragon's skin is air-tight and "out of his mouth go burning torches; sparks of fire leap forth; out of his nostrils smoke goes forth as from a boiling pot and burning rushes; his breath kindles coals, and a flame goes forth from his mouth"—even in all this, God can draw him out with a fishhook.

When Job gets a picture of the majesty of God, his recovery was near. Job, who had been falsely accused of sinful actions, discovered that the only thing he had to apologize for was his lack of understanding who God is.

Before, Job had heard about God. After his experience, he saw Him for Who He Is.
And THAT is what Christmas is about. Immanuel. God with us. Understanding who God is. The thing that got Job out of his funk was getting a fuller, more complete picture of who God is.


That is where the first guy in this blog got stuck on the shoals. He does not see a God in control of creation. He feels pressured to buy stuff. I should end this post now with a nice, pithy river reference. But, no. Instead, I am going to row this boat over to comment on the teaching of evolution. When kids are taught evolution only, the school robs them of the opportunity to see God in control of creation. Children who are robbed of the opportunity to see God in control of Creation are doomed to greater despair and hopelessness.

Roads end, but rivers flow on to the sea. Evolution is a dry gulch dead-ending in a desert. To deny creation is to deny the Creator. To deny the Creator is to end in desolation. God wants to be known. He went out of His way to make Himself known. He has visited His people.

Saturday, December 4, 2010


This is the article that was supposed to post last month but didn't. The reason is simple enough: I never know who is going to read this. Since complaints tend to sound worse secondhand, it seemed prudent to do some preemptive damage control. That mission successfully completed, let the rant begin!



Christmas cheer took an early hit this year. The church bulletin announced that the Christmas Eve Candlelighting Ceremony would be on December 22nd.

It sounds to me like people want to have their Christmas cookie and to eat it too. All the fun of a candlelight service with none of the inconvenience or sacrifice. So much for the lights in the firmament of the heaven being for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. Don't find the date convenient? That's okay, we'll just ratchet our waning gibbous moon back to full.

The pagans are not so cavalier about it. I had to check, and we are okay for 2010. Solstice is on the 21st at 23:38 (or 11:38pm) UTC this year, so that gives us 22 minutes to spare. But some years, a candle lighting on the 22nd would be sharing the glow with the wiccan Sabbat of the Yule. That is just wrong.

That is not my biggest complaint though. That is just the one that sounds good.

My biggest complaint sounds selfish. My biggest complaint is that moving Christmas Eve services to the 22nd robs me of my power. If the candle lighting were on the real eve, I could get my entire family to church. With two working retail and one living a hundred miles away, it is not going to happen on the 22nd.

Ah, the irony. It seems that some folks don't want a Christmas eve candle lighting on the real Christmas eve because they "want to spend time at home with their family." That type of reasoning makes me feel like an Asperger kid. I do not connect the dots. Spending family time at home seems pretty ordinary to my kids. What would make Christmas Eve special would be going to church as a family and singing a very old and very traditional carol slightly off key. Then we would come home and have chocolate mousse before bed.

I am not stupid. I know what is going to happen. One will say, "Well, mom, since you don't have anything special planned, I'll just come over in the morning." And another, "Can I borrow some wrapping paper? I didn't wrap my stuff yet since you didn't have anything planned." Then they will be off to another room with the door shut tight. Or this, "My friend asked me to go hear their church's bell choir, and since our family isn't doing anything, I said yes."

So what would I like in a church? I would like a little support in keeping the light of Christmas Eve focused where it ought to be.


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