Christmas Explained to a Five Year Old

IMG_0716“Papa, can you tell me about Christmas?” asked the five-year-old granddaughter of the man whose knee she was perched upon at that moment.

“Sure honey, what do you want to know?” was the confident reply of Papa.

“Well first, what’s the difference between Santa and Jesus?  And do Mary and Joseph live at the North Pole? And, at Sunday School we learned about the three Wise Men, but at school we sang about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  Was Rudolph at the manger with the Wise Men,” were the initial round of questions blurted out by Katie, Papa’s granddaughter.  “It’s all getting jumbled up in here,” said Katie pointing to her head.

“Well we don’t want things getting confused up there, now do we,” said Papa.  “You could end up like Uncle Fred, but that’s a whole different story.”

Papa settled into the recliner and snuggled Katie close in.  There was a lot of explaining to do, as Rickey often told Lucy.  “First you asked about Christmas, so let me tell you about that.  Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus; the son of God.  That is the main reason for all the decorations, and the lights, and the funny blow up snowmen at your Daddy’s house.  We have a party on your birthday right?”

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Every Day

1278When Seth Mooney was born a healthy beautiful boy his parents thanked the doctors and nurses who performed the delivery, the attendant who pushed Mom’s wheelchair to the waiting car, and almost every neighbor who stopped by the next week to give their congratulations.  They thanked the Pharmacist, their grocer, the nice lady at Target who sold them diapers, wipes, lotion and a dozen other necessities for young Seth.  They even thanked the mailman who delivered the letter and packages from family and friends across the country.  But they didn’t thank God for the most amazing miracle ever to happen to their young family. The Mooney’s are not unbelievers; they’ve been to church.  No the Mooney’s are part of the growing minority of people who thank their friends for a miracle from God.

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Until the Ink is Dry

pen paperImagine the beginning of your life as a book without any words; blank pages beautifully bound in precious leather but absent any substance. Your life and mine is an unwritten story anxious to tell its tale. Now imagine a pen next to the book. The ink in the pen will create the lyrics of your life: love, joy pain, excitement, intrigue, and many thousands more.  Each page represents one day; God chooses the number of pages, only He knows the first day and the last. We create the experiences that fill the pages, deciding for ourselves the volume of life that each day will hold. So then, it is a partnership between ourself and God that creates the quality and fullness of the life we live, and that partnership is more evenly weighed than you may think.  

Jay, my brother-in-law, died this month.  It has been a time of emotional trauma as we navigate through unknown and unwanted waters.  Yet we somehow have made it past (sometimes reluctantly and always bruised) each hour of every day.  And we will survive the days to come, battered and tired beyond our human ability to comprehend, but survive we must, and we will.  

During this period, while writing an obituary for Jay and listening to the many entertainingly emotional stories arising from the pulpit and barstool, it is abundantly obvious to me that Jay’s book contained too few pages. His novel should have been Tolstoyick in nature, with pages of fine print numbered in the hundreds of thousands.  Still I believe the time of the last page was set by God for a reason I cannot comprehend, so I reluctantly choose not to question His contribution to the partnership.  This however, I know to be true; on the last day there was not a single drop of ink left in Jay’s pen.  He had filled each line on every page with life.  Richly laughing and loving through each chapter; every paragraph shouting for friends and family, Jay boldly placed all others in line before himself.

The adversity named diabetes struck him in the seventh chapter like the iceberg to the Titanic.  This time though, there was no shipwreck as Jay cast the berg aside like a melting snow-cone on a hot summer day.  Hard working and equally hard in play, Jay scribbled and printed in his book with an energy that was obvious and envied.  If the direction for his next adventure were unclear, Jay kept writing, knowing that every page would eventually be turned.  Near his end the pages turned slower, but that only gave Jay more time to spend filling the lines with laughter and hope.  His contribution to the partnership with God was at the highest level possible, making his book a timeless best seller.  Now, their partnership has become a sole proprietorship; the two merging into one, living on in endless fun and games.

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What does your book like?  How many pages are blank, or only contain a few words?  How often do our pages speak of work and responsibility, of belongings and not of family or friends?  The ink is ours alone to use, so why do we let so many other people and “things” dictate what we write?  How many paragraphs begin and end with God? 

 Is it time to for all of us to seize our pen and write our own story!

The death of Jay has made me test my priorities and my values.  I have not used all of my vacation time for any year of the last ten, but I have more miles on Southwest and points at Hilton than most people you will meet.  Over 400 friends and family members attended the two memorial services held in Jay’s honor, and although he had only been retired for three years, no one spoke what he had accomplished at work; we spoke of friendship, commitment, and love.  

I am not questioning the need for a career; I question its priority in our book.  I don’t question the need for serious thought; I encourage the need for laughter.  I’m also not advocating only engaging in BIG adventures (vacations, travel), but also the important little things; such as attending kids sporting events, family game nights and regular dates with your spouse.  I’m suggesting less of the doldrums and more excitement; I am proposing a reassessment of priorities to whom, and away from what, from sometime to now!

I am changing my vocabulary to phrases that say; yes, I’ll try that, or sure let’s go, and I’m coming home now.  I don’t know the number of pages left in my book, but I think there is a lot of ink left in the pen.  I intend to use every drop, just like Jay.  

Four Strategies to Survive Holiday and Work Stress

definition_of_stressWe are over half way through the holiday season.  Thanksgiving and Christmas have passed; but football playoffs, the Superbowl, and New Year’s Eve and Day are waiting to pounce on us like Mardi Gras on an unsuspecting tourist.  The stress of having to watch all the bowl games, NFL playoffs, go to the many celebrations, and eat and drink beyond sanity is too much to bear for some.  Adding salt to a wound, many of our employers expect us to function at work as if nothing else was happening outside the grey walls of industrial servitude.  What are we to do?  Give up; stay inside and watch reruns? Buy a gross of antacids and hope for the best? No! Giving up is not in our DNA and hope is not a plan (unless you are in the Federal Government).  I have tested four strategies which will help you to survive the holiday season and escape to the doldrums of January physically unscathed and mentally neutral. 

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Trust

In_GOD_We_TrustAs a normal course of life, we are asked to routinely trust a diverse array of situational commands delivered by people we have never met, or machines we never wanted to.  Yet we accept these often life changing commands as routine because we trust the source.  More precisely, we choose to trust the source.

  •     “In an emergency, the bags will drop from the ceiling above your head.  Simply pull on the chord to start the flow of air.  The bag may not inflate, but (TRUST ME) air will be flowing.”  We are asked in an airplane emergency to trust that lifesaving air is actually in an empty bag.  I’ve never heard anyone ask, “I don’t trust you – prove it.
  •     You are driving your car towards a busy intersection, and the green light is shining in your direction.  Other cars are approaching in a perpendicular path, but they SHOULD have a red light.  You TRUST that the other cars will stop. We TRUST that the light is working properly and the other drivers see the light, know the law, and will obey it.  We bet our lives on that scenario every day.
  •       One more from the airlines.  “In case of an unplanned water landing, use your seat cushion as a water floatation device.”  My seat cushion is barely the size of my seat, and only two inches thick.  I believe it will float in the Pacific Ocean, but I am to TRUST that the cushion will float with me holding on to it.  Really?  Yet here I sit in aisle 4 during a flight back home, TRUSTING that the aircraft, crew, and the Laws of Physics that we will land safely.

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Two Trails

Frenchman_Mountain_trail_6Billy, Eddie and John were like most 14 year old boys: endlessly hungry and dirty in the same moment, exhibiting the attention span equivalent to a sub-atomic particle and in possession of the inquisitive nature of the scientist who discovered it.  They were ‘good boys’, a description often assigned by their mothers in the small Nebraska community where they lived.  When they were bad, they would say so as well.  Today, the three sat in Eddie’s garage throwing a tennis ball Billy had found in his sister’s gym bag.  Billy had a knack for finding things in obvious places. In this game, they threw the ball to one another as quickly as they could, but each had to catch the ball one handed.  Making the other guy’s hand hurt when he caught the tennis ball was always the ultimate goal of the game, but they only kept score by the number of times you missed a ball that should have been caught.  Arguments over whether a ball was catchable were often and loud, a secondary benefit of playing this particular game.  

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Take The Next Turn

road-trip1The term “Road Trip” immediately injects a vision of excitement and fun into an undertaking that often morphs into a mundane act of getting from here to there.  When driving, we usually focus on where we were or where we are going.  In the morning while driving to work we think about the challenges of today or about the family we left at home.  When driving to Disneyland, we focus on Mickey Mouse and the Matterhorn; we are concerned with the destination (as we should be), the method to get there is generally unimportant.  Although a road trip must have a starting and ending point (often the same place), the reason we get excited is because of the journey; it is the “getting to” part, not the here or there that produces a broad smile, and unleashes our inner world-explorer self.  A road trip is about having fun with where we are at that moment in time, and less concerned about where we have been and where we will be.  Often on a road trip there is not an established timetable, or schedule; you float from place to place absent the worry of being late.  

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Renee

photo (2)She is perfect.  From the tip of her black hair covered head to the bottom of her finger sized feet, she is as flawless as the finest diamond ever cut by a master jeweler. Perfection is not limited to her beautiful, 7 pound, 14 ounce body, with skin so soft you scarcely feel it when you touch her. Every part of her human and spiritual existence is unblemished, perfectly made in love, without even the hint of sin.  In this moment, Renee only knows trust, love, and faith, no other worldly feeling or emotion has stained the brilliant white light that fills her tiny body. The strength in Renee’s hands when she grips my finger, just moments after she entered our world, unleashes love in me so powerful that I welcomed the tears that swelled in my eyes.  The last time I felt love so pure and strong was when each of my children was born.  Now I am beginning to understand how much God loves me, and what He sees when He looks at me. Continue reading

The Snake and the Mouse

gruffalo-snake-i1A mouse is a timid little creature, who under almost any circumstance when confronted with a dangerous situation will choose the option of flight over fight.  This is a very logical position, given the non-threatening physical characteristics bestowed on the Mouse: short legs, a round body covered in white hair, a small mouth with smaller teeth, and a roar that closely resembles air slowly leaking from a balloon.  A snake, on the other hand, seems content with fighting first and asking questions later.  In fact, a snake rarely asks questions at all, they just strike.   Also logical, because a snake’s body is designed for stealth, attack, and creating fear in an opponent or prey.  It is not a coincidence then, that many snakes eat mice, so choosing to run, as opposed to joining a snake for dinner, is another good choice for a mouse.  Sometimes though, running is not the first option.

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The Christmas Story

God created the earth with the intension of living with us, of walking with us daily in His garden paradise. In the beginning, God only had one simple rule.

 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die”

“Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

Genesis 1:1, 27; Genesis 2:15-17, 25

 

But God gave us the gift of free will, so that our love and adoration to Him would be real, and honest.  Unfortunately, that left people to make their own choices, and their own mistakes.  That first mistake lead to the end of paradise.

“He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”  The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”  So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.”

Genesis 3:10, 13

 

Mankind soon discovered that a life separate from God was no picnic, yet our suborn pride kept getting in the way of good choices. (Of God’s choices)

“So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.  But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly.  They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.”

Exodus 1: 11-14

 

The moment Adam and Eve left the garden God started planning our return to Him, our eternal righteousness.  He chose Moses, and unlikely hero to be a leader to His people.

“One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.”

“God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

Exodus 2:11-12; Exodus 3:14

 

Pharaoh did not obey God’s demands easily, but eventually relented.

 During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord as you have requested. Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me.”

Exodus 12:31, 32

 

God’s people escaped Egypt, but their stubborn pride once again got in the way.  So, a journey that could have taken 11 days, took them 40 years to complete.  Only one person who fled from Egypt crossed the river Jordan.

“Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.”

“Then the Lord said to him (Moses), “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.”

Exodus 33: 3; Deuteronomy 34:4

 

For thousands of years we struggled to follow in God’s way.  We fought Him, then obeyed Him, then fought Him once more.  He sent many prophets to remind us of our divine destiny, but we just would not listen.

“The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.”

“No sooner had Gideon died than the Israelites again prostituted themselves to the Baals. They set up Baal-Berith as their god and did not remember the Lord their God, who had rescued them from the hands of all their enemies on every side.”

Judges 6:1, 33

 

However, God’s plan for us was in full swing.  He was sending forth great leaders and prophets to tell of a chosen one, a Savior for all time.  Salvation was on its way.

“The LORD swore an oath to David, a sure oath that he will not revoke: “One of your own descendants I will place on your throne.”

“For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.”

Psalms 132:11; Isaiah 9:6,Jeremiah 23:5-6

Now was the time; God’s plan to right what was wronged in the garden was now in its final stretch.  As foretold by dozens of people, the Savior of mankind would be born in Bethlehem.  King of Kings; Lord of Lords.  The Messiah.

“In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.  The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”  Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.  But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God.  You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.  He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”  “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”  The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”

“So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.  He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.  While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Luke 1:26-35; Luke 2:4-7

 

For all of eternity God planned for Christmas day.  Everything that transpired in history, from the garden to Abraham, Moses, David, and Mary: God’s overarching plan was to rid the world of sin, and bring all of humanity back home.   To do all of that, He needed to enlist the help of His Son.

Why, after the many times people let Him down, why would God keep trying to bring us back to Him?

One word: Love

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16 

Merry Christmas!  This is your day to celebrate.