On being ill

For the last few weeks I have been moderately stuffed up.  I'm not sure if it was a cold, or some allergic reaction.  Then, Christmas Day, I woke up with a sore throat.  It got worse over the next few days, finally leading to me missing church (and my chance to be on worship team) on Sunday.

Yesterday, I felt really terrible.  I don't know if I had a mild fever, or if it was from so frequently blowing my nose, but I felt light-headed, woozy and exhausted.  I think that I was awake for only ten hours yesterday, which, since I usually fight sleep, means a lot of sleep for me.

Being ill is tough on me spiritually.  First, I usually feel like being sick is my fault, a result of my being overweight.  Second, I find it hard to pray when I am ill - it seems like it takes too much effort.  Third, I usually just want to be left alone, which isn't too great for my darling, relationship-oriented wife.  Fourth, my thoughts are often drawn to more, shall we say, disbelieving viewpoints.

I feel like I'm doing okay on items one and four of that list this time around.  But being ill makes me more appreciative of those who handle illness, even prolonged illness, with greater grace and faith.  I'm thinking particularly of Pam (no last name in the comments, please), who through her long illness was ever faithful, ever hopeful, and ever praising God.

Psalm 103:1 Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. 2 Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits-- 3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, 5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. 

There are those that believe that being ill means a failure of faith - if we are really in the Lord, then we won't ever get sick.  But how do you know if you have been healed of a disease if you don't ever experience it?  I think that the verse above is talking about people experiencing illness, and then getting better through the Lord's beneficence.

But I also believe that there will be a time when there will no longer be any illness that we experience.  That will be great!

Okay, using the word "beneficence" in a sentence has pretty much exhausted me, so I think that I will end here.

The meaning of Christmas

In a recent teaching, Christian talked about the meaning of Christmas.  I remember thinking that it didn't match what I have felt about Christmas this year.

What I have been focusing on this year is the fragility of a newborn baby.  A baby is tender and small and helpless.  Back in first century Palestine, it wasn't very certain that any child, or its mother, would survive childbirth.  A child can easily succumb to disease, exposure, or the malicious intent of others.

And yet, this is the package that God chose to put Himself in. He decided not just to disguise Himself as human, but to become fully human, and so to risk all the dangers that other babies do.

Why did he do this?  Because He is shameless in his pursuit of humanity. Because, like an obsessed lover, He was willing to do whatever ridiculous thing is needed to win His love. Because he saw the gap between us and Him that was created by our sin, and He was willing to condense Himself down and undergo the indignity of babyhood to bridge that gap.

The baby.  Eight and a half pounds of the most valuable flesh the earth has ever seen.  All of our hopes and aspirations for redemption, life and fulfillment, in one tiny child.

To me, this year, Christmas is about the humility of God.  It is about what God was willing to do and to endure in order to make a way for us.  We are that important to Him.

Note: Why is this post showing up the day after Christmas? Because I have learned that the best way for me to endure Christmas is to ignore it as long as possible.  This means that it also lingers a bit after the actual holiday for me - my tolerance for Christmas peaks right around the actual holiday. So sue me.

Christmas Eve

So here we are, finally, at Christmas itself. The big event.

For my family, there is no frantic gift unwrapping this morning. In fact this morning, the girls are at Blue Waters Farm feeding horses, and my son just woke up about nine.

Our main Christmas activity was last night.  We gathered around the dining room table, turned down the lights, and lit some candles.  I turned on Christmas music.  Those who wanted made tea and hot chocolate (I had some yummy Chai tea).  The wife brought out five copies of the Joy to the World Christmas catalog.  I prayed, thanking God for His provision for the year and asking that He guide our decisions that evening so that we would choose what was on His heart.  My son then prayed in a similar vein, and the wife concluded.

I have been praying about how much to give this year through the catalog and had arrived at a figure last week, so at this point I told the family how much money each would have to give. Last week I had asked the kids to consider contributing some of their own money if they wanted, and so at this point last night I invited them to add in that amount if they so chose.  Calculators appeared on the table, and then we all got quiet as we read through the catalog and decided how to give our money.  As we made our decisions, we tallied our choices on our individual worksheets.

As I skimmed through the catalog, I looked for items that tugged at my heart.  I also looked for what seemed to be good "values" - ways to give money so that it did the maximum good.  I had initially thought that I would give more money locally this year, because of the economy. I did give a good chunk locally, though a lot of that was for what I might call "ministry advancement" and not directly to support the poor.  However, I also found myself drawn to give to works overseas, where I know that things are bad no matter what the economy is like.  Orphans in Cambodia always have a rough time of it, whether the credit markets in the US are in disarray or not.

I mentioned above that we had five worksheets, even though there are four people in our family. A friend had given us some money, asking us to decide where the money would go. After we had been working on our own sheets for a while, I suggested to the family an idea for a large chunk of our friend's money.  Everyone else agreed that my suggestion would fit with that person's desires and heart, someone suggested a similar item for the rest of the money, and so that is how we filled out their worksheet.

After we had finished, we consolidated our worksheets.  I then prayed a blessing prayer over our choices - that our money would not only physically bless people, but also spiritually bless them so that they were drawn to God and praised and glorified Him.

And then we were done, our pleasant labor complete. The whole process took about one and a half hours.

Merry Christmas to you, and to all the people that we contributed to.

A Chorus Line

One of my best friends in high school was Christopher Patrick Mullen.  He was then and is now an actor (he is performing in Cinderella at People's Light & Theatre through January 4).  Back in high school he was of course very interested in Broadway, and spoke often about shows that he had seen and was interested in.

One of these shows was A Chorus Line.  Chris infected another friend of mine, Gerry, with excitement about the show.  Gerry bought the original cast album (which you can still find on Amazon, though now you have to buy it as a CD and not as an LP).  I remember Gerry excitedly showing me this album just after he got it.  Now, my memory gets a little fuzzy here - I'm not sure whether I borrowed the album, or made a cassette recording of it -  but I remember listening to this album.  A lot.  I loved the music, and the songs became pretty familiar to me.

Friday night I saw A Chorus Line with Kathie in Philadelphia at the Forrest Theater, and all the joy of that music came rushing back to me.  Of course, I loved the jokes, and the dancing was sparkling, and I enjoyed cheering for our own Jessica Latshaw Copeland as much as possible.  But hearing those songs performed live is what gave me goose bumps.  Take, for instance, the song One - the curtain call song of the musical, and the big production number of the musical within the musical.  It is one of those hokey, over-the-top, woman-on-a-pedestal numbers that thankfully went out of fashion sixty years ago. But there is something about the fantastic melody and grand production that make the eye-rolling lyrics work.  I loved it - in fact, I got annoyed that the audience was clapping so much because I wanted to better hear the singing at the end!  I have been singing that song (and, for some reason, Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love) ever since Friday night.


I really enjoyed the show Friday night.  The ticket was expensive, but I am glad that I went.  Jessica was great, and very funny during her song.

I have to tell on her, though.  I caught her, toward the end, shifting her weight on her feet - probably because her shoes were hurting her.  And we did hear her voice above the others for about two measures in the first rendition of One.  Nothing bad, mind you - most people probably wouldn't have caught it.  We were actually glad that we got to hear her really sing, instead of act like she can't sing as she does in her song Sing! (make sense?)

But one thing that I really enjoyed was seeing Jessica after the show. You see, we were there the night a large group from the Delaware Dance Company was there. At one point after the show I looked across at Jessica, surrounded by all these girls from the Company. She was smiling and talking with them in her very animated way. And it was just sweet to see the way that she was so gracious and generous with them.  She really looked to be in her element speaking with them, as much as she looked to be in her element while she was dancing during the show. I'm glad that she is finding success.

Reminder: A Chorus Line is pretty much R-rated, for language and thematic elements. If you need a flavor of what you will run into, listen to some of the samples of the soundtrack album available at Amazon.

No room

Luke 2:1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to his own town to register. 4 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. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 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.

Familiar story.  Here's your common everyday comprehension question: Why was Jesus (presumably) born in a stable?  Answer: Because there wasn't any room in the inn.  Simple, right?

OK, so how about this one: Why were Mary and Joseph looking for a room in an inn, anyway?  Think about it: they are traveling back to Joseph's ancestral home town.  Surely there were still some relatives hanging around the place, willing to take in a couple imminently expecting their first child, right?  And if not, all of the relatives that he did know were also traveling to the same place about the same time, to take part in the same census. Surely some of them could have made a little room for them, right?  So why were they even going to an inn at all?

Well, as you know, there was this large matter of a suspicious pregnancy.  It's likely that their relatives didn't want to have anything to do with this man and his young wife with her strange story of visions and angels.  Or maybe, Joseph himself didn't want to make his presence known to them.  Maybe he had gotten grief about Mary from relatives in Nazareth, and so he had decided to just not contact his relatives in Bethlehem.  Whichever it was, it resulted in him scrambling for some place for his wife as she gave birth to her first born.


Now, here is an interesting twist.  When Jesus was born, an angel appeared announcing that the Savior had been born, and then a whole company of angels appeared at the announcement, praising God.  Pretty impressive, huh? That would make a believer of you, huh?

Wouldn't it have been so just if the angels had appeared to Joseph's family?  "Hey, go down and see the son of the man whom you rejected! He really is the Annointed One!  Go offer them a room, or at least make a meal for them!"  But of course, that didn't happen.  The angels appeared to poor shepherds, men who didn't have much in the way of influence in the community but who had great metaphorical relationship to the Messiah.

But, as low on the economic scale as they were, many people believed and were amazed at their testimony. It is likely that Joseph's relatives eventually came around to see the child of which this remarkable story was told.  Maybe, evenually, they thawed out a bit.  Maybe, even, the house that Matthew 2:11 says they were staying in was that of a relative.

I mention all this because it is so easy to lose sight of all the messiness of Jesus's birth (not like that) in the sanitized version of the story that we are familiar with.  The matter of Mary's pregnancy likely caused great passionate responses in Joseph's family. It might have caused such an uproar that they were planning to stay in Bethlehem and away from Nazareth permanently (remember that they may have been there for as long as two years) until they were warned off to Egypt.  I'm amazed at God's humility, as he allowed all of this drama to accompany the birth of His Son in order that Jesus could be made perfect through His suffering (Hebrews 2:10).