Stuck?

When our oldest son was a curious toddler, he occasionally wedged his chubby body into spaces that were a few sizes too small. I can still see him with his upper torso protruding from the opening between the seat and the back of a dining room chair.

“Stuck!” he would call. “Stuck!” There were no flailing limbs. No body contortions. Just a holler or two, and a passive wait for rescue. Freed, he scampered away to play.

Can you identify? Sometimes our spirits become wedged between the past and the future. Life marches on, but we can’t seem to move with it. A loved one dies, a move uproots us, a project ends, change happens, and it’s hard to change with it. Or a bad choice is made, a heart is scarred, a life is derailed. Guilt and regret press in. Discouragement and sadness weigh heavy. We’re going nowhere. Stuck.

As we learned Sunday, we have to let go of the past in order to move toward the future. That means letting go of not only the bad things others have done, but our own bad decisions with their long-term effects on ourselves and those around us. And while stacks of books have been written about the difficulties of dealing with regret and guilt, of letting go, forgiving, forgetting, and all that goes with it, there’s one thing that shortens and sweetens the whole process:

Trust. In God.

Specifically, trust that He is the incurable Redeemer of everything that is put in His hands. That no matter how damaged and worthless our past, He can do something wonderful with it. He is always “making lemonade out of lemons,” and we have only to trust that He is everlastingly at it, with a glad and willing heart.

If we really believe that, we won’t be ashamed to look Him in the face and tell Him how desperately stuck we are and how much we need His help. We’ll quiet down and calm down and wait expectantly for Him to come and release us from the past and set us free to scamper off into the future.

We'll forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead, pressing on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Jesus’ Family Tree

Matthew 1:1. Not a footnote or side note or appendix, but Matthew 1:1.

You’d think that God would be a bit reluctant to publish His Son’s pedigree right there in the opening lines of the New Testament. And that He would at least have dressed it up to make it sound as classy as possible. But He intentionally went out of His way, used extra ink to expose what we wouldn’t think God would be very proud of… more than a few black sheep in the family lineage.

But we are talking about the God Who gets more excited over recovering a wandering sheep than over ninety-nine who give Him no trouble at all. Who spent far more time on the sinful and the lost than on proud Pharisees with noble bloodlines and papers to prove it. Who later inspired Paul to list the flawed but faith-filled patriarchs and proclaim, “Therefore God was not ashamed to be called their God”… (Heb. 11:16 NIV).

Do you sometimes feel like He must be ashamed to be called your God? Perhaps you can’t imagine Him being proud to list your name as one of His own, as a spiritual descendant of Abraham and an heir to all that His Son owns. Your past disqualifies you. I love what W. Tozer has to say:

“Now, on the basis of grace as taught in the Word of God, when God forgives a man, He trusts him as though he had never sinned. God did not have mental reservations about any of us when we became His children by faith. When God forgives a man, He doesn't think, 'I will have to watch this fellow because he has a bad record.' No, He starts with him again as though he had just been created and as if there had been no past at all! That is the basis of our Christian assurance--and God wants us to be happy in it.”

It’s all a part of the “good news of great joy which shall be to all people.” Nobody’s disqualified by their past. Everyone has the opportunity to be made a new creature, to start with a clean record, to find forgiveness for every relapse, to cooperate with the Spirit in forging a faith that makes God proud to be called our God.

The Christmas Story

I have a little book on my shelves, cardboard-bound and covered front and back with fabric. Its content is typed; the art is hand-drawn; the author is my son Greg. The occasion was a grade-school assignment and the title is “If I Were in Charge of the World.”

All I can say is, thank heaven he isn’t! In the space of twenty pages Greg canceled homework, nixed the idea of cleaning one’s room, and eliminated his brothers, cats, and sickness (okay, Ill give him that one). He also pronounced sugar a vegetable and went on to callously obliterate the entire Steelers football team (sorry, Ben). He ended by covering all his bases:

“And a person who forgot to do his homework
and sometimes forgot to clean his room
would still be allowed to be in charge of the world.”

I wonder what he’d have written if the assignment were “If I Were in Charge of the First Christmas”? I wonder what you or I would have written? Pastor Ben mentioned Sunday that “in my story, the glory of God would have lasted all night.” I think we all would tend to minimize the hard parts and the puzzling or painful places, and major on the joy and glory and good news.

Written by us, we’d have a Jesus who enjoyed a life of privilege that few could identify with. Jesus would have been born in a pristine setting in Nazareth, with grandmas and grandpas close at hand. And everyone would have welcomed Him. But part of the glory of the Christmas story is in those hard places. In the long, difficult journey. The separation from kin. The birth in a stable. Being hated and hunted by Herod.

Yet God could be trusted with that story, couldn’t He? He knew what He was doing – fulfilling prophecy, identifying with the poorest and most insignificant, becoming nothing for us.

He can be trusted with your story, and mine, too. It’s foolish to try to grab the pen from His hand and write “If I Were in Charge of My Life.” We’d eliminate the very things that God meant to use for glory. Better to gaze in wonder at the manger scene this Christmas, and reaffirm to our Creator, “Lord, You are in charge of my story. Write what You want. I trust You with all of my heart.”

Christmas, condensed

Christmas, we were reminded at the musical this past weekend, can be condensed into four words:

God is with us.

I think we’re more accustomed to the diluted versions. Those versions that start with the basic observation of Christmas, then water it down with a lot of tradition and required atmosphere and general hyperactive hoopla.

But there’s something simple and powerful about a condensed Christmas. Really, it’s a version that should blow our minds, if you think about it. It should nearly short-circuit our mental wiring to realize the truth of Christmas: Emmanuel, God with us.

Why is the condensed version so wonderful? Because now there need be no separation between us and the God who made us. No no-man’s land. In fact, there are no alone places in our lives. We never have to experience anything on our own. We’re never left to our own devices. In no situation are we powerless. He softens bad news with the reassurance that it is not the final word, that someday He will make all things new. He’s there to confront the nagging past, to calm future worries, and to liven the dull present… because how dull can a moment be when infinity and omnipotence and irrepressible hope and joy are right there with us?

But I think most of us live our lives in a sort of a brown-out. We need the truth of God-with-us to surge through in its full-strength reality, and overload a few systems: The system of doubt and suspicion with which we regard God. The system of weight and worry through which we process our lives. The system of cynicism and despair with which we face our futures. The system of self-protection behind which we live our days.

God-with-us races along the old, decrepit wiring of those false systems, and POP! FLASH! – they’re left smoldering… until somehow the connection with worry is broken. Self-protection has been bypassed. We’re unable to contact despair. Something – Someone – has taken over the power grid, and the lines are humming with hope and we feel more alive than we ever have before.

Alive with the indescribable wonder of Emmanuel, God with us.

Waiting Well

What do people do while they wait for something?

I’ve seen the weary traveler dozing in the busy airport terminal, and heard the impatient customer complain loudly about “getting another register opened up!” I once saw a driver shaving at the stoplight on Peach and Kuntz (the efficiency experts would approve). And I heard of a husband who claimed to have, over the years, read an entire set of encyclopedias while waiting for his wife to get ready to go out!

What will we do while we wait this year for Christmas?

We generally experience Advent by trying to re-create the Christmas scenario. By putting ourselves in Mary’s sandals or the shepherd’s bare feet or even the donkey’s hooves – trying to feel what they felt and experience what it all meant to them. We dress up like them, we sing "O Come O Come Emmanuel," and we wonder what it really would have felt like to be on the waiting side of Jesus’ coming.

But we are on the waiting side of Jesus’ coming - again. Ronald Klug wrote:

“I am an Advent Christian… Advent Christians believe Christ came, but we still sing, ‘Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel.’ We believe that in Christ the kingdom of God has dawned, but we still eagerly pray ‘thy kingdom come’ because we long for a world that is still to come. Exile, longing, watchfulness and waiting resonate with us…” The cry of Advent is still, as Klug writes, “Wake up! Be alert! Watch for his coming.’”

Watch for the One Who “will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God” (1 Thess. 4:16 NIV). Watch for the One called Faithful and True, with eyes like blazing fire, on Whose head are many crowns, and on His robe and thigh is written this name: King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev. 19). Wait eagerly; look and long for His appearing.

He may not come on our watch. But no matter, the charge remains: Wait well. Don’t fill the intervening days and years with busy work just to look productive; don’t reach for mindless diversions; don’t sink into lethargy like the foolish virgins of Jesus’ parable. Don’t grow impatient or discouraged and adopt the mindset of the skeptical world: “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? (2 Peter 3:4 NIV).

Instead, “live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming… Make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him… looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:11-13 NIV).