IVP - Strangely Dim - December 2008 Archives

So This Is Christmas

"Surely he taught us to love one another.
His law is love, and his gospel is truth.
Chains shall he break--for the slave is our brother,
And in his name all oppression shall cease."

--From the carol "O Holy Night"

 

Merry Christmas from your friends at Strangely Dim.

So This Is Advent--And What Have We Done?

And in despair I bowed my head
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men."

--From the carol "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day"

We Are Waiting for Christmas

Better late than never, here's a nice meditation on Advent from The Circle of Seasons by Kimberlee Conway Ireton. I like to describe it as "a life in the year of the church."

The coming of Christ into our midst requires that we rethink our desires and that we learn to hold them lightly, allowing the desire of God to supplant--or increase--our own desires.

If we were to observe Advent as the season of thoughtful reflection and repentance that it has traditionally been, we would have an opportunity to do just that: to rethink our priorities, to realign our lives with God's desires for us, to seek forgiveness and to start anew--the first Sunday of Advent, after all, marks the beginning of the church year. What better time to reflect, repent, receive forgiveness and so refresh our weary souls?

To spend the weeks before Christmas in this way would be radically countercultural, to be sure, but it would also serve to remind us that we are waiting for Christmas--and that the celebration of Christmas is worth waiting for.

The book goes on to offer really lovely experiential insights into the various seasons of the Christian calendar, from Christmas to Easter to Ordinary time, and all points in between. But for now it's a nice reminder at the end of a calendar year that the year of Emmanuel--God with us--is only just beginning.

A Site for the Spent

If your December has been anything like mine, you're probably tired and stressed out with what still needs to get done and overwhelmed by the pace you've been moving at. And frustrated by all of the above. Advent is one of my favorite times of year, yet once again this Advent has been short on quiet space for reflection and long on--snow, for one thing. And dashing (but not in a one-horse open sleigh, though that might have been more helpful than my car in the snow and traffic yesterday).

In the midst of the rushing and frustration--both of which feel particularly true this week--I came across a simple gift in the midst of my work: a "live" Advent calendar from Inter-Varsity Press, our publishing friend across the sea in the U.K. They offer a short reflection for each day of Advent, and all you have to do is click on the number corresponding to the current date. You can't cheat on this one and eat the candy early, though; you can only click on the current and preceding days--which serves as one more reminder to me of the goodness of waiting. This site, granted, will not solve all my Advent frenzy frustration. But for two or three minutes while I read, I'll be still and quiet, which feels like a start and serves as a reminder to my body of the goodness of stopping. So happy reading, reflecting, quieting through this small gift focused on the great gift of the Prince of Peace, come to dwell with us.

Maybe: A Story of Advent

Wake, walk, wait, return, rest, repeat. Every day was the same for him. His whole life till now, going back as long as he could remember (his memory, of course, was no longer all that good), was this pattern: wake, walk, wait, return, rest, repeat. He'd considered giving up more than once, but another day would come and go, and still his pattern would repeat.

Over time everything else had faded from his priorities--due to his faltering memory, perhaps, or to the vagaries of time passing. The older you get, the fewer the temporalities that can keep pace with you. Really he was down to three. He still had a love for his people Israel, who year after year had like him waited for the restoration of their greatness in the eyes of the world. He still held on to his faith in the God who, so the Scriptures say, once delivered his people Israel with a mighty hand and in the intervening centuries had promised more than once to deliver them again. And then there was this loitering hope of his--hope that this wild-eyed, half-awake vision which had overtaken him so many years ago would be realized, that he would see what he had been told he was meant to see.

Still, that was so many years ago, and if the memory of the old is suspect, the audacious visions of the young are likewise to be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe it wasn't a vision, he occasionally allowed himself to consider; maybe it was a moment of hubris--certainly not his only such moment. Maybe in seeking the fulfillment of this promise from God he was merely indulging a private fantasy of his own importance.

That thought did occasionally cross his mind, but it typically left quickly, its only sustenance having long dwindled with the steady fade of all his other priorities. He was a tired old man now, with little time for hubris.

He had been helped in his endurance by the woman. She was always there in the Temple courts when he walked in to wait, and she always remained after he returned to his rest. They exchanged knowing glances from time to time; those around them all knew that they were both waiting for the same thing, but only these two really knew what it was like to wait.

So today they would both wait again. No one would mock them; their age earned them the deference of the crowds. And in a sense all Israel took some courage from their waiting. They were given space every day to follow the same pattern--wake, walk, wait, return, rest, repeat--a lifelong wait for the ransom of captive Israel, a lifelong wait for their own death and deliverance into the age to come.

Maybe today.

Filth on the Floor, Crown on the Head

The latest in our ongoing lunchtime series of topical discussions related to Likewise Books, the Donkey Congress, involved a conversation about the tension between cynicism and earnestness, and the appropriate balance between the two. I left the meeting and stumbled upon the following comments from President Theodore Roosevelt, who presided over the social progressive movement in early twentieth-century America and the parallel movement of "muckraking" exposé journalism.

In [John] Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.

In "Pilgrim's Progress" the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil.

So maybe between Bunyan and Roosevelt we have the appropriate caution for an otherwise healthy cynicism: every once in a while, for your own sake and for the sake of everyone else, you gotta look up.

The Sins of the Author Are Visited on the Editor

Sometimes when you edit a book, particularly a book of nonfiction and especially a book of Christian nonfiction, you get the feeling that the author has been spying on you. Call me a megalomaniac, but I had that experience today. What follows is a lightly edited pair of paragraphs from a draft manuscript for an as-yet unscheduled, untitled book:

I am an ENFP. If you know the Myers-Briggs personality types, you know that the ENFP is the easily distractible, often zany, poor at follow-through, overly dramatic personality type who speaks in run-on sentences and is apparently personified in the character Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid, which is weird because my college Spanish teacher suggested I take the name Ariel since words that begin with the "s" sound are nonexistent in Spanish and ... See what I mean?

There are numerous aspects of this personality type which make us very poor tyrants. Namely, we are too obsessed with being liked. Add to this the fact that I am a nine on the Enneagram (another personality measuring tool based on your chief sin), and dictatorial leadership becomes nearly impossible. The nine on the Enneagram struggles with sloth, or the need to avoid. In other words, that sound the car is making will probably go away if you just stop listening to it and those complaints about your supervisee will work themselves out eventually if you pretend they don't exist. Nines on the Enneagram have given us such memorable leaders as Dan Quayle and Gerald Ford. No, not the guy who mass-produced the automobile; the U.S. president Rolling Stone magazine called the most forgettable since Millard Fillmore (Millard who?).

I am an ENFP and a nine on the Enneagram who ignores noises in the vain hope that they'll resolve themselves and is mildly obsessed with being liked. The only thing about these paragraphs that I don't identify with myself is the stuff about Spanish class and The Little Mermaid. I think perhaps my phone has been bugged.

It's one thing when something you read that reminds you of yourself is objectively positive--for example, "ENFPs can make friends with pretty much anyone." Ah, that's nice. But that's not what this author is doing here. My dear author is being confessional, and he's implicating me in his confession. How dare he?!?

That's a hidden value of confession, I think. It has a corporate aspect to it that is often overlooked--sometimes even on purpose. When people hear statements that cut a little too close to the bone, they often quickly distance themselves from it: "You're right. I like being liked as much as anyone, but you're crazy about it. You should lighten up." The degree to which a personal confession takes on a corporate life, however, is the degree to which it is prophetic.

I'm reminded of Isaiah's confession in the presence of the Lord seated on the throne: "Woe unto me! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips." If I had been within earshot of Isaiah, I most likely would have said something equally pious such as "Hold the phone, Isaiah! Speak for yourself!" But he was right, and there's no sense denying it once it's out there. Behold the power of confession: it opens the door for a community to better understand itself and its need for the grace and mercy of God.

Confession also, of course, alerts the community to the reality of God's grace and mercy, which is a nice side effect. At my church we offer a corporate prayer of confession, followed by a time of silent confession, followed by the passing of the Lord's peace. We wind up being the hands of Jesus for each other, speaking the words of Jesus to each other--"Peace be with you"--in the immediate wake of our acknowledging our failings in the company of one another. Behold the power of a community of faith: in case you forget, you're reminded that God is love, and sins are forgiven.

The Art of the Approach

We're well into Advent by now, and my pastor is preaching his way through the nativity story. This past Sunday was the juxtaposition of Herod and the Magi: the Magi, who entered Jerusalem in a flurry asking Herod, in effect, to "take me to your leader," whom they were fully prepared to worship; and Herod, who immediately set into motion a plot to assassinate whatever upstart might cause them to kneel.

A big part of the sermon had to do with our posture before God. We picture the villains of the nativity story with arms crossed, perhaps pacing to and fro, fretting over this new threat. But we picture the heroes of the story as kneeling, mostly because we're told by the Scriptures that they knelt. There's something about how we approach God that reveals where we're really at, I suppose.

Then again, if you kneel before a baby, does the baby even get it? My friend Andrew told me yesterday that his toddler son was a last-minute cast as Jesus in his church's nativity play. When the wise men bowed before him, he didn't know what to do, so he bowed back at them. Everybody laughed because nobody had really thought how Jesus--fully divine, yes, but also fully baby-like--would react to a bunch of strange men genuflecting before him in worship. I'm reminded of a post from about two years ago in which I tried to make sense, for myself at least, of the notion of finite beings approaching an infinitely approachable God. I repeat it here for your own sanctitainment.

***

January 26, 2007

Waiting Well

Thankfully, so far in this holiday-shopping season, I haven't had to wait in any excruciatingly long lines. In fact, I think the longest line I've stood in was at a Starbucks (surprising, I know), and the store was well-prepared for the frazzled, in-need-of-an-extra-shot-of-espresso shoppers, so the line moved relatively quickly. Since many of the gifts I have left to buy can be ordered online, I might manage to entirely avoid overcrowded stores. That would be a welcome gift in itself.

 

I like to think I'm a relatively patient person, but the truth is, like most of us, I don't like to wait. Our immediate-gratification culture only makes things worse; it's not just that I want something now, it's that I think I should get to have it now. The Chicago traffic has not helped my patience level either. Unexpected traffic volume (read: even more than the usual amount) quickly makes me angry and cranky. I'm probably either running late or hungry too, which means I'm likely not in a good frame of mind to begin with.

 

The start of Advent has made me look a little more closely at waiting, though. My thoughts first turned in that direction thanks to Dave, who led a reflective Advent exercise at the office one day during lunch. On my own later, I journaled about one of the questions he asked: What are your connotations of the word waiting? Mine were largely negative, I discovered--words like long, discipline, unfulfilled longings.

 

In an effort to be a little more positive, I decided I should look at what waiting builds in us. The only thing I could think of, however, was patience. Patience is, of course, admirable and should be desired by us all, but it's really only useful for one thing: more waiting. Great! Excellent!! Can't wait--I mean, I will wait patiently (with excitement and shouts of praise!) for the next period of waiting, so that I can show off the patience I've gained!! Somehow, the allure of patience didn't quite make my eyes shine with anticipation. In fact, I felt a little gypped.

 

The next night, I decided I needed to try again. I felt like there must be more to waiting than that. Actually, I felt like I had to know there is more to waiting than just patience, because I feel like I've been waiting for God to work--to speak to me, unearth some joy in me, free me from fear, break through--for a long time now. Let's just say whatever patience I've gained thus far in my life is wearing a little thin.

 

As I pondered waiting a little more, I thought of my cousin. Her (now) husband is a number of years older than her. It doesn't matter much now, but when they first met, she wasn't sixteen years old yet, which was the age her parents had said she had to be before she could go on a date. So he waited. He waited until she was old enough to date and then, once they were dating, he waited a number of years until she was old enough to marry. I realized from their story that waiting shows our devotion and commitment to someone. It reveals how much we think of them. And that realization shifted waiting in my mind from drudgery to a gift--something I can offer to God to show him that I trust his timing and I'm committed to him, even when I have a hard time seeing him and have no idea what he's up to or when he'll act.

 

Advent itself gives me perspective on waiting as well. Israel waited hundreds of years, longing for their Messiah. Zechariah and Elizabeth waited years for a child. Mary and Joseph waited nine months (with not a little anxiety, I'm guessing) for Jesus--their Messiah--to be born, and they waited to consummate their marriage, a hard task for any newly married couple. Simeon and Anna waited in the temple to see the Messiah God had promised. The Advent story is full of people waiting and longing and then discovering that the end result was so much more than they could have imagined--worth every minute of their waiting.

 

The reality is, I can't force God to act. And I can't bring about his results, because I don't know what he's planning; I only know what I want to happen (which is most likely different than what he's planning for me--what I really need). My prayer, then, this Advent, is that God would help me wait well: to wait in trust and hope and contentment, out of devotion to him. I've tried the alternatives: waiting impatiently, with whining and complaining (it didn't help), and trying to take things into my own hands (it makes the waiting much worse. And maybe longer. Trust me.).

 

I'm realizing, too, that waiting works both ways. God, I'm quite sure, has been waiting on me, perhaps waiting even for this change in perspective--this small transformation--before he reveals the next thing I need to know. He knows what I can handle and when. And he only gives what's good, when the time is right to give it. This is the God I wait for, the hope I'll wait with when the waiting is hard.

So whether you're waiting in line to buy gifts (or chai!) or waiting for joy to somehow emerge from the place it's been buried inside you, here's to waiting well this Christmas, and to trusting--like Elizabeth, like Simeon, like Mary--that waiting itself is a gift that gives birth to more gifts: the ones we really need.

The Rabbit Hopped; The Writer, Flu

It's nearly noon where I live, and I just dragged myself out of bed after an epic night of the flu. To be honest, I had thought it was just bad donuts. Anyway, I'm home sick today, but I couldn't let the first of the month pass without acknowledging our monthly game of "Rabbit," or "Rabbit Rabbit" if you're so inclined. Each month we strive to be the first in our little network to say "Rabbit" on the first of the month, and it appears that this month goes to Andy Crouch, who posted to the "Rabbit Uber Alles" Facebook group at 5:23 a.m. Eastern time, or approximately seven hours before I woke up. Congratulations, Andy! Runner up: Web, with a subtle post to my wall at Facebook.