An Untidy Christmas

An Untidy Christmas

Maybe it’s an echo of Eden or a yearning for things to come, this drive I have for perfection.

I long for things to be just so, for everything to fit in neat and tidy boxes, for the day to go as planned and all our stuff (aka clutter) to stay neatly organized.

Christmastime is no exception.

Actually, my drive for perfection may be even more intense this time of year. I want the tree trimmed symmetrically (I have been known to readjust ornaments after the kids go to bed), the shopping to be done ahead of time, and the menu to be memory-worthy. I long for quiet evenings by the tree with a cup of tea and a good book. And I want it all to progress slowly enough for everyone to enjoy the season.

christmas-3015776_1920But sometimes, most of the time, real life doesn’t fit in my ideal little boxes.

Right now, I’m sitting in front of the Christmas tree and a whole section of lights is out, despite the time my husband spent restringing all the lights (several times, but we won’t mention that frustrating fact.)

And it’s crazy early in the morning right now, but the jet lag from my mission trip 12 time zones away has my sleeping patterns all out of whack.

And the Christmas cards arrived from the printer on time, but they looked so awful I had to have them redone. Guess they’ll be late this year.

I realized, however, that these little details really are minor frustrations. For many people, Christmas is a time of deep sadness. Tears well up in my eyes as I remember friends who’ve suffered great loss recently. My dear mentor told me not a Christmas goes by without her thinking of loved ones not present at their holiday gatherings.

Real life is messy and full of heart-breaking disappointments. Christmas has a way of accentuating that pain.

Nothing in real life is truly Pinterest perfect.

But that’s why Emmanuel came.

Everything was perfect in His heavenly home. Perfectly sinless. Perfectly painless. Perfectly perfect in every way. Jesus was honored and served and adored there.

But you see, He loved these humans He’d created. The ones who’d traded in their perfect relationship with Him for a shot at doing life on their own – and we’ve been living with the fallout from that bad decision ever since (all the while adding our own sinful messes to the mix).

Yet no matter how broken humankind was, God wouldn’t stop loving them. He’d appear in their imperfect world, live among them, and make a way for their relationship with Him to be restored.

He wouldn’t do it our way, though. No royal palace, no sterile birthplace – Jesus stepped down right into the middle of our brokenness.

sheep-690371_1920He entered a virgin’s womb, and everyone doubted his mother’s integrity. He showed up in a jam-packed town and only the animals made room for Him. Smelly shepherds were His greeting committee and foreign dignitaries paid Him homage, while most of His own failed to notice His arrival.

His hometown was despised. His people oppressed. For most of His life, He was simply “The Carpenter’s Son.” Thirty of His 33 years were spent in obscurity.

When His ministry officially began, He defied everyone’s idealized notions of how this Messiah thing should be done. Instead of conquering Rome’s oppressive regime, He said, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Mark 12:17, NIV). While others clamored for first place, Jesus took off His robe, knelt before His bickering followers, and washed their filthy feet (John 13).

He loved the unlovely. He forgave the unworthy. He turned the world upside down.

This is the Baby we celebrate at Christmastime. So why on earth do we bustle so frantically to make sure everything is just right?

That first Christmas was a stunning display of God’s ability –affinity even — to create beauty, not in our perfection, but from our brokenness.

He’s present in the process, not just the finished product.

This is our Emmanuel – the God who’s right here with us, with all our struggles and heartaches, our warts and bruises and scars.

God’s idea of the perfect Christmas is vastly different than ours, which is really comforting to me. It reminds me that there’s beauty in this very moment, untidy as it is, if I’ll just be still and embrace it.

His presence is the heart of the Christmas spirit, so life doesn’t have to be perfect to celebrate the season.Untidy Christmas

As we count down the last few days until December 25th, let’s look for Jesus in each moment, bringing Him our heartaches, our disappointments, our frustrations.

Let’s choose present over perfect, memory-making over striving, and surrender to His plan over clinging to our own.

Let’s celebrate God’s work right now, even as we long for the perfection that will one day be our reality.

How about you? How are you finding rest in the middle of the Christmas crazy? I’d love to hear – please leave a comment below!

A Matter of Focus

A Matter of Focus

Sometimes I get distracted.

Sunday night, hubby came home from a week-long business convention in Pennsylvania. We stayed busy while he was gone – the big kids went to STEM camp each day, our littlest enjoyed several play dates with her besties, and I wrote lots and lots of words. When the weekend rolled around, we were all more than ready for Daddy to be home.

Except that I wasn’t ready when he got home.

alyson-mcphee-499812-unsplash.jpg Dinner wasn’t done. The bathroom deep clean that had exploded into our bedroom wasn’t… well, cleaned up. The laundry sat where I’d left it, waiting to be put on hangers and hung in the closet.

How I wanted everything to be perfect when he walked in the door. But alas, real life got in the way.

And guess what? He didn’t care.

He just wanted to be with us. To hear about our week and tell us about his. To snuggle up close and enjoy the evening together.

As I bustled about the kitchen trying to hurry the cooking along, I remembered the story of another woman with whose life I so often relate.

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” Luke 10:38-42.

I so get Martha! She loved Jesus and wanted everything to be perfect for Him. That meal in the oven was an expression of her affection. She longed to make Him comfortable, to help Him feel at home.

Yet all Jesus wanted was her.

Her heart, her focus, her devotion – not shown through works done in His name, but through responding to His loving pursuit.

In contrast to restless Martha, there sat Mary — the picture of a quiet heart.

Yeah, there were unfinished chores to be done. But Jesus had arrived, and she had to be near Him.

Serving from a distance just would not do.

If He was sitting in the living room, that’s where Mary wanted to be. If He went to the dining room, you’d find her there. If He walked outside, she’d join Him there, too.

Mary was preoccupied with Jesus.

The Bible mentions this Mary several other times – once at Lazarus’ tomb, where she brought her grief to Jesus just before He raised her brother from the dead, and again at a dinner party, where she anointed His feet with expensive perfume as an act of worship*.

In both scenarios, Mary went where Jesus was. She loved Him and needed Him, so she ran to Him with zero hesitation.

Oh, God, give me such a heart! May I never be content with days full of service yet absent of connection with You. Teach me to cultivate Your presence, both in my “daily quiet times” and in middle of my everyday crazy. servicewithoutconnectoin

How about you? How do you practice the presence of God? In what ways do you cultivate a quiet heart? I’d love to hear – please leave a comment below!

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*John 11:32, John 12:1-3

Shields are Not Just for Superheroes

Shields are Not Just for Superheroes

by Meredith Mills

@DazzledByTheSon

Last week, my hubby was out of town for a business convention, which left me home alone with the kids. We had a good time together, trying to stay busy and not miss Daddy too much (hard to do!) Two days in a row, we drove out of town to meet friends at the zoo. flamingo baby

That was exhausting, but super fun.

One night, while the kids were tucked safely in their beds, a car drove by our house and cast creepy shadows on my bedroom window. In my mind, I knew the shadows were caused by the tree outside. But fear began to invade my heart. “What if’s” flooded my mind as this mama bear thought through how I’d defend my babies in case of danger.

It’s crazy how that happens. There was a logical explanation. Nothing really to be afraid of. But sometimes our emotions are stronger than our minds.

Thankfully, however, the Holy Spirit is stronger than both.

As I lay there in the dark, I prayed that God would shield and protect us. I envisioned a large superhero shield covering our home and angels standing around our property.

Then I went to sleep. We all awoke the next morning, safe and sound.

Psalm 28:7 says, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and He helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I will praise Him.”

I love this description of God. He doesn’t just give us a shield. He is our Shield.

He stands between His child and the onslaught of the enemy. He absorbs and extinguishes the fiery dart blows.

This, however, leads to an obvious question. Does this mean bad things should never happen to His children?

We need only look around to see this isn’t the case. Christians suffer like the rest of the world. Probably even more, if you ask imprisoned believers and those tortured for their faith.

Is there a contradiction between faith and “real life”? Is God really our Shield when awful things happen?

Since God doesn’t change (James 1:17), we can trust that He never stops being our Shield, though His protection may look different at various times.

  • Sometimes He shields us from physical harm

Like those times when I’ve narrowly avoided a wreck.

Or when we’ve prayed for healing and He grants our request.

Or that time when I was a young adult living at home and my family happened upon a crime scene. Somehow our car ended up inside the police blockade, a would-be burglar laying shot on the ground a few feet away. That frustrating delay twenty minutes earlier may have kept our family out of the line of fire.

  • Always He shields us from the enemy’s fury

Satan hates Jesus. He also hates those who follow Him. Quite honestly, we’re no match for the devil. Yet the devil is no match for our God.

God stands between us and the enemy’s wrath, never abandoning us to fend for ourselves. Never leaving the devil to do anything he wants with us. (See Job 1-2, 42 for the interaction between God, Satan and a man named Job.)

  • Always He shields us from God’s righteous indignation

Our God is pure. He hates and punishes sin. But Jesus, the Sinless One, stands between His children and God’s anger. On the cross, He bore every ounce of the judgment we’d incurred through our sin. Through faith in Christ, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

In every circumstance, God is our Shield – protecting us from things seen and unseen. Sometimes He prevents tragedy. Sometimes He walks though it with us.

God my shieldWhat do you think? How do you reconcile the apparent contradiction between God as our Shield and the trials that we face? How have you seen God act as your Shield? Please comment below. Let’s get to know Him better together!

 

 

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Redeemed and Set Free

Redeemed and Set Free

by Meredith Mills

@DazzledByTheSon

I’ll never forget what I saw that day.

fence-2163951_1280I had heard of slavery, but to me it was a remote problem – a shameful period in our nation’s history and a distant atrocity in far-away lands.

And then I saw them. Flesh and blood people trapped in the insidious web of human trafficking. Sex slaves and beggars lining busy streets. Drugged children and lepers waiting for alms. Victims of human cruelty and depravity.

I saw real-life slaves that day. I looked in their eyes and felt as though I gazed into their souls.

And my heart broke into a million pieces.

So this is what slavery looks like.

The powerless trampled by the powerful. The weak exploited by the strong.

No mercy. No hope. No means of escape. Only the monotony of a slave’s daily existence.

The event I describe took place during a mission trip to Bangkok, Thailand several years ago. It is burned in my memory, tucked away in the deepest corner of my heart.

black-and-white-1619522_1280Yet in reality, it’s a picture of my life. I’ve experienced sin’s heavy chains, enslaving me to destructive habits I despise but keep on doing.

And I’ve felt the crushing condemnation of a Law I can’t keep, no matter how hard I try.

I know the tyranny of a master who cares nothing for his slaves.

But thank God, Someone came to my rescue. Someone stronger than my old master. Someone rich enough to pay my ransom. Someone so relentlessly loving He’d exchange His own life for mine – and yours.

This is God our Redeemer. Lavish in love. Extravagant in grace. freedom

“He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins. He showered His kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding” (Ephesians 1:7-8 NLT).

Let that sink in for a minute. Our God is rich, abundantly wealthy…in kindness and grace.

He looked on us in our wretched slavery, when we had nothing to offer Him, and He loved us.

He wanted us.

He knew we’d broken His law. He realized we’d not always love Him in return. Yet He loved us and was delighted to make us His own.

Do you feel it? The overwhelming realization that, no matter what, you are wanted.

I’ve spent the past several days reading through Ephesians one. Our Redeemer’s abundant generosity is striking. For those united with Christ:

  • He has given us every spiritual blessing.
  • He loved us, chose us and decided to make us holy – all before He uttered creation’s first life-giving words.
  • He made plans for our adoption so we could be close to Him, though we were once His enemies because of our sins.
  • His richness of kindness and grace compelled Him to pay our ransom and purchase our freedom.
  • He poured out abundant favor on us, showering us with kindness.
  • His incredibly great power works on our behalf – the same power that brought Jesus back from the dead.

Abundance. Riches. Greatness. This is the lavish love of our Redeemer.

Have you experienced it? Do you know His redemption? If not, I invite you to check out In Case You’re Wondering.

If you know Him, I rejoice with you in the freedom He gives.

How have you seen Him as Redeemer in your life? How does His redemption affect your daily life? Please comment below. Let’s get to know Him better together!

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