No one has ever chosen to be born.  No one ever got to pick their nationality, the family they’d have, or what town they’d grow up in.  We all arrive into this world cast upon the care of our parents without any say in the manner of life we’ll inherit upon our first naked and desperate breaths outside the womb.  We don’t get to chose any of it.  This is true for all of us, except for one.  

Every man has been born, but there is only one man who was given a choice.  This man, called the Word, was in the beginning with God, He was God.  All things were created through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made.  This is the one that chose to born, this is Word that became.  To try and grasp this mystery hurts our minds but thrills our hearts: He took on flesh, God became a man.  There has never been one born like this one, He is fully human and completely God all at the same time.  He was in the beginning with God and yet He has a birthday.  He created all things and yet He has a mother.  

It is worth considering what kind of life the only man who had a say in his birth actually chose to live.  What kind of life would you chose if you were given an option?  My guess is you wouldn’t have chosen the one Jesus did.  He lived in a small town that people said nothing good comes from (John 1:46), He was born into a poor family, He worked with his hands, and He lived in a country under foreign occupation.  Even the circumstances of his birth were mean; He spent His first hours lying in a feeding troth for the beasts because there was no room for his family at the inn.   

What is even more astonishing than how Jesus chose to come into the world, is the fact that He chose to remain there hidden in the mundane of everyday life for 30 years before His true identity as the Son of God was revealed.  Between His meager birth in the Bethlehem manger and the humble proclamation of his cousin John: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” lie 30 years cloaked in silent mystery, the details of his childhood largely absent from the holy scriptures.  But oh how these silent years speak volumes to us about who He is!  God became flesh and dwelt among us, perfectly content to live hidden among us as just another guy from Nazareth.  Humble, Human, Holy.  

I found this book on a friend's book shelf, the title alone ministered to me. I'm calling it the Fire Within of Christmas.

For centuries faithful men and women have set their minds to meditate and their mouths to sing of the events of the life of Christ.  The birth of Jesus was remembered during the season of advent (which means coming) and the death and resurrection of Jesus was remembered during the season of lent.  These times, marked on the church’s calendar each year, were pivotal in keeping the mind and heart of the church constantly thinking upon the life and death of their Savior.

In many christian circles today, Christmas and Easter are celebrated but we don’t really know what to make of the longer seasons of advent and lent.  This christmas season, I’ve made it a point to focus my reading, thinking, and prayers upon the birth of Jesus.  I haven’t gone to the extent of buying an advent wreath and candles or discovered what wassail is all about and how one quaffs it, but I have spent some quality time looking at the birth of Jesus and I have to admit if this is what advent is all about than I’m a huge fan!

John Saward, in his book on the Christmas Mystery “The Cradle of Redeeming Love” speaks about the Christmas celebrations throughout church history:

In the middle ages the festivities of Christmas continued without interruption till Candlemas (Feburary 2^nd feast that celebrated the presentation of Jesus at the temple).  Throughout January, holly and ivy decked the halls, wassail was quaffed and carols rang out in praise of the successive mysteries of the infant God. ‘Make we myrth/ For Crystes byrth,/ And syng we Yole tyl Candelmas.’ Only on the second of Feburary, with an eye on the approaching rigors of Lent, did the medieval man dowse the Yuletide log. (p. 30 ignatius press. my parenthesis) 

The Christmas season is a great time of year to intentionally set our minds upon the birth of Christ, and ponder the weightiness and beauty of God revealed in the face of Christ.  Scripture calls the incarnation (God becoming a man) a great mystery (1 Timothy 3:16). The truths within this mystery were not hidden from us but rather hidden for us.  Saints throughout history have born witness to depths of this mystery and to the wisdom of seeking it out.  It was said of St. Francis of Assi that he could not even utter the name Bethlehem without stammering with emotion, like the bleating of sheep.  Oh that this christmas, that tiny one in the manger would be to us a treasure of unspeakable worth.

Reading Suggestions: 

Here in John 9… Jesus passes by this man who had sat begging, presumably at the entrance to the temple, for such a length of time that he’d become known to people as “the man who sits and begs”.  The disciples’ theological question to Jesus seems quite an inappropriate question to ask in front of a man born blind, but I am sure it wasn’t the first time this man born blind had heard it asked.  It almost seems like here at the beginning of John 9 we have a mini version of the book of Job.  Like Job’s friends the disciples assumed this man’s life of blindness and destitution was due either to his sin or his parents sin and who better to ask for an opinion on the matter but God himself.

I can’t help but think about how this question must have eaten away at this poor man.  It seems the disciples wouldn’t dare suggest that God had anything to do with this man’s affliction and I imagine they were caught off guard by Jesus’ reply… “it wasn’t that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”  In essence Jesus was saying the most important part about  this man’s sickness is not the origin of it but the outcome.  This man’s life long ailment, the cause of his pain, sorrow, and shame was to be used to display the works of God!   The next thing that happens is crazy… Jesus bends down to the dust that this poor man was laying in, hocks a loogie, makes some mud, rubs it in the blind man’s eyes and when he washes it off he can see!  What!?!

The thing that really strikes me is that Jesus, who is God, the everlasting one, the high and lofty one before whom angels cry holy, holy, holy,  is in this very act of kindness displaying what He is like.  He doesn’t treat people like theological problems to be solved but rather he is kind and compassionate… he came from the heights of glory but he has no problem in bowing down to touch a desperate blind man begging by the side of the road.  Truly there is no pit of despair too deep which Jesus can’t reach!!  If he cared for a man such as this and redeemed even his most hopeless and painful woes than he cares about me too and my problems and my spells of despair are not beyond his loving touch!   This is our God, this is what He is like, He spits, He makes mud, and He really cares about us.

Praise, O servants of the Lord,

praise the name of the Lord!

Blessed be the name of the Lord

from this time forth and forevermore!

From the rising of the sun to its setting,

the name of the Lord is to be praised!

The Lord is high above all nations,

and his glory above the heavens!

Who is like the Lord our God,

who is seated on high,

who looks far down

on the heavens and the earth?

He raises the poor from the dust

and lifts the needy from the ash heap,

 to make them sit with princes,

with the princes of his people.

 He gives the barren woman a home,

making her the joyous mother of children.

Praise the Lord! - Psalm 113

(Those words in bold seem awfully familiar, I think I remember reading something really close to these someplace in the bible.. anyone want to take a guess who said it first? I’ll give you a clue.. she wasn’t drunk but someone thought she was…)

David wrote in Psalm 27:14  “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”  I’ve been discovering lately that it really does take courage to wait for God… to spend your time in prayer month after month and year after year with seemingly little to show for it. To not lose heart in the waiting takes something more than we have in our human zeal.  It takes courage.

In his book “Clowning in Rome” Henri Nouwen compares the large, empty spaces of Cathedrals in the midst of the bustling city of Rome, to our lives of solitude in a busy modern world.  I remember visiting a Cathedral in Ireland. The clamor of the outside street was quickly swallowed up by silence as I passed through it’s dark entry way into the sanctuary.  Inside the towering heights of it’s domed ceiling I held back my words as the ancient stone walls echoed with a weighty history that made my soul tremble.

As tourists we marvel at the architectural feats of these cathedrals, yet they still seem somewhat foolish to our post modern minds.  Our churches  are more practical, much more efficient then there ancient forefathers.  We have more sound systems, more seats, more offices much lower ceilings and less mystery.  But these old cathedrals still stand as witnesses to us and by their extravagant emptiness remind us that there is more to life than people and schedules.  They remind us, by their sacred vacancy, that there is indeed an empty space in our lives that not even the most intimate of human relationships can fill.

Prayer too can seem impractical and even dreadful on the surface as we enter through it’s quiet and empty hours and discover our own deep vacancy.  While the vastness of our emptiness is overwhelming, let us remember that it was created by our Maker who longs to fill it with Himself.  So be strong and let your heart take courage …wait for the Lord.  

There she was, eyes swollen from tears, hair all a mess covering her face, sitting on the dusty floor …  She had not been deaf to the murmuring of the twelve when she burst in the door at Simon’s house.  Her heart was set, she had done it; that vial of perfume was now broken and its contents finally poured out over Him.  He leaned over and looked at her, gently lifting her bowed head.  Moving the hair from her eyes, she returned his glance, not knowing for sure how he would yet respond.  There in the silence, the disciples’ groans now erupted into a sincere, but indignant protest, “Why this waste?!”  Suddenly came that familiar rush of despair, she bowed her head low and thought to herself, “Maybe they’re right; what was I thinking?”

There were a storm of opinions surrounding Mary’s devotion to Jesus that night.  We know, for certain, that the disciples didn’t grasp what she had done.  They didn’t see her fragrant offering as a thoughtful extravagant gift, but rather, a foolish and costly waste.  We don’t know for sure from the scripture, but I wonder, as I’ve alluded to in the above description, if Mary wasn’t also a little uncertain about what she had done.  Did she doubt the virtue of her gift when it was not met with applause by those closest to Jesus?  Perhaps she thought, “Do I really have anything to offer that matters to Jesus? This is all I have to give, and everyone thinks it’s a waste; maybe Jesus feels the same way?”  It took courage for Mary to do what she did.  She didn’t stop herself at the door with the first grumble of disapproval from the disciples, and she didn’t turn and defend herself.  It’s hard to wait like Mary, in silence before Jesus, to hear what He thinks of our offering.  But oh, to hear what Mary heard…

The silent tension seemed to hang there forever.  Jesus turned to the disciples, and as they saw his face, their snarls turned into a nervous panic.  Their words fell to the ground, crawled back under the table, and hid from His stern gaze.  “Leave her alone!” He said to them.   Then turning back to Mary, He looked at her and said with a smile, “She has a done a beautiful thing for me.”  

That night, as the fragrance of Mary’s worship filled the room and the swirl of commentaries rose from every heart, Jesus spoke, and the opinion that mattered above all had the last word.  Applause will come and go.  The approval of man will show itself shallow soil to build our lives upon, fragile reason to make our choices by; but there is one opinion that will remain true, and one voice that will always matter.  If what we are doing really matters to Jesus, if it moves His heart, if He appreciates it, then what we do truly matters. If the beauty of our devotion to Jesus is hidden from our sight we can rest assured that it does not go unappreciated by the one before whom all the thoughts and intentions of men’s heart are clearly seen.  Oh, Lord, let us see the eyes that Mary saw, eyes that defeat our doubts.  Let us hear the voice that Mary heard, the voice that silences our accusers and tells us: “It matters to me; I think it’s beautiful”. 

Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.  Preserve my life, for I am godly; save your servant, who trusts in you- you are my God.  Psalm 86:1-2

The prayer above was written by a man named David, who God called a man after his own heart (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22).  God must have really wanted us to take a good look at David for not only do we have a record of the events of his life, but we also have a detailed record his intimate conversations with God.  These have come down to us in the form of over 70 psalms that apart from being filled with some of the keenest insight into God’s character and emotions also give us a shockingly raw look at how the man after God’s heart prayed.  We would do well to sit next to David in his prayer time and learn from him… so lets do it!  We’ll look at Psalm 86, its called by the compiler of the psalms “a prayer of David”  so it seems like a great place to start.

First thing we notice about David’s prayer in psalm 86 is that he addressed God as one who was poor and needy. The man after God’s heart, whose prayer life was given to us as an example saw himself as poor and needy.  But wasn’t David a King, the sweet psalmist of Israel, a famous and skilled warrior?  Many would have thought David strong, but David saw himself as weak, poor, and completely dependent on God.  Nothing like daily bringing yourself before God in long hours of prayer will make you realize how poor and needy you actually are.  Those who are needy pray and those who pray realize how needy they really are.

The next thing we notice about David’s prayer is that he also addressed God as one who was godly.  What an amazing statement to make before God “I am godly.” Now as much as we know about David’s achievements, the bible is also not shy in recording his failures yet still he states that he was godly.  How can this be?  How did David know that he was godly?  Simply because David knew what God was like!  After making his plea to God for help he states the ground upon which he makes his request “for You, (because you) are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.”   What gave David confidence to declare himself godly was that he knew what God was like.  David knew that even though he was poor and needy, God was generous and merciful.  It was the combination of these two truths: David’s need and God’s generosity that caused David to trust in God and not in himself.  As we discover our need for God it’s meant to bring us to rely on the generous God who loves us in our poverty.

When I read these two statements in David’s prayer it is hard for me to reconcile them because often I view my weakness and need as evidencing a lack of my godliness.  I’ll often think if I was really a man of God I wouldn’t be struggling with x,y, and z.  So as I read this psalm and see David, the man after God’s heart, boldly stating his need for God and confessing that he is “poor” I can’t seem to breeze past it as though its not a shocking insight for me into what it means to be godly.

Admitting that I am weak or in need seems to be one of the hardest things for me to do, but I think the clearest way to know how I really feel about weakness is seen in how  I respond towards other people’s weaknesses.  Often instead of meeting their needs with compassion and patience I meet them with impatience and frustration.  Can anyone relate?  These little revelations are a painful insight into how I actually think God views my weakness.  It’s really hard to walk away from meeting a compassionate and tender God and be harsh towards others in their weakness, if we do we have really missed the point (Matthew 18:21-35).  But even these painful revelations are not meant to send us groveling in the dust, but to cause us to come to Jesus.

Seeing and admitting our need for God opens the door for the revelation of the love of God to penetrate us at the deepest places.  Yes I am poor and needy, but GOD thinks upon me!  I’d rather be poor and needy but have God watching out for me, than “rich and strong” and depending on myself.  More than anything I want to love God and love like God… but if I am ever going to succeed at that I have to let him love me first and not because I am strong or because I try really hard… but because I am his child, poor, needy, undeserving but never the less he still calls me his beloved.  So today lets come like David and let the Holy Spirit woo us into total dependance upon God.  You are my God apart from you I have no good! (psalm 16:2).

Fast forward to the present, I’ve been a christian for eight years and I’ve watched as the runway of my twenties that was supposed to launch me into my “destiny” has gradually grown shorter and narrower as life speeds ahead with no regard for boys dreams.  Life seems much more mundane and hard now than it was in my romantic teenage years.  As I seek to live out my vows to follow Jesus will all of my heart, I find myself needing constant reminders of why I am really doing what I am doing.  I still have the dream of being a musician and writing songs, but I wonder if I really have what it takes to “make it” and I’m starting to question what “making it” really means?

This past winter while I was home for Christmas my mother told me I had to watch this documentary about Bruce Springsteen called The Promise.  It chronicles Springsteen’s passionate and obsessive production of the his fourth album Darkness on the Edge of Town.  The film maker did an excellent job of capturing Springsteen’s drivenness as a musician.  No detail was insignificant to Bruce, one day they spent 16 hours in the studio just trying to find a good sound for the drums.  Bruce’s really believed in what he was doing.  He didn’t want to just make another album, he wanted to make a masterpiece, he didn’t just want to get by he wanted to be great!  It was really inspiring watch this video and peer into a time in Bruce’s life when his future was still uncertain; its as if whether he made it in the future or not wasn’t as important as giving it all he had in the present.

As great as the documentary was, something about it really bothered me.  It took me a couple days with a pit in my stomach to actually figure out what was bothering me, but then it hit me.  Bruce and I may have a lot in common but we define greatness and success in totally different ways.  Bruce talked a lot about inspiring people and making music that really made a difference in the world and in those terms he has been really successful.  He’s sold millions of records, he’s been credited as having saved rock n roll, and he’s doubtlessly touched millions of people through his music.  Now don’t get me wrong I think these are great achievements and I think there is much to be admired about a man like Springsteen and his give it all you got ethos but I don’t think Bruce is overly concerned with what Jesus thinks about His music.  Hence the pit in my stomach.

There is coming a day when we will see Jesus, his eyes will meet ours and in that day there is only one opinion that matters: His.  In Matthew Chapter 11 John the Baptist sent word to Jesus from prison, he had his disciples ask whether or not Jesus was really the one who John spoke about, in other words was John on the right track in what he dedicated his life to and what he was about to die for?  After Jesus answers John’s disciples he turns to the crowd and says to them about John the Baptist what I long to hear him say about me… there was none greater than John.  One day I am going to see Jesus, the man who died for me.  This is real and this is the reason why I won’t give up when things get hard, when I’m misunderstood, under-appreciated, or unpopular.  Its not because I don’t want to be great but because I want to be great where it really matters: in Jesus’ eyes.

Let me answer that question by sharing a dream of mine with you.  Its a dream like not one that you have when your asleep, but its the kind you have when your eyes are open and your heart is pounding like dynamite in your chest.  You know like a Martin Luther King Jr. I have a dream dream…Well I have a dream too and it goes something like this:

One day when the glory of rock concerts and sunsets are long forgotten, when Jesus has returned, and God and man are dwelling together again.. all the redeemed saints will gather before God’s throne to worship Him as will doubtlessly happen time and time again throughout eternity.  The choirs of men and angels leading the songs that day begins singing.  Maybe that day they start with one of the psalms or a Charles Wesley hymn, or a spontaneous chorus and then suddenly it happens! I hear it and I am shocked: they are singing a chorus to a song I wrote!  Still amazed that they even knew my song I look over and I see Jesus…. He smiles at me and the look in his eyes says it all; this isn’t the first time that He’s heard the song.  He heard it the very first time I sang it to him through tears and snots in my basement some cloudy afternoon when my heart was heavy and I wrestled in a song to bring him my heart.  It moved Him then and He will remember it forever.  Oh if Jesus remembers what I’ve done and thinks it great, if this happens and nothing else (no CDs, no concerts, no radio play, no recognition from men) if Jesus likes my songs then I will have been a success.  This is my dream.  What’s yours?