As I write this, the first major snow of the season is falling in southeast Michigan. Christmas songs are playing on my tablet. There is a pot of homemade soup simmering on the stove. Calder is on his cat tree and playing with the toy that hangs on a string from the top. I’m thinking I will build a fire in the fireplace and start decorating the house for Christmas. It’s a day I’m feeling blessed.
This post will be published in a couple of weeks on Christmas Eve. Between now and then, I will be faced with the stresses that tend to, unfortunately, accompany the holiday season. To get me through those trials, I’ll use memories of this day to help settle my mind and find some peace.
Today reminds me of how Calder looks when he’s sleeping under the Christmas tree. It’s an image that says all seems right with the world. And in the spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood on our shared planet Earth, I wish for you to experience moments of peace, like I have today, during the holiday season and throughout the coming year.
Merry Christmas!Happy Holidays!Happy New Year!Peace and joy to you and yours!
In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge was obsessed over the accumulation of wealth. He was greedy, hoarding his pennies. He was mean, complaining about the poor. He was nasty, wishing ill on others. No one wanted to be around him. His main problem, however, was that he had lost his joy. Wretched behavior grew in the chasm left behind. In a last ditch effort to save Scrooge’s soul from eternal torment, three ghosts individually appeared to him to whisk him through time: past, present, and future. With the Spirits’ guidance, Scrooge examined poignant moments of his life and was convinced that he needed both a change of heart and a change in behavior.
Similarly, we’ve all had moments in which we’ve buried our joy so deeply that it seems like we’ll need several miracles to find it again. We battle busy schedules and stress over unfinished projects. We say things we don’t mean to loved ones and regret how we’ve hurt them. We obsess over wrongs done to us and harbor contempt towards offenders. Financial worries, health scares, and tension all add to our woe. We want to dismiss everyone and everything with a loud “Bah! Humbug!”
But we don’t have to hide from the Grim Reaper—or avoid answering the phone—by curling up beneath our covers on cold, dark mornings. There are ways to get through the gloom and into the light. We just need a healthy disposition and a route to lead us back to joy. The three avenues that help me are to give, pray, and sing.
GIVE A year ago, I fueled my van at Costco and started to maneuver past the pumps. I wasn’t in too much of a hurry. I had plenty of time to meet my boys at their school and take them home. It was cold, about 40 degrees. The boys would keep warm inside until they saw me arrive.
Just as I was about to exit the Costco lot onto a busy road, I saw a young woman walking through the grass. She struggled on the uneven ground in part because she was lugging an infant carrier. I had no doubt there was a baby tucked underneath the layers of blankets. Of the two travelers, the young mother was the one crying.
For once in my life, I wasn’t conflicted over whether or not to offer help. I rolled my window down and shouted a couple of times in the woman’s direction before she heard my offers to give her a ride.
Quote taken from A Christmas Carol. Photo by Kelly Bixby
She told me that her van had run out of gas in a lot across the street from Costco. She had seen the gas pumps and made her way over to ask for help. A man whom she had approached was rude and turned her away. Her tears led me to believe that she was emotionally defeated by the time I came upon her.
According to Jesus, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Through my chance meeting with the young mother, I know exactly how it feels to be blessed. It is joy to be handed trust and confidence from a stranger. It is joy to provide for another person. It is joy to cry together, hug goodbye and wish good upon one another.
In Matthew 25:35, we read, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” If you’re inspired to give of yourself in any of these ways, you’ll meet a need in someone’s life. Sometimes they’ll thank you. Sometimes they won’t. When you give freely, without expecting anything in return, you’ll feel differently, and you’ll want to give more.
PRAY There was a time when I couldn’t imagine squeezing a single minute out of my day for any other being, even God. I was a busy mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, volunteer, committee member…titles galore. For crying out loud, I couldn’t possibly support one more relationship! And then, I gave in to an ever-present tug: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6). So, God joined me during my early morning showers.
Praying while showering may seem disrespectful to people of other faiths who are tied to strict worship ceremonies and customs. But my Christian faith teaches that nothing stands between the Creator of the Universe and me. I can approach Him anytime and anywhere. I may be casual and speak conversationally with Him. Alternatively, I can be formal and lower myself to the ground in reverence, never losing sight of the fact that He is owed my perpetual thanks and utmost respect.
Throughout my years spent getting to know Him, I’ve discovered that He has quite a sense of humor. He’s very opinionated and He’s jealous for my attention. He’s loving and kind too. And sometimes His expression of love comes with harsh discipline. What’s really cool, however, is that He provides me with all that I need.
We work well together: I seek His input into my life and He directs me…I may have that statement backwards. Either way, I don’t always listen, and the path isn’t always easy or clear. I’ve tripped over plenty of litter—ugly sin and temptations, disappointment and heartache—scattered by the world. I’m not immune to any of it. Often, I wonder if I might even be more susceptible to it than people who don’t care about His approval.
The beauty of His and my relationship with one another is that He knows what I truly think about Him, and I get to experience the joy of His companionship as He walks with me through all my trials. It feels good to know that He is ever present and looks forward to our one-on-One time. “Go into your room, close the door and pray to your father, who is unseen” (Matthew 6:6).
SING The Detroit Christian radio station, K-LOVE 106.3 FM, challenged its audience members to spend thirty days listening to nothing else but Christian radio. The point was for listeners to replace worldly distractions with the praiseworthy songs and positive messages provided by Christian radio programming. For me, that meant that I would have to turn off daytime TV shows and evening news programs.
I did it! I tuned out mainstream media and primarily listened to three stations: K-LOVE; Faith Talk 1500; and WMUZ 103.5 FM – The Light. For well-over a year now, my life has been practically void of televised news and I don’t miss it one bit. There are plenty of other ways to get information. My friends, family, and church all provide enough details for me to feel like I have some idea as to what is happening in the world. If I want to know more, I look to the Internet and mindfully select what I want to read or view. By choosing to do this, I am not bombarded with overly negative and repetitively broadcast stories. Bucking popular information sources and spending time singing along to songs of worship has brought greater peace to my life and more productivity to my days.
I admit to venturing astray by going to hear the Rolling Stones play at Comerica Park; how could I not? I collected nearly every one of their albums during my youth. By the way, the concert was amazing! The guys all defied their ages as they played a dozen and a half of their iconic songs, and I had fun singing.
In comparison, a year earlier my husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary by attending a concert performance of Christian artists: Third Day, Mercy Me, and Colton Dixon. That concert was amazing for a different reason: Christian music seeps into my soul like nothing else. I carry songs of praise almost constantly in the background of my mind. And the joy I feel is powerful enough to get me fervently dancing. That’s a phenomenon for a conservative girl like me. With my arms reaching towards heaven, I belt out words of worship, words reserved for the King of Kings. Mick may still jump around like a thirty-five year-old, but I know my heart belongs to Jesus. I feel it in my joyful soul.
“Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:19).
This Christmas, I hope you’ll plot your way to joy. GIVE cheerfully, PRAY boldly, and SING loudly!
Stained glass depiction of Joseph’s encounter with God’s angel. The Church of St. Joseph, Nazareth, Israel. 2014.
“I’ve got pageant on the brain.” It’s a temporary affliction that I most recently revealed to my friends one evening while we were playing Euchre. The conversation had been swimming around careers and responsibilities, and at some point I squeezed in my earth-shattering news: I’m directing the Christmas pageant at my church and am preoccupied with the planning.
Two years ago, I took on the endeavor for my first time. When I told one of my best friends, she surprised me by laughing. So much for the vote of confidence, I thought. Then, I realized that she grew up with me and she remembered what I was like as an adolescent. Back then, I hated speaking in public, was never in a play, and quit going to church sometime during high school. Upon reflection, her reaction seemed somewhat appropriate, except a lot had happened since our childhood. Little by little, God had prodded me until my faith had grown strong enough that I could be trusted with telling His story.
I knew organizing the pageant would be a huge responsibility. Parents wanted to see their children participate in an appropriate demonstration that would honor Jesus. Children expected to have fun while being part of an important presentation. And God seemed to be nudging me to deliver the pageant in a way that would help others appreciate the unique circumstances surrounding His Son’s birth.
Did I understand the historical event well enough to accurately portray Jesus’s entry into the world? Not entirely. But I have heard it said that if you really want to learn something, then you should teach it to someone else. Since I would be doing both, I felt obligated to look for reliable information. I consulted several different sources, sifted through books and articles, garnered what I needed, and wrote the script for The Story of Jesus’s Birth. The pageant was introduced to my congregation as the “Authentic Christmas” story because I hoped to do away with many common misconceptions and show people a more realistic rendition of the miraculous event that took place over 2000 years ago.
I didn’t want to rewrite history, but I found many tidbits that warranted my tweaking of the traditional Christmas pageant. Here are some of the things I found interesting and the ideas that took shape.
Jesus fulfilled more than three hundred prophecies, an astounding number considering they were written over four hundred years before He was born. His birth, life, and sacrificial death were foretold well before he walked the earth. His role as savior was long expected.
Stone feeding trough. Photograph taken by Kelly Bixby in Megiddo, Israel. 2014.
Joseph’s arrival back in his hometown of Bethlehem for the census may have been similar to our modern day experiences of going home for a holiday. Sometimes we have to sleep on the couch because Auntie Em is in the spare bedroom. It doesn’t mean we can’t stay; we just get whatever space is still left. The familiar misconception of a callous innkeeper may have evolved from nothing more than a tired and grumpy cousin who didn’t get to sleep in his own bed one special night. The place offered to Mary and Joseph could have been the only room of his house that wasn’t already overflowing with relatives and other guests. It would have been the lower portion of the resident’s home (a multi-level cave) where valued animals were routinely brought inside at night. There they were safely protected from loss and theft while the owners slept in an upper room. No one really knows if any animals were present and lying near the baby Jesus on the night of His arrival, but there is evidence that Jesus’s bed was a stone feeding trough, not a wooden manger, built into the lower room.
Under normal circumstances in ancient Israel, Joseph wouldn’t have been in the room when Mary gave birth. He would have remained close by and quick to enter after Jesus was cleaned and swaddled.
Below the ornamentation and decorative tapestries is the ground of a cave presumed to be the birthplace of Jesus. The Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Israel. 2014.
There isn’t any biblical mention of angels being present in the stable when Jesus was born (despite artistic renderings and popular crèches), but they are part of the story. First, the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her she would conceive the Son of God and that her old and barren relative, Elizabeth, was also pregnant (with John the Baptist). Then, an angel, presumed to be Gabriel, appeared in a dream to Joseph to explain that Mary’s conception was miraculous. God’s messenger instructed Joseph to name the expected baby Jesus. On the night Jesus was born, a single angel–once again presumed to be Gabriel– appeared to shepherds to announce Jesus’s birth and encourage them to go to Bethlehem and see the baby. A host of angels joined Gabriel and the shepherds, praised God, and proclaimed peace to those who please God. Joseph was visited at least two more times by angels giving warning or instructions that led to Jesus’s safety.(NIV)
Jesus was officially given His name during the time of circumcision, when He was eight days old.(NIV)
When Jesus was no younger than forty days old, He was taken to the temple to be presented to the Lord and dedicated into serving Him. During the ceremony, Jesus created quite a stir when two faithful servants recognized the infant as the Messiah (Christ). Simeon prophesied Jesus’s suffering and death, and old Anna, a prophetess, spread the news of the infant Messiah’s arrival to those looking forward to redemption.(NIV)
Wise men, commonly referred to as Magi, came to worship Jesus, but not on the night of His birth. Their visit may have taken place as long as two years afterwards. So in our pageant, the unnamed Magi from the east humbly bowed before a toddler Jesus as He stood beside his mother in their home, not a stable. The visitors were most likely not kings, but they may have been astrologers or advisors to kings. There was more than one Magi, but the Bible doesn’t specify the exact number. Tradition, whether right or wrong, sets the number at three.
Jesus was taken to safety in Egypt, thus spared from paranoid King Herod’s orders to massacre all the boys in Bethlehem who were two years old and younger. This tragedy is pretty well known, but it is often left out of Christmas pageants. One reason is that this tale is gruesome and unsettling. Even I glossed over sharing this part of history because the pageant was ending and I wanted a softer transition into a joyous closing hymn. I would have liked to have explained that more than baby boys would have been killed. In their fury, it’s presumed that Herod’s army didn’t take time to figure out which babies were boys and which were girls; and if parents tried to protect their children, they may have been killed too.
Scene from “The Story of Jesus’s Birth.” Photograph taken by Lynn Rife. 16 Dec. 2012
Overall, our pageant looked fairly traditional. Youth portrayed every part. They became fluffy sheep, brilliant angels, and humble shepherds. As wise men, they looked like kings, complete with two-legged camels trailing behind. The highlight was still the scene with a costumed donkey that came to rest next to Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. Did anyone notice the non-traditional yet more realistic stone manger? Was anyone surprised to learn about Simeon and Anna? Or that Jesus was at least two years old when the Magi bowed before Him? I had achieved my goal of introducing lesser known details into our rendition of the Christmas story. I hoped that many were inspired to wonder what that night was really like.
The pageant required long hours of planning and the support of a small army of family and friends. Together, we survived the crazy, energetic practices and embraced impromptus by our young actors. There were tears (mine) during group prayer and joy as I watched God’s precious children welcome and worship baby Jesus. The parents smiled. The children beamed. I was amazed by it all and felt like the one who had the most fun.
“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” –Jesus
SOURCES:
Bart D. Ehrman, “The Myths of Jesus,” Newsweek 17 Dec. 2012: 26-28.
As I write this, the first major snow of the season is falling in southeast Michigan. Christmas songs are playing on my tablet. There is a pot of homemade soup simmering on the stove. Calder is on his cat tree and playing with the toy that hangs on a string from the top. I’m thinking I will build a fire in the fireplace and start decorating the house for Christmas. It’s a day I’m feeling blessed.
