How did this happen?  We can look at an organization like World Vision and say, we can’t do that.  But the reality is it started with one man and what he had.

Stearns in part 5 of his book talks about repairing the hole in our world.  You can look at a story like this and you can look to exampels in the Bible as well.  He does a great job with the feeding of the 5,000.  The disciples see this huge need in front of them and are overwhelmed.  How can they feed so many!  Notice what Jesus asks them to do.  He doesn’t let them off the hook, but he doesn’t ask them to do the impossible either. He asks them how many loaves of bread they have.  He asks them to give it to him. He takes what they give him, what they have, and then with that he multiplies it and does the impossible.  He does the miracle. 

What a powerful example to us.  God only asks that we give what we have.  You’ve probably heard it broken down this way before, but you’re asked to honestly think about your time, your talents, and your treasure.  If we offer these things, might God do something amazing with them? Something we can’t imagine, but God can?

Stearns does a good job in the last section of offering hope.  There’s been hard facts in this book and some very daunting and depressing facts, but he does offer hope.  And the good news is that in this last section he does begin by connecting us to the motor that drives our action.  He does speak about the resurrection and how that changed the disciples, from people cowering in fear to some of the boldest men in the world.  Doesn’t that change us too?  He asks us to think of ourselves in that same light, as postresurrection people.

So that’s good place to close this series.  There’s been a lot of great fodder for discussion in this book.  Let yourself go out from it, thinking of yourself in that way- I’m someone Jesus died and rose for, and the people all over the world are exactly the same.  What is God asking me do for them?

Then you look at the Church of the Suffering Servant.  It’s  a 50 person congregation in West Africa that meets under a large shade tree becuase they have no building.  The people have subsistence style lives.  The members endure sickness, hunger, and war in their country.  Yet they also gather faithfully and listen to sermons and sing about God’s love and his mission for their lives too. 

Imagine what would happen if the Church of the Suffering Servant got a look at the Church of God’s Blessings.  What would they think?  What would their hopes be?  This is how Stearns begins part 4 of his book, A Hole in the Church.

He imagines that if this was to happen, 2 Cor. 8-9 would come to mind.  Words from Paul talking to his churches about their need to care for each other, words like, ” And here is my judgment about what is best for you in this matter. Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. ¹¹ Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. ¹² For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have.  ¹³ Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. ¹⁴ At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality.”

Is this a little convicting?  It’s not that the stuff in the first church is bad, but Stearns continues to push us in terms of thinking about how what God has given us should be shared with our brothers and sisters around the world.  He asks churches to look at their programming and wonder, how much internal ministry do we have compared with external ministry.  He talks about the American Dream and wonders how it’s distorted our perceptions of money, where we feel entitled rather than realizing what we have and get is all a gift entrusted to us by God and for us to steward towards his purposes.  He notes that the average churchgoer today give 2.58% of his income as a tithe.  And what’s interesting is that this number has actually gone down as our wealth has increased.  It was better in the Great Depression… wow!  And then you extend that to churches.  The average American church gives 2% of what it receives to overseas missions and charity.  These can be some heavy thoughts.

And yet, he does offer some contrasting thoughts and hope as well.  He notes that if American churchgoers tithed, our churches would have an additional $168 billion every year.  And remember, with $60 we could look around the world and elminate the most extreme poverty.  It would only take$9 billion to provide clean water.  Only $6 billion to provide primary education.  And can you imagine what the world would say if this all started happening?  We often talk about the Church’s image problem today.  How people see us as hypocritical and negative.  How much would that change if the Church became that which provided the money to end the worst hunger, disease, water, and education problems around the world?

These are certainly encouraging thoughts, and I appreciate Stearn moving the chapter towards this hopeful thought.  Also, he does quote Eph 2:8-10 and note that we are saved by grace for the purpose of good works, which does connect the engine of grace to the output of what we do for our neighbors.  It’s good to see that.  The problem is that he mentiones it but he doesn’t really rest in that.  In one chapter he rails against the inward focus and almost calls out our prayer, worship, etc as empty.  Yes, we cannot be completely inwardly focused, becasue that can become empty, but he needs to be careful, because when you say these things, you can start to forget that it is worship, Bible study, prayer, and those inward ministries that are so vital to build people up in God’s grace and forgiveness so that they really can move outward.  This is often the temptation.  To motivate wholly by the law rather than by motivating with grace.  And that’s again my caution in this book.

So there continue to be some really good thoughts in this and by all means we need to let the law he reveals work on our hearts, but as we do so, we also need to run to God’s grace and find both forgiveness and motivation.

Watching any large building being put together is probably close enough.  It’s such an amazing thing to see in process.  This morning as I was walking back from chapel I saw two cranes lifting up a huge truss for our new santuary and it got me to thinking.  There were so many people involved.  There were the men operating the cranes.  There were men standing on beams bring the truss to rest  There were guys with welders and bolts ready to go.  There were the men orchestrating the whole thing from the ground.  And then you can think of the people who designed it all, who made the beams, and even delivered them.  There are so many people involved in building a church.

Of course, this isn’t just true of a church building.  We’re used to talking about the Church as people and that’s true, but then it  makes us consider some important questions.  How are we part of the process of building the Church?  How should we be working together with other members to keep building the Church?  And by that, we don’t mean simply getting people into the building to join, but building up people in the faith and extending the Church into all the world, whether it has to do with a physical building or not.  

There are so many people involved and we need to work together.  We should be aware of what other Christians are doing, how they’re building, and think about how we can partner with them, how we can be part of the process.  You don’t worship in isolation, and we don’t reach out in isolation either.  We all need to be building together.

For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.  ¹⁰ By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. (1 Cor. 3:9-10)

It’s been a while since I did a post in the series on the book “Hole in the Gospel”, but I thought I’d pick it back up.  I’ll admit that it was a little hard to get motivated sometimes to tell you about this chapter.  It was a hard chapter to read.  It’s the kind where piece after piece is added to what seems like some an enormous mountain describing poverty.

Sometimes it was numbing statistics.  Each day 26,500 children die from preventable causes.  Yet that just seems like a number right?  The author of the book imagined it as if 100 jumbo jets went down in flames every day.  We’d react to that right?  No cost would be too great right?  These deaths are preventable.  Sometimes the statistics were challenging.  in 1800 the gap between the wealthy and poor was 4-1.  Today, it’s 75-1.  Wow, you realize where we as Americans sit on that spectrum. 

But he didn’t just give statistics.  Stearns realizes that oftentimes stats overwhelm and people turn them off. He talked about individuals and how they experienced these things and he talked about the web of problems that cause it all.  So often we sit in judgment, with the idea that “poverty” is caused on some level by the laziness of those individuals.  But most of the time as he put it, the lazy in poor countries are already dead.  It’s those who work the hardest that are surviving, though often barely.  But they live in a system with so many interconnected problems.  They deal with lack of food and clean water.  This in turn takes up all their time to find even minimal amounts.  Malnutrition, disease from dirty water, and sickness in turn sap energy and strength.  In many countries they also deal with war and illiteracy and injustice that holds people down no matter how hard they work.  Answers to poverty must keep all these factors in mind. 

Impossible right.  Too big right?

No.  While we will never completely cure poverty, this Jesus tells us, we can make progress.  Because of wholistic efforts started by government agencies, churches, and individuals, today statistics can show improvement as well.  Life expectancy in developing nations has gone from 46 years to 66.1.  Preventable child deaths have fallen 50%.  The percentage of the world’s population classified as hungry has been reduced from 33 to 18%. Polio has basically been eradicated from the world.  And the resources to do more are there.  I had trouble finding the exact number but Americans alone spend a couple hundred billion dollars on Christmas every year.  With just $65 billion dollars more a year one billion people could be lifted up out of extreme poverty. 

But the most important thing to remember is that it’s not just about money.  This has to be about we as Christians turning to God, repenting of what we’ve done or not done that’s part of the problem, and then praying.  Really, truly praying to God for those in poverty.  And praying that God would open our eyes to ways we can be part of his light shining forth to bring some healing to this world. We can say we believe in prayer, but here is a real opportunity to trust it.

This is again one of those areas of history where there is much tradition and probably not complete certainty.  New Years celebrations themselves go back thousand of years with the ancient Babylonians who celebrated the New Year in March with some pagan festivals and very racous activities.  The Romans moved the New Year  and while many emperors tinkered with it, it finally did settle onto what we today call January 1st.  This month is actually named in recognition of the Roman god, Janus, who had two faces, one looking to the past, and the other toward the future.  It is said that Julius Caesar made New Years resolutions to honor Janus.  We know that this tradition became popular in Roman times with most focusing on some kind of moral betterment.

As Christian influence rose within the Roman Empire, there was a pushback against New Years celebrations, mostly because of the pagan and immoral activity associated with the revelry around the day.  The Church tried to focus people toward other celebrations such as the Feast of the Circumcision.  Of course, celebration of the New Year and resolutions never completely went away and the Church began to adopt and adapt some of these practices as well. By the 18th century many churches tried to influence their members to skip revelry but to do some real reflection on the past year and make resolutions toward improvement in the New Year. Thus resolutions rose in favor again.

There is certainly something good in the idea of a New Years Resolution.  Thinking about what God has done with you in the last year and also reflecting on places where you have not lived out your faith.  Thinking about places you’d like to grow in the year to come.  I’d encourage such reflection to focus on God’s Word, something like 2 Cor. 5:

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. ¹⁵ And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.  ¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

We are indeed a New Creation, every day, not just at the beginning of the New Year.  And this is all a work of Christ!  Indeed, the power to effect change in our life will come from him as well.  So yes, you can use little tricks to help keep yourself accountable, but remember to rest on the Lord’s strength.  Be in the Word.  Be in prayer.  And let your resolutions reflect Christ and as this text says, the ministry of reconciliation.

Listen and watch.  Take some time to feel that joy right now.

Take a moment and pray, thanking God, talking to him in a very real way about how Christmas has hit you this season.  What has God been trying to do with you this year as he gathers your life around his salvation story in Jesus?

And of course, part of the fun with Christmas songs of old is to find out the story behind them.  This is probably the best telling of it that I could find, giving some real insight into both Handel and his composition of ,”Messiah”.  Oh, and one sidenote, a lot of people ask about the standing for the Hallelujay Chorus.  As best I could tell from my research we do not actually know that King George came and stood for the chorus because he was moved to recognize the King of Kings.  This is certaily a possiblity for the origin of the practice, but this isn’t first written down until years after the piece was first played in England.

God’s blessings on your Christmas season!

We certainly have in our minds the way God should do things.  How he should do things in our lives and how he should do things in the world at large.  But so often, as he works things out, it’s not at all what we would have planned.

This is also true of Christmas.  You’ve probably heard people highlight this before- who would have imagined that God would choose to save the world by becoming man, a baby, and such a humble arrival at that. And yet, when Jesus was in the manger, it became a throne.  He was attended by lowly shepherds, but also by wise men, powerful men from the East.  No one would make room for him in a house, but angels from the throneroom of heaven made their way to earth to sing his praise.

God does things his way, not our way.  Some of it seems like utter contradiction, but with God it all comes together in such a beautiful way.  Philippians 2 points that out, “Jesus made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant…. he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross!  Therefore God exalted him to the highest place…. ”

Notice the “therefore”.  Death on a cross is not what our minds would have naturally linked with exaltation to a throne.  But in God’s mind, it comes together perfectly for our salvation.  Jesus is exalted becasue of what he did on the cross.  And it begins before passion week.  God brings these tensions and seeming contradictions to bear all throughout his salvation history.  He raises up the young, the weak, those not considered powerful in the world, and he makes precisely such things into his means of salvation.

And so this week, as you consider the birth or our Lord, as you think about the tensions and the strange circumstances of his birth, consider also how God uses tensions and contradictions in your own life to work out his will.  As the song says, “That dirty manger is my heart, too I’ll make it a royal throne for You”.  Our hearts may not appear fit for a king, but our king says he wants them anyway.  Praise God!

This

Imagine it again…

Imagine being there that night as Mary or Joseph, sitting there and pondering the God that you worshipped, now somehow in front of you in the form of a tiny baby that you just gave birth to.  If you’ve ever been part of a birth you know how amazing every baby is, but imagine that night.  Looknig at those hands and feet.  Taking in the face.  Trying to figure out how this can be your child and also your Lord.

Imagine being one of the shepherds who came to see this.  They’d been visited by the angels and told us a Savior was being born, but that he’d be found in a manger.  And they were supposed to be the honored guests to attend him.  Can you imagine the mystery of a night filled with angels and their powerful words and then peering in at a tiny infant wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

Imagine being the angels.  It’s probably hard to get inside their heads, but you have to imagine this was all a little awe inspiring for them too.  To see Jesus, the Son of God, one they worshipped in heaven now down on earth, in the form of a child. 

Imagine it afresh again for a few moments as you ponder these words, as you listen to the music.  Let the mystery and the miracle capture you.  Let your imagination wrap itself around what God did in the incarnation.  He was Immanuel.  God with us.

This is a pretty impressive though isn’t it.  To think that from the beginning of time God had a plan for sin. To think that it would mean sending his own son to earth.  To take on flesh (God become flesh- amazing!)  To think that the plan wasn’t just to incarnate on earth, but for his son to suffer and die on earth.

And so Christmas Day is a day that forever changes things.  It’s a day that looks back, that calls on people to glory in a God that is so powerful that he has perfectly controlled history to bring things together in this moment so that he could come to earth.  It’s a moment that celebrates that God took the risk of putting himself into flesh, and not as a mighty warrior or king, but in the flesh of a tiny baby, laid in a manger.

And Christmas Day is a day that looks forward.  It looks forward to the purpose of Jesus’ life, which was his death.  It’s a day that looks forward, knowing that his life and death would give us a chance for new life.

And I love love that this song just celebrates that.  The title , “I celebrate the Day” and the last line is perfect

“And I, I celebrate the day
That You were born to die”

That is what we should be doing in this season and on Christmas.  We should be celebrating.  We should feel it and sing it, and shout it, and let it really shine forth on that day, that we have something incredible.  We should truly be caught up in the joy of the season which is the Christ child and his purpose.

The song, While You Were Sleeping, is a great song by Casting Crowns for this time of year.  I love that it captures the importance of Advent as a season that reflects on the first coming of Jesus Christ, the first advent in Bethlehem, but it also brings us to today, asking the question, “Are we ready for Jesus Christ to come again?”

Think of what did happen while most people in Bethlehem were sleeping that night.  The world changed, God came to earth as a child, but how many people noticed?  There were certainly signs and the shepherds seemed to get the idea.  But most of the people were so wrapped up in what was going on with the census, that they probably didn’t notice.  The night of Jesus’ birth was a silent night.

Then the song takes us to Jerusalem.  Jerusalem was abuzz with the events of Jesus, but when he died on the cross that Good Friday, most probably returned to their homes, to their families, and focused on the Passover.  There were certainly signs.  Jesus’ death got people’s attention, there was darkness, the Temple curtain was torn!  But  most were so preoccupied by other things that they went back to sleep that night considering it again a silent night.

And then the song asks us, this United States of America, are we watching for our king?  Are we going to focus on Jesus or are we so busy that we will ignore him and his desires for our lives that we too will pass each night, treating it as a silent night, ignoring the call to watch for the coming of the King.

A great song to start our Advent reflections!