Christmas season ramblings

Ok, so, as usual, this Christmas season has been crazy. I realize that that is true for most people, but for me it is a bit of a job hazard as well. Well, this year has been even more so. On top of the usual bevy of rehearsals for upcoming worship services, extra bulletins, locating advent readers, etc., this year I was asked to sing & speak for no less than 3 events not in my usual realm of responsibility. So, I sang my testimony through Christmas music (an interesting challenge, let me tell you) for an event Saturday morning. Next up was a WMU circle meeting at the retirement home near the church on Monday. I really wanted to give a Christmas lesson that was something different than what you normally hear. Ended up, I taught a lesson on being humble as we are shown in the Christmas story (When visited by the angel Gabriel Mary's response was humble; Zechariah was humbled by being made mute after his lack of belief; finally, the humility of Jesus as we are encouraged to have in Philippians 2). Oh, and we had the first of our Christmas programs Sunday night at church.

Tuesday morning my senior ladies' choir sand their cantata at a memory care facility full of alzheimers patients. I think there were 4 or 5 awake out of the 25 (patients, not singers). However, this is the 2nd concert we have done this year where there was a fight between residents. We have been avoiding our usual mosh-pit inducing music, but, apparently, it is not working. I do want to say the ladies are holding their own in their golden years as both times, a woman let a man have it. I am not sure what that means...

Needless to say, I was looking forward to Tuesday night, which looked to be my only night at home this week. You know, occasionally pregnant women are supposed to rest. Well, I got a call at 4:30 Tuesday from a desperate church member. Their Sunday school class was to have a party at the country club in an hour and a half, and their entertainment had just cancelled. I knew she was desperate because when I said that it was just me and Christian for the night, she told me to bring him along (to the country club!! Has she met my son?) Anyway, being so good at saying no, I ran home, got dressed, tried to find a song or two that I had not already sung for everybody this Christmas season, and ran out the door. Well, after a few moments prep time, Christian and I ran out the door. He did wonderful at dinner (another Christmas miracle!!), and it was time for me to sing. Well, there was another group just down the hall from us that was having a very lively time with much hooping and hollering (Christian said they must be watching football!). Well, about the time I got up to sing, the karaoke started. I did my best to sing over their sound system, but the preacher said he couldn't turn around and look at me because it was the first time he'd heard "O Holy Night" and "Californian Dreaming" together, and he was afraid he was going to lose it. Probably good he didn't, because I would have lost it with him. So, God reminded me of that humility lesson I'd taught earlier this week...

Anyway, all this to say...I don't know. It's just been a funny week.

I think that I shall never see...

Ok, spring has officially arrived, and I received the most wonderful gift. Having bought my home in the fall, I knew I liked the yard and trees. It is a pretty yard, nothing special, but I like it a lot. However, this week I got the most wonderful surprise- I realized those trees in my yard were cherry trees with the most fabulous blossoms on them-like large, puffy clouds in my front yard. Then, when I had about gotten over the cherry trees, I realized that the other tree in my front yard is a dogwood, fixing to bloom. Well, I have wanted a dogwood for several years. Most of my neighbors in johnsonville had them, but for whatever reason, when they cleared my lot, I did not have one. Jamie has planted several over the years, but they need to be planted a particular way, and none of them lived, but now I have one, and it is beautiful! One of the ladies in my senior ladies' choir said, "see, God knew you needed to be here." Too funny!

Coincidentally, the cherry tree I planted in Johnsonville 12 years ago bloomed for the first time this year. Yeah, I got the irony.

Silence

Ok, anyone who knows me knows that I do not do silence, rest, pauses, quiet, or reflection like I need to do. Someone sent the following to me, it appealed to me on a couple of levels, and I thought I would share it with you.

The Sound of Silence
Betsy Childs

I recently attended an elementary school talent show. Among the variety acts were several young pianists; listening to them play brought back memories of sitting through many long piano recitals. I remembered how prone young musicians are to rush their songs. The underlying assumption is that faster is better, and in their haste they plow through slow or meditative portions of a song, failing to give full value to the rests. I remember my piano teacher physically restraining my hand to keep me from hurrying ahead as she audibly counted out the full value of the notes.

It was only as I grew older that I learned not to just read the notes but to hear the music. I came to see that the rests and held notes in the music are every bit as essential to its beauty as the song's progression. What would Schumann's "Traumerei" or a Chopin nocturne be with out their pathos-laden pauses?

You may have noticed that God is not one to rush things. He isn't compelled to fill the silence for the sake of moving things along. Between the Old and New Testament, there were roughly four hundred years during which the people of Israel were without prophecy or revelation. Yet this silence, uncomfortable as it must have been for those believers who lived and died under it, only accentuated the crescendo when the Word became flesh.

Perhaps you are going through a period when it seems as though God has grown silent in your life. Silence tries the soul. Try as we might, we cannot explicate it, and the noise of nothing threatens to drown out faith. But consider for a moment that such a noticeable silence actually testifies that God has not always been silent. The fact that we can recognize an absence in fact bears witness that there has been a Presence.

I don't know anyone who would claim that the rests are their favorite portions of a song. But those silent beats are necessary to accentuate the other notes and allow the music to tell its story. So also in our lives, I believe that we will one day be able to see the value of the silences that give shape to our stories. We can take comfort that silence is hemmed on either side by a song.

Throughout the scriptures, prophets repeatedly cry out, "He who has an ear, let him hear!" We need to learn to listen in the silences as well as in the climaxes, for the silence itself may be what God wants us to hear. The silence will not last forever, and it will make the sound that follows even more glorious.


Betsy Childs is associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

A Long Week

I had to speak in our contemporary service the other day. Cindy had asked me to share my favorite attribute of God. I thought it would be pretty easy. I just had to narrow it down to one. Now one of my favorite passages of scripture is Psalm 19: "The heavens declare the glory of God." I love it because I spend a day thinking about the sky and what it could teach me about God's nature: His purity, sustenance & provision, His cleansing power and forgiveness, His sense of order (yay, OCD me!), His glory, beauty, and artistic nature, HIs brightness, His power and strength, the list goes on...I thought I might talk about how scripture says He delights in us. I thought about how His thoughts are not our own. I was going deep. Then my weekend really began. I apologize for the length of what follows, I will try to make it shorter than it really was, but, as anyone who knows me knows, sometimes I have to tell you how I got there :)

Friday morning I got a call from my husband saying he would be late from work. He knows I never really worry about him at his job unless he is really late, so he called to keep me from worrying. He also told me that another officer had been shot, but he was ok, so if I heard, I was not to worry. Later, he called me to meet him for a late breakfast. He was exhausted and stressed and not quite himself. He told me how he had arrived on scene just after the other officer was shot and how he saw him lying there. He was frustrated and angry and dealing with a myriad of emotions. He went home to sleep and I had to leave for a little while to meet up with the office crew for an event. I got home to realize that Jamie, after working his fifth midnight shift, had not slept. He spent most of the day very restless. By that afternoon we found out that the officer had no brain activity and would not live. I forced Jamie to get out of the house and we went for coffee and a drive. Saturday I made him go for a walk with the family. By Saturday evening he was doing a little better. However, Saturday night we got a call to find out that our very dear friend, mentor, encourager, and cheerleader, John Bendure had passed very suddenly. And we got news that our "other daughter/little sis" might not be able to have the surgery we were waiting on. At 2 am I was exhausted, but I had to force my able-to-sleep-anytime-anywhere husband to go to bed.

It is interesting how burdened you can be for those that you love. I love it when fellowship means that you can laugh and play and share the good times, but God truly creates fellowship for so much more. My heart has hurt this week for so many that I love. My loss is nothing compared to others, my life so blessed, but I still hurt for them. I have prayed so many prayers this week for my friends, for the wife and family of the slain officer, for Jamie and his coworkers as they have gone through so much this week with funeral, memorials, debriefings to check that they are ok. I have wished that I could do more for all of them, but was not in a position to do so.

After a lot of struggle, I finally decided on an attribute of God. It is one of those that I tend to take for granted until times like these. I spoke Sunday night about God's faithfulness and everlasting love, how He is not a god who leaves us to suffer alone. Not only does He suffer with us, He is working at all times for our good. He is with us in our pain. He wants to carry us through it and to use it for His glory. Sometimes we are not faithful to Him and don't see Him in the midst of our suffering, but He is there. He remains faithful, and because of this and a thousand other attributes, we worship Him. The following are a few verses from psalm 33:

Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.
for the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does
The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love...
From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind;
From his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth-
He who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do.
But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him,
On those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
To deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine.
We wait on the Lord; he is our help and shield.
In Him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.
May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in You.
Amen.

I wish it would snow!!

Ok, maybe not this weekend because I am supposed to link up with some friends for a very important trip to VA (although I heard Sunday or Monday may be the day for snow-go figure, it will happen when I don't need it to!) It's like I repel snow or something!! It will fall everywhere but where I am. But, I thought when I moved out of the snow vacuum I have lived in for 12 years and moved closer to the mountains that I might see some. Apparently, I moved to the one place in the area where snow falls all around but not here.

My poor son got dressed in all his snow gear the other day to play in the "snow"-a small dusting on the ground. He got more dirt than snow but thought it was fabulous. I just thought, "Poor boy, I have got to take him somewhere he can see what real snow looks like."

I'm dreaming of a white someday...

christ in the wilderness

I just love this painting. It comes from a series of paintings by Stanley Spencer, a secular artist. I have not seen the whole series. In fact, I have only seen this and another which shows Christ holding a scorpion (a surprisingly serene painting). I find it interesting that, of all the biblical themes he could of chosen as a decidedly secular artist, he chose to paint Christ in the desert. what I think is so interesting about this painting is the way that Christ seems to be being swallowed up, perhaps by temptation, hunger, or frustration? He is reaching out to the Father, something I think we forget he had to do. I think we put Christ on this pedestal like he was never really tempted or hurting. After all, he was God.

This painting reminds me that Christ is familiar with my suffering, whether it be from temptation, or stress, physical pain, or frustration. His answer was to look to the Father. Mine? Too often I try to fix things on my own. I figure if God knew what I was going through He would fix it for me, and if He doesn't, I will. It's hard sometimes to know whether it is God's will to wait something out or to move. I found myself praying the other day like Moses and Joshua did in the OT, "Lord, if you do this, it will bring you glory," and, while it was true, I am unsure of whether God has something in mind which would bring Him even greater glory. Hard call. Hard to be patient. Even laying a fleece is sometimes difficult, like I am trying to force God's hand.

I still like the picture, even if I haven't learned my lesson...

snow day

Ok, so, for a week I have been meaning to write about my trip to Chicago. Maybe I'll get to that in part, but for now I have to say ITS SNOWING!! Well, more like the North Carolina equivalent of snow which means white stuff falling from the sky, sticking (barely) to the grass and melting on the the pavement. This also means no school. Crazy, huh? No, crazy is the way school has been canceled. We got up, and school was on. We got ready to go, and they put high schools on a 2 hour delay, 20 minutes before the tardy bell-so sorry those of you who have left already. Now they have canceled the high schools, and the other schools will get out an hour early. And I though I was random! The snow also means that my concert for the College Parkers, the senior adult socal group here at the church, has been canceled as well. I am both saddened but glad I get a little more time to work on it.

So, my trip to Chicago...A few random thoughts: Not that I was in space per say, but flying over the earth at night is amazing. You can see the cities laid out in grids and patterns of lights-like reverse stars. ..When you are not too far up you can see Christmas lights! Flying on top and in clouds blows my mind...Kind of amazing-I couldn't tell one city from another from that height, yet God sees the individual and knows them...Chicago has a very boxy light grid...Chicago-land of people who never smile(and who look at you crazy if you do). Wish NC had this many ethnic restaurants...Chicago has diversity out the wazoo. Southern Mississippi, not so much (What's the name of the florist? Aiello? I don't even know what kind of name that is, how do you spell it? Everything there has strange names!) You can be related to a group of people and completely not relate to them at all. You can find something amazing in loving them anyway. My world is completely different from the one my grandma and her siblings grew up in. Canning meat? Did he just use the n word? I am the kind of girl who can laugh at a funeral...I both love and hate that I can laugh at a funeral...Even the cute guy from jr high grows up to be a regular person, and when you grow up, you aren't scared to talk to him, particularly if you are wondering if he is gay...mourning is much worse for the one who doesn't believe...Preachers are to be available but not pushy (mental note for the minister inside me...)...It is amazing how ministers can posture and be competitive...How many members do you have?...how long have you been at your church?....What kind of Baptist are you?...good grief!!...Unfortunately, sometimes the statistics are more interesting to a fellow minister than your heart... Brett Favre rocks...Lilly, with the personality of 10 children!...George and Laura make beautiful children...but he is still a knucklehead...I love woodstoves...Potica rocks, got to learn to make that someday...You know Grandieu is getting older when you cook her breakfast...I love my family.