It's Christmas time in the city...

Which means of course, that I have been extremely busy since the last time I posted. From camping out at Best Buy on Thanksgiving for 9 hours, to finishing(almost) the nursery, to selling loads of garbage on eBay (shameless plug), to Christmas shopping, to gathering and planning and drinking coffee and trying to get people to understand exactly what is going on inside my head, I really haven't had much time to get on here and actually put down my thoughts. Seems more and more lately I've had an outlet to express what God's been teaching and showing me, even if I'm not very good at explaining it in a way people can understand.

Which brings me to, I guess, a good topic for this post. I've discovered lately the importance of "context". Whenever I hear that word I think back to standardized tests in grade school that would always ask questions based on the context of a certain passage. The questions would have multiple choice answers, all of which could possibly be right, depending on the context of the passage. So you really couldn't grasp the meaning unless you knew the context.

Example: I am a huge fan of the show LOST. At the beginning of this season, we learned that the survivors we spent all last season learning about were not the only survivors of the plane crash on the island. Apparently there were several people from the tail section of the plane on the other side of the island(which is huge) that had no idea anyone else had survived either. Through a series of events they have come to find out there are other survivors, and they journeyed across the island to meet up with the others. There was a tearful reunion on the beach, including a scene between a husband and wife who had been separated. The wife had been saying all along she knew her husband was alive, and she deeply believed God would reunite them. The husband has lost hope that his wife was alive. But then they were reunited on the beach, along with everyone else, and I did need a Kleenex.

So of course, my wife loving the emotion of stories like this, I called her in and rewound the scene and told her she just had to see this. She watched, and simply said, "Oh, that's nice." She wasn't as touched as I was, obviously.

It couldn't have possibly had the same effect on Alisha as it did me, because she hadn't been involved with the show for a year and a half. She didn't know every character's back-story, she hadn't been a part of all the struggles, trials, victories, joy, and tears that I had been a part of. She was experiencing one scene out of the context of the larger story, and as a result, it had a different meaning for her.

So what does this mean? I have been able to apply this simple concept to lots of things recently. Back to what I was saying earlier, I sometimes have a hard time explaining to people my thought processes about things as of late. But I have to understand that they are hearing a few thoughts out of the context of my life and journey. Because they are hearing these thoughts in the context of their own life, it has a different meaning, or no meaning at all, to them. I have to give them food for thought on their own journey and let them come to their own conclusions.

Just yesterday I was having a conversation at Aroma's, and we started talking about being completely relevant and completely Biblical. Someone was commenting that people sometimes may be turned off by the Bible because they think of it as being a bunch of rules telling them what to do and what not to do. Which is not entirely inaccurate, because it certainly has "laws" of things to do and things not to do, but that is a small portion. I began to think, and commented, that people think that because they've heard those things out of context. The church has always been big on telling people the things they should and should not do in order to make heaven. Outside the context of God's story, these seem like rules and regulations made to control someone's life. For those of us who know the whole story, we understand these parts of the Bible, and they have different meaning for us. But for those who don't have the context, it can be somewhat of a turn-off.

And what about Christmas? Many people have heard the Christmas story, seen the TV specials, heard Linus tell it to Charlie Brown, sang the Christmas carols, but how many have heard it in the context of God's story? Think about it. A baby born to a virgin, who is the Son of God, and people come to worship him. Yes, miraculous, but the significance is lost if you don't understand that history had been building to this point ever since the Garden of Eden. The Christmas story didn't start upon a midnight clear in the little town of Bethlehem. It really began centuries before, when God first promised that the woman's offspring would crush the serpent's head(Gen 3:15). It had been prophesied over and over. The Jewish feasts were signs and hope of things to come. They spoke of Messiah, the Savior who would come to save the people. It means something different when you understand this baby was God, born into flesh He formed from the dust of the ground, suckled at the breast He Himself created, born into an imperfect world created in the beginning to be perfect but corrupted by His own creation, yet also fully Man. Obviously there's lots more, because the story doesn't end their either. This God-man chose to die to take the punishment for everything we'd ever do, anything all of his creation would ever do. Then He promised to go prepare a place for us all, and to one day create it all anew, to once again have a perfect creation where corruption would never show its ugly face again. Christmas is about more than presents and Santy Claus, sure, we all know that. But Christmas is about a lot more than just a baby in a manger as well. It's a climax in the human story, which is God's story, the greatest love story, between us and God.

So, in short, let's be aware of context. Let's retell the whole story, and not just bits and pieces. And let's remember, the story did not end with John's Revelation. That was just a preview of the end. The story is still happening, it is still being written, and you and I are a part. We're characters in this grand epic that has been going on for thousands of years. What's your part?

Old Book

Several years ago, when I was an intern at an A/G church, we hired a new pastor and he decided it was time to clean house. Quite literally. Suffice it to say, during a period of about 8 months, my main job was to make things disappear, very quietly. Our church had a small library, which was not used much. I don't think any new books had been added to it in at least 10 years. The pastor decided there were better uses for the room, so I was to quietly donate the contents to Wayland Baptist University. However, as I was preparing to become a minister myself, the pastor told me I was free to keep any books for myself that I liked.

If you know me, I love to read, anything and everything, so I was like a kid in a candy store. I probably kept 15-25 books, including a set of Collier's Bible encyclopedias. I can count the number of those books I've cracked since then on one finger. Maybe 3 fingers.

But the other day, as I was cleaning out the office to make way for the nursery, I decided to open one of the books. It's called "10,000 Religious Quotations" or something like that. All sorts of quotations from thinkers of all different religions, arranged by topic. So, of course, immediately turned to the W's, and looked at "WORSHIP". I began to skim the quotes. All good, but nothing that jumped out at me right away. Then I found this one, which I will share with you now:

"O my Lord, if I worship Thee from fear of Hell, burn me in Hell,
and if I worship Thee from hope of Paradise, exclude me thence;
but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, then withhold not from me thine Eternal Beauty."-Rabia Al-Adawiyya (Muslim saint, 717 to 801 AD)

Wow. That sums up what I've been trying to teach everyone I worship with for the past year and a half. And this coming from a Muslim. Sometimes I think we Christians just don't get it. God isn't a vending machine, he's not a self-help resource, he's not someone we go to to get our current life crisis taken care of.

He should be worshipped for who He is, not for what He can do for us. Of course we should worship God for what he does and has done, but we shouldn't worship God to get the benefits. It's the old "seek the giver, not the gift" thing. Anyway, just wanted to share this quote.