Tag Archives: Jesus

PCS

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Sand blowing on the Kelso Dunes, California.

Sand blowing on the Kelso Dunes, California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

PCS

“Permanent Change of Station” or PCS is what we called it in the military when we were assigned to a new location.  “Temporary Duty Assignment” or TDY is what we called it when we were only to be there for days or a few months.  When TDY I sometimes stayed in a tent, an old WWII barracks and even a spare bunk in the bottom of a ship.  We learned to ‘make do’ because it was just for a little while and then we would be back home.  Home.  That was where our family, friends, regular meals, car and all the things that made life more fulfilling were.

Being in war games out in the Mojave Desert many years ago, living out of a duffle bag at the end of my cot, I was thankful not to have too many things to try to keep up with because there wasn’t room for them. They would have gotten in the way of my job and besides all that the desert wasn’t my home assignment.

Christmas is about a permanent, PCS assignment.  This world is a temporary, TDY assignment.  Things didn’t start out that way.  God set up the Garden of Eden to be a permanent place but then we messed that up.  From that day to this our world has become a TDY assignment.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem to die and change all that.  His death was the price for a PCS assignment out of this world where there would be no pain, suffering, sickness, poverty or death.  For most of us Christmas is not the idealistic painting of a perfect life in a perfect family in a perfect village.  For most of us, the celebrations are merely a pause, or not even that, along what can be a grueling journey of life.  Thanks be to God that the Reason for the Season is that we now have a way out of this temporary assignment.  When Christ returns or our body dies, our trust in Him brings with it orders for a Permanent Change of Station!

Christmas Gifts

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Christmas gifts

Christmas gifts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Christmas Gifts

 

Christmas, the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birthday, falls on December 25th this year!  But I think I started seeing the first hints of Christmas advertising in August.  I knew a woman in Florida who kept her Christmas tree up all year.  Americans’ are expected to spend about $801 per person this Christmas.  This boils down to about $550 for gifts, $100 food and candy, $50 decorations, $30 greeting cards and $20 for flowers.
Why?  Some believe the tradition of gift giving at Christmas goes back to pre-Christian times in Rome and was simply adopted by the early Church.  Wherever it came from it is firmly rooted.  Most of us have memories of gift giving that includes looking at shelves piled high with everything from after-shave to wooden puzzles scratching our head wondering what uncle, aunt, cousin… might like.  Or then there is what has sometimes been called the ‘dirty Santa’ ritual of exchange at Christmas parties.
One of my early Christmas memories growing up in West Virginia was the time I saw an elderly woman carrying a heavy bag of groceries down a snowy sidewalk.  I stopped my car and asked if I could give her a ride.  Carrying her bag to the door of her ram shackle home I saw light coming through the boarded walls and broken glass in the windows.  As I helped her with her things I saw little in her cupboards.  I knew I had to do something.  I couldn’t rest until I found a way to go back and cover her windows and bring more food.  It is a vivid memory because of all the Christmas memories of my childhood it is the happiest.   I did grow up in a loving home with my parents and two brothers but this memory stands out.
Why?  “I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes, I was sick and you stopped to visit, I was in prison and you came to me.” (Matthew 25:35-6). …”Master, what are you talking about?” they respond.  “I’m telling the solemn truth:  Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me – you did it to me.”
Who do you see around you ignored?  Whose birthday is it anyway?

Whew!

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Whew!

Whew! I was soaked with sweat, and around me lay piles of dirt, wood chips, a pry bar, bow saw, shovel, spade, ax, blocks for a fulcrum and… a stump removed from the ground. It took all my effort, a variety of tools, four hours of work and a LOT of energy. When I finished I was exhausted but satisfied.

Last week I wrote about that stump and how it was held by something unseen beneath the surface of the ground and that, after digging down almost a foot and cutting every root in sight, it remained firmly entrenched in the landscape.

Removing it took persistence, patience, rest between attempts and a variety of tools. At last, after digging deeper than I thought I would have to go, using a hand spade, to uncover a large tap root going directly down from the center cutting most of it with a saw and then, putting all my weight on a 6 foot steel pry bar… it broke free!

Like stumps, conflicts and other problems can be deeply rooted. During my span of 25 years serving churches I have witnessed many a conflict in church. Whether the conflict was over theology, programs, buildings or personalities in every case I have seen that all ‘sides’ seemed to possess a portion but not all of the answer. When the conflicts have not been resolved it has been because people could or would not work together.

We are too ready to speak and too slow to listen. We are too convinced we are right and ‘they’ are wrong. In our failure to listen; in our failure to consider that we don’t know it all; we reject the people and the perspective of others without which we will never find the answer to our intractable problem.

In the Church God has given gifts to each of us so that together we become more, much more than the sum of our parts. I kept going back to the tool shed for something else. I kept going back to that stump over several days until it gave way.

Without the strength, gifts, understanding and presence of some of the most unlikely and even the least favored we may never resolve our most difficult problems. Jesus was murdered by those who exclaimed, “Can any good thing come out of Galilee? … Search the Scriptures and they will tell you that no prophet comes out of Galilee.” (John 7) They were sure Jesus was NOT the answer, to their own loss.

We need each other. We need those we think most likely to succeed and we need those who seem least likely to succeed. We need the most gifted among us and we need those who may seem to be the least gifted among us. No one among us has all the answers or all that is needed to find solutions in our world and in our lives. I needed many tools to break that stump free. We need all the gifts God gives us to uproot the problems in our lives.

Stumped

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Stumped

After a morning of chopping, sawing, digging, and prying it is still unmoved!

At first I thought it would be an hour long project. That was before I dug down and looked at what was below the surface.

Let me back up. I cut that tree down over a year ago to make way for planting grapes, blackberries and blueberries. Since then I have repeatedly cut away new growth emerging from an ugly stump barely six inches across. So I decided I would get rid of the thing. How hard could that be?

Before I cut it down this tree did not stand out as different from the others. But on the morning I decided to get rid of its stump I discovered a real difference in this tree just below the surface where no eye had seen. Beneath the surface there were huge roots, nearly as big in diameter as the stump itself stretching in every direction. After cutting each one (with considerable effort) it still would not budge! Obviously, deeper still there are roots holding it in place, tenaciously to the ground in which it once emerged as a tender, young sapling.

This week we learned of yet another mass shooting at a Naval yard in Washington. Other weeks we are faced with healthcare problems or the threat of government shutdowns and war, or a recessionary economy. We struggle with broken homes, wayward children, or a shocking diagnosis from the doctor. The list goes on. How can we be prepared for such a world as this? These problems seem intractable because there is more to them than meets the eye.

I believe the answer is in that tree stump. The word “stumped”, meaning there seems to be no easy solution to a problem, emerged during the days of building our national rail system. As the tracks expanded great trees were encountered. There was no way around removing the stumps but that was easier said than done. The setting of the sun on many days left the workers “stumped” with how to remove them.

Jesus came not as a general, a president or a philanthropist because God knew the solution to a troubled world could not be found in war, politics or finances. Our world is “stumped” because we have not learned to look beneath the surface. When we allow God to probe our hearts and reveal to us our broken human nature which is beneath all our problems we are taking the first steps. Only the God who made us, and who loves us can root out all that keeps our lives and our world broken.