Christian Living

Celebrating Christmas is a skill. I’m not particularly good at this craft, but I have at least figured out that you must handle the holidays with a measure of prowess. Just letting Christmas happen to you is a recipe for trouble. Like sailing a ship, Christmas is an opportunity requiring keen attention at the helm.

Every year, it seems, I gain a lesson in what not to do and resolve to do things a little better the next time around. I do not pretend to offer anything like a comprehensive word on the subject here, nor to speak with authority. But after many tries at it, a few reflections may at least stimulate thought as we reflect back on this past season and look to the future.

The first skill in navigating Christmas well is to renounce idealism.

This is harder for some than for others; but it is vital never to permit tradition or fantasy to overwhelm reality. Fulfilling traditions and meeting expectations is not evil; but unrestrained dreams can quickly morph into vampire-like nemeses that suck the joy from our souls. Have a long talk with your head (rather than your heart) at the outset of the holiday season: “Some preparations will fail. Unforeseen complications will arise. Some things will not go well. And all of that is okay.” Do not expect to hit a home run every Christmas; hitting a single now and then is acceptable. Moderate expectations can brighten the season considerably.

Like almost all children, I loved Christmas. Being brought up in a religious (but non-evangelical home), I understood the meaning of the holiday from as far back as I could remember. We always went to church every Sunday and would not think of missing church on Christmas.

Part of our Christmas décor included setting up a small Christmas crèche, complete with a light that fit into a “star” slot above the stable. Although I was led to believe in Santa Claus, the religious nature of the holiday was always front and center. My mom sent only Christmas cards with manger scenes, and we never bought Christmas albums that did not have at least some faith-based carols.

When I was very young, my sister and I would go out with my parents to purchase a live Christmas tree about a week before Christmas. We would decorate it with ornaments, tinsel, and those old-fashioned colored bulbs. One year, a neighbor moved and left us a silver tree. We tried it one year, but it seemed so cold. We returned to purchasing live trees, but eventually decided to buy an artificial green tree.

Read the series so far.

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

One of the greatest difficulties for believers when they are praying is perspective. By this I have in mind particularly the perspective of time. God’s time-table is stretched out and often overruns the short span of our brief lives. Like the stride of a giant overtakes the scurrying of an ant, it can appear that God is hardly “in” our situation, because He has the vista of the whole future in front of Him. As Longfellow put it, “the mills of God grind slowly!”

Most of us struggle through life snatching only glimpses of the outworking of God’s plan. We expect this, for we are instructed to walk by faith and not by sight. So we trust that the plan is truly coming together. Indeed, this part of the “Lord’s Prayer” teaches us that anticipation plays a large part in daily prayers. We are to anticipate the culmination of present realities—as harsh as they so often are—foreseeing an era when God’s perfect shall indeed be done on earth as it is right now in heaven.

Years ago when our kids were very young, we lived in South Florida. Even though I hadn’t grown up with an annual white Christmas (snow in our part of Tennessee was a pretty rare event) I found it very difficult to get into the Christmas spirit when it was 75 degrees outside. You can only turn the air conditioning down so far, and there’s just something wrong with Christmas lights strung on palm trees.

Read the series so far.

In the last post I cited what is often called “The Lord’s Prayer.” It would be good to have a brief exposition of it. Let us begin by dividing it up (Matt. 6:9-13):

“Pray, then, in this way…”

Introduction and First Petition: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come
Second Petition: Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.
Third Petition: Give us this day our daily bread.
Fourth Petition: And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Fifth Petition: And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Doxology: For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

As a matter of fact, and as most of you know, this isn’t an actual prayer to be prayed (although it can be put to that use), but a model or outline of how to pray. Since it comes from the One who hears the prayers we send up, this little outline is full of interest.

(The series so far)

In the last book he wrote, C.S. Lewis made this observation:

To confess our sins before God is certainly to tell Him what He knows much better than we. And also, any petition is a kind of telling. If it does not strictly exclude the principle that God knows our need, it at least seems to elicit His attention. Some traditional formulae make that implication very clear: “Hear us, good Lord” – … As if, though God does not need to be informed, He does need, and even rather frequently, to be reminded. But we cannot really believe that degrees of attention, and therefore of inattention, and therefore of something like forgetfulness, exist in the Divine mind. I assume that only God’s attention keeps me (or anything else) in existence at all.” (C. S. Lewis, Letters To Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, 20.)

The question being posed by Lewis is the seeming contradiction between God’s attribute of omniscience, His knowledge of all conceivable things, and our praying to Him. After all, why do we have to inform God of what He already knows? I think this question rears its head often in Christians’ minds. Why “go through the motions?” What is God up to?