What do you do when the glory fades?

          For some reason I identify with the shepherds at Christmastime. I’ve never really been around sheep that I know of and actually the thought of it kind of gives me the creeps. Yet, every Christmas I can envision myself sitting out on the hillside watching the flock.

          My favorite part of the story is when the angles show up. There seems to be some controversy about whether they were singing or just saying (I prefer to believe they were singing with guitars and drums) but one way or the other they were letting the shepherds know about the Christ child.

          The saddest part of the story is when the angels leave. What a letdown! The angelic host just up and leaves. Is that the story of my life or what? I remember more than a few times saying, “Yep, that was the glory of God. Where did it go?”

          The answer comes by trusting the story. The Story can always be trusted to lead us to truth. The glory left so the shepherds would go find the next glory! Had they not been left “glory-less” in the fields, they would never have made the trip to Bethlehem. They would have missed Jesus!

          We all have a tendency to live our lives based on “past-glory.” The Church is especially vulnerable to reaching backwards for the “glory days.” We are afraid if we let go of the glory days of the past, the glory will be gone forever. Nothing could be further from the truth. When the glory fades, it’s not that God wasn’t in the past glory or that He’s mad at you and took it away. It’s that He has even better glory in store at the next stop. The Israelites understood this concept. They moved the tabernacle all over the desert following the glory. They took “church” to where God was. They didn’t expect God to just show up wherever they pitched their tents. The point was not geography…the point was glory.

          Unfortunately, all of us are a little like Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration. We are inclined to build monuments to past glory instead of building momentum to get to the next glory. We could learn a great lesson this Christmas. Follow the glory. Move, as Paul says, “from glory to glory.” There is a present waiting for each of us this Advent season…the glory of God is coming…and I’m going to follow it when it does.

Radicalized Christians

          If you pay attention at all to what’s going on in the world, you have undoubtedly heard the word “radicalized.” Here in the West, and particularly in the United States, we generally hear that word coupled with another, you know, a “radicalized Muslim.” Of course, that term is usually meant to be derogatory, meaning one who has adopted a radical political position which might lead to something as extreme as terrorism. Like it or not, that’s the perception and as someone once said, “Perception is reality.”

          The truth is, being radical doesn’t necessarily mean being something bad. As a matter of fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say something radical in and of itself…what the world needs now is a bunch of radicalized Christians. Now before some of you stop reading let me tell you what that doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean a guy standing in front of an American flag in a white shirt and skinny black tie who carries a forty-pound Bible in one hand and an AK-47 in the other. I actually saw a picture like that on Facebook last week. It made me a little weak-kneed.

          No, what I believe we need are some radicalized Christians who are radical lovers, radical healers and radical neighbors. When Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all you heart, mind, soul and strength,” He was talking about radical love. When He said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” He was talking about radical neighboring. When He reached out and touched outcast lepers and made them well, He was practicing radical healing. Jesus was clearly a radical and when He called us to follow, I believe He was calling us to a radicalized lifestyle.

          Most Christians I know don’t rock the boat much. They’re not very radical. That makes me sad and if God can be sad, I think it makes Him sad too. I know a lot of folks who prefer the middle of the road. Jesus preferred the margins. He ministered to marginal people (prostitutes, tax-collectors and zealots) in marginal ways (coming over for lunch, keeping them from being stoned, and accepting them into His inner circle). That classified as a bona fide radical and eventually got Him killed.

          I’m O.K. with Jesus being a radical and I’m also O.K. with being radicalized by knowing and following Him too. I'm pretty sure that being a Jesus radical has landed me on a Satan’s watch list, maybe even his hit list. I’m O.K. with that too ‘cause that’s just how us radicals roll!

The Christmas I Got Everything I Wanted

As a young child I grew up in Western New York. My father, a pastor, had gone there when I was four years old to start a new church. In addition to pastoring the church, he worked full-time at Montgomery Wards.

One of my fondest memories as a young child was when dad would bring home the new Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog each fall. The employees always got it early and I would spend hours and hours looking through the colorful pages, dreaming of what it would be like to receive such wonderful gifts. Dad’s income was meager to say the least and trendy toys and stylish clothes were outside the realm of possibility.

Our gifts usually consisted of things returned to the store because there was a missing part or some kind of damage. Mom would fix clothing that was missing a button or had a jammed zipper and give it to us for Christmas. Both mom and dad, raised in the hills of Kentucky in the years following the Great Depression were proud to give us our store bought gifts, even if they were slightly less than perfect.

When the Christmas catalog came out in the fall of 1963, when I was eight years old, something caught my eye each time a opened the “dream book”…an electric model train. The catalog had a picture of the train set assembled with the plastic mountains and trees situated on a green piece of plywood with smoke coming out of the locomotive’s smoke stack as it rounded the curve in the tracks. In the background a father and son had their hands on the transformer controlling the speed of the train. That was what I wanted for Christmas. That’s all I wanted.  I didn’t care if I got anything else or not…I just wanted that train.

Looking back on it now, I think what I really wanted was for my dad to help me put it together, stay with me and play with it and be like the father and son in the picture. I didn’t understand that then…I just knew I wanted that train.

When Christmas day came, there was only one gift for me. It was a big square box. When I ripped off the wrapping paper I still could not tell what the plain brown cardboard box contained. Dad helped me cut the tape which sealed the box closed. As we opened the box I could see each of the railroad cars, the miniature cardboard freight boxes, the plastic trees and telephone poles and even a bottle of liquid smoke to make the locomotive smoke like the one in the picture. My dream had come true.

I have no idea how dad afforded the train set. Perhaps it was missing something or had been returned. At eight years old I didn’t know to ask and I’m glad I didn’t. Dad was so proud to be able to give me what I wanted. He spent most of Christmas Day with me and we set up the train set and ran it all day long. That’s the last day dad ever spent with me and my train, but it is still one of my prized positions, 54 years later. Every once in a while, I still get it out and set it up. It still runs. Dad is gone now. This will be yet another Christmas without him. Maybe I’ll set up the train and remember the day when I got all I wanted for Christmas.