Christmas is Different This Time

My family has always loved Christmas. Growing up, all my mom's extended family would come together and spend the night at our house. I'll never forget when the heat went out and 12 of us spent Christmas Eve night sleeping around the fireplace. It's always

What gets lost in Christmas sometimes is that it's hard to point kids and teenagers towards Jesus. We get caught up in the gift giving and moving from house to house to see family. None of those things are inherently wrong, but I'm sure you've all thought one way or another about how to slow down Christmas and focus on what's important.

I now have kids, and Anna and I are starting to discuss what kind of family traditions we want to start. What do we want to do? How do we want to highlight the true meaning of Christmas? How do we make it less about gifts and more about Jesus?  

With that said, here are some ideas we've been talking about when it comes to making Christmas different for our families.

• Spend time together-Wake up Christmas morning and eat breakfast, then read the birth story in Matthew 2 and Luke 2 before opening gifts.
• Spend time together serving-Serve somewhere the week before. The Salvation Army and Helping Hands food pantry usually have trouble finding people to serve the week of Christmas. 
• Spend less-Give more gifts like letters, pictures, and handmade items.
• Give More-Find a organization that is doing something amazing and give to them. The Orchard will have a mission offering Christmas Eve night for their mission partner in Ecuador, Foundation Elohim. Because of our adoption and association with Ethiopia, we will probably also choose www.bringlove.in

These are just a few things we are doing this year. We'll spend plenty of time opening gifts, eating too much, and traveling from family to family to see grandparents and aunts and uncles, but we'll also look at Christmas as a time to point to the miracle of Jesus. 

What are you doing differently for Christmas this year?

The Zambia Project

The Zambia Project is a book I first learned of a year ago. It's the story of a former youth pastor who now works at a christian school in suburban Chicago called Wheaton Academy. Over the past decade, students at Wheaton Academy have raised money to support the small region Kakolo in Zambia. The region has been devastated by AIDS, and the average life expectancy is 37 years old. It has been an incredible journey where high school students have stepped up and raised over $100,000 a year consistently.

It's a fascinating read, but here's my favorite quote from the book:

I have come to believe with all of my heart that the best leadership development is accomplished when growing leaders actually have to lead something. I know that sounds far too simplistic, but my experience has taught me with high school and college students that unless they feel the weight of being in charge of something significant they will think they can lead something, but may never move to that place where they know they can lead something.

You see that? Often when we give people large chunks of responsibility, instead of shying away or backing down, they accomplish the thing they set out to do. Even teenagers.

This I think is the challenge for all of us. Parents, teachers, youth leaders, small group leaders. We all have a responsibility to our teenagers to find areas where they can significantly contribute to God's work in the world and give them the keys. In order for great things to happen, freedom must exist. And for true freedom to exist, we have to have the freedom to fail as well. My hope is our teenagers will be ones who go to college and become adults who know God can do things in the world through them because they've already seen it happen. They've lived it. They've known it.

A New Hope

Next Wednesday C27 starts our teaching series on Christmas, called A New Hope. Here's a couple highlights of what we'll be talking about.

• The arrival of the Messiah was supposed to be great. It was, but it was in an entirely unexpected way. The people expected the arrival to be in a kingdom with power. It was in a barn with humility.
• We usually expect Christmas to be great, but if we're not careful, we can expect it to be great for the wrong reasons. 
• What if we made Christmas great in an entirely different way? What if we spent less, gave more, and spent more time loving people? For ideas check out the Advent Conspiracy.
• The wise men were powerful respected men, and they walked a great distance to see Jesus. The shepherds were poor, the opposite of powerful, but they also got to see Jesus. Jesus is for all of us, no matter what our background.

Every year, I get excited about talking about Christmas with our students. Maybe all of us can work together this Christmas to uphold that Jesus is for all of us. Your social status doesn't matter. Your background doesn't matter. Your income, nationality, or political party doesn't qualify you or disqualify you. Jesus is for us all.

This is hope we can all get behind. 

What are some ways can you highlight Christmas in a different light this year with your friends and family?

Mighty God, who created the waters
but also the grip of an infant son
In some ways so visible and clear
In some ways shrouded in mystery
Unknowable, yet approachable,
Invisible, yet  breathable,
Save me from myself

Solitude and the Funk

My daughter came home in August. My son was born in December. I had zero kids in my house in July, and now I have two that are in diapers. It was a shock to the system. This is no surprise to anyone, including me.

Of course I love my kids, but the reason it was such a shock I think is because there are certain things that keep me sane that I couldn't do anymore. Specifically, finding time to read and exercise. I used to get up early in the morning and read scripture, read other books, and run. It was part of my routine for the longest time. Then all of a sudden I was getting up at the same time(after going to bed much later and getting up two or three times in between) with no break for me. I woke up, feet hitting the ground getting my kids ready for the day.

I still love that time in the mornings with them, but I went crazy for a bit because I couldn't find time to tap into the things that give me life. You can ask my wife, I was in a definite funk.

As the new normal started to dawn on me, and as I'm still trying to find time to read and run, I've come across some passages recently.

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed."-Mark 1:35

This story is one of many where Jesus takes a break from his public ministry to be by himself. Even Jesus, the Savior of the World, had to get away every once in a while. I've always loved this passage because I can relate to Jesus in this way. I crave solitude. I love to be up early, just me and God, me and the quiet. My life is better when I can tap into these moments. As I began to open the pages more, I read passages of Jesus going to a garden to pray, getting in a boat with his best friends to escape crowds, and all other cool things Jesus does to disconnect.

And I envied that.

But as the funk slowly lifted from my life, it dawned on me that I was reading those passages with an agenda. I loved those verses because it's what I wanted to do at that present moment. When in reality that's not what any of the stories are about. The story isn't about Jesus getting away to pray. It's about him healing a leper five verses later. The story isn't about Jesus getting onto a boat with his friends. It's about him feeding 5,000 people. The story isn't about Jesus going to a garden to pray. It's about him going to the cross for humanity. Jesus always disconnected so when he was around people he could FULLY ENGAGE with them.

And that's the damage the funk caused in my life. I no longer cared about people like I said I did. I was a pastor, youth worker, who didn't really care about people anymore. I cared about my family, but really more than anything I cared about my reading schedule and my continually slowing mile time.

So I still crave that solitude. I'm still trying to figure out how I can exercise and read on a regular basis. Not because it's an end. Because when I do it allows me to engage people and be present with them. You see, my story is not about me. It's about God redeeming humanity. I've been blessed to see that unfold over the course of my life, and I'm so excited about who's next. This is how I know the funk is gone.

Resurrection is coming

Today, The Orchard sponsored the city's Easter Egg Hunt. 20,000 easter eggs get sucked up in about two and a half minutes. Neither of those numbers is an exaggeration. This year is my fifth year to be involved with it, and every year I'm amazed at the mad scramble for eggs. It's frenzied and chaotic and swift. For four years, I laughed at it all. This year was different.

This year, MY daughter was there. She was going to be searching for eggs. She was going to be in the midst of the frenzied chaos and hundreds of other kids. I wasn't as amused this year. I was a little scared for her. Turns out I had little to be scared about. She apparently picked up one egg, attempted to open it, and got bored.

As I was coming home today, it occurred to me I had zero kids at last years hunt. We had met Lucy, flown to see her, and flew back to Tupelo to pretend like life was normal. Although last year I did celebrate Easter, there was a tinge of sadness every time I thought about what we were missing. It was a difficult day. 

When my daughter plunged into the fray, I knew everything was worth it. If you asked me to do it all over again, I would gladly suffer through the financial uncertainty, the endless hoop jumping, the highs and lows. I'd do it all again tomorrow, because having my family together is worth it. I have a daughter. I have a son. 

God looked down at our need, saw that it was greater than us, and redeemed us. He voluntarily put himself through hell so that we wouldn't have to. I can't imagine what Christ went through, but I will celebrate differently, because when that's your child, you just do whatever it takes. 

God looked at us and did whatever it took so we could be called his children. 

Easter is coming tomorrow. Easter is the celebration of hope bursting onto the most hopeless of situations. Easter is the celebration of light consuming darkness. Easter is the celebration of resurrection. It is the celebration of God stopping at nothing to make sure his children belong to him. We are his children now, and nothing can change that. 

Get ready for tomorrow, resurrection is coming.

Six Pairs of Shorts

July in Mississippi is relentless. The heat has been melting everything since May. The promise of a low humidity 80 degree day in September creates Pavlovian drool in most residents. The heat seems endless. There's two more months of sweat and breathable moisture.
I love the summer, can't get enough of the July heat. Every summer is memorable for me, and last year was no different. One evening I was sitting on my toilet, surfing the internet for new board shorts. I was vocalizing to my wife that I just NEEDED a new pair. The ones I had were three years old. The black had faded to almost a gray color. They were old. I didn't like them as much. I got tired of going to the lake consecutive days and having to wear the same pair. If I was going to go skiing two straight days I needed different pairs of swim attire. I wanted a new pair, yes. But if I thought about it, I NEEDED a new pair.
I put off purchasing any because I never make impulse decisions on the toilet. I may do my thinking there, but I'll never use the throne as a place for final judgement. As I entered the living room, I started folding clothes.
Just then, a neighbor kid came walking in. I'll call him Sam. Sam cuts our grass occasionally. We pay him for it because he needs some walking around money. Sam usually is hungry, so we feed him. He usually is hot, so we often ask him inside. As Sam is in our house talking to us, I notice he has on a pair of jeans.
No teenager wears jeans in Mississippi in the summer. It's simply not done. But he was. When I asked about why he was wearing jeans, he told me he simply didn't own a pair of shorts. Not one. He only had the one pair of jeans.

Sam, sweating in my living room talking about how he didn't own a pair of shorts.
Me, complaining about needing some more shorts while I fold six pairs in front of him.

Now, this is obviously the point in the story where I talk about how guilty I felt. Honestly, I didn't feel any guilt. I just felt like someone gave me a nice big bowl of perspective. Language is a funny thing, and when we live in America we start talking about things we need. It turns out most of those things aren't needed at all. I need water and food. I need sleep. What I don't need is a seventh pair of shorts to wear to the lake just so I'll look cool.
Since that summer, I've tried to correct myself when I start thinking I need something. I want it, yes. It's not a sin to have it, but I don't really need it.

I just want it.