Photo Credit: Sophie Pope

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 8^th
“The Stairway of God”

Genesis 28:16 (NLT) – “Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn’t even aware of it!”

Just before the verse above Jacob had the famous dream often referred to as Jacob’s Ladder.  On page 68 of The Greatest Gift, Ann writes, “Sometimes you’re just the most tired of trying to be strong.  You have these Jacob dreams, and you dream of what might be.  And this is the dream that comes true—that makes all the stressed things come untrue:  the real amazing dream is there are no ladders to climb up, because Christ came down one to get you.”

So much of life seems to be about making something of ourselves, making a name for ourselves, staking our claim, leaving our mark.  Right before this passage in Genesis 28 Jacob had made a bold move in making a name for himself.  He had deceived his own father into giving him a blessing that belonged to his older brother.  Earlier in Genesis he had talked his older brother into giving him his birthright (that’s Bible speak for the lion’s share of his father’s estate) in exchange for a bowl of beans.  Not that everyone else in this little drama was completely innocent: his mother had instigated the trickery of his father and his brother could’ve made his own bowl of beans instead of giving in to Jacob’s extortion.  Can anyone say, “Codependency?”

But still, as Jacob was on the run from his brother’s anger he lay his head on that rock, slept and God extended Himself to Jacob in that dream.  God came to him.  Why?

Why would God honor a liar, a deceiver with His very own presence?  Because that’s who needs a Savior.  Because that’s the Savior I need.Right there in the beginning God demonstrated His desire to rescue all the liars, deceivers, sick, broken, the self-righteous and self-made sinners because our way NEVER works.  Jacob could never have built a ladder to heaven (remember the Tower of Babel?), he could never make himself righteous enough for God no matter how many birthrights he stole, no matter how hard he pretended to be the first-born son.

I could never make myself righteous enough and all of my pretense of being the good first-born never fooled Him.  Just like Jacob, even when I didn’t know I needed one and when I deserved it the least, He extended Himself to me and to you.

But The Ladder He extended to us wasn’t a dream.  He is reality: The Way, The Truth and The Life.  We can stop making a name, we’ve been given one – Beloved.  We can REST in who we are and not rely on what we do.

He’s been coming for us from the beginning.  Every moment is holy.  Every day is Advent.

Photo Credit: Sophie Pope

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 7^th
“God Provides”

Genesis 22: 9 – 14 (NLT)  – “When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice.  At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Yes,’ Abraham replied. ‘Here I am!’ ‘Don’t lay a hand on the boy!’ the angel said. ‘Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.’ Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son.  Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: ‘On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.’”

Yes, God provides.  He always provides just what we need, exactly when we need it.  And right in that moment on Mount Moriah God provided the ram that Abraham and Isaac needed.  One of the things I find so striking about this scene is that it doesn’t appear that Abraham is busy telling God what he needs.  He is faithfully walking out what God has told him to do.  Period.

When I say Abraham is faithfully walking this out, let me be clear…Abraham is not desperately clinging to a predetermined outcome or expectation.  Long before God told Abraham to take Isaac to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him as a burnt offering (Genesis 22:2), God had made him a promise that He would make him a great nation.  God later confirmed that Isaac was the one through whom that great nation would come, not Ishmael.

So on the way to Mount Moriah to follow the instructions to sacrifice Isaac it would have been really easy, and some would argue justifiable, for Abraham to remind God of His promises and demand that He provide a different sacrifice, and to argue a case for why it would not be right to sacrifice Isaac.

But Abraham wasn’t attached to the outcome on that mountain.  He was attached to His God, the One who is Love, and the relationship he had with Him.  Abraham didn’t demand that his son be saved because Abraham and his son were already saved by trusting God.  In fact, Hebrews 11:19 tells us that Abraham knew God was able to raise Isaac from the dead.

When Messiah arrived on the earth as the Babe in the manger, most missed Him because they expected the Conquering King.  When God’s chosen people crucified their own Deliverer it was because He didn’t live up to their expectations.  Instead of clinging to their relationship with God and receiving Who He provided, they rejected Him.

In the Advent that is EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. are you willing to lay down your own expectations and outcomes, even if they seem good and right, and receive the Provision of Grace and trust the results to Love Himself?  Even if it comes wrapped as a Babe?  Even if it never looks like you’d hoped or expected?

Photo Credit: Sophie Pope

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 6^th
“Laugh!”

Genesis 21:6-7 (NLT) – “And Sarah declared, ‘God has brought me laughter.  All who hear about this will laugh with me.  Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse a baby?  I have given Abraham a son in his old age!’”

I love that Sarah laughed when Isaac finally arrived, when the long, dark wait for the promise was over and the gift had finally come.  It had been 25 years since the initial conversation when God had promised to make Abram a nation. Twenty-five years and a lot had transpired since: Abram had relocated with his wife and servants to a land of strangers; he had lied to a king; he had separated from his only other family, Lot; he had rescued Lot and defeated three kings in battle; he had met the mysterious Melchizedek; and he had tried to gain a son on his own terms, through Hagar; he had cut covenant with God, but it took 25 long, difficult years of waiting and believing for the Promise to arrive.

The Promise arrived and they named him Laughter.  Isaac was the big exhale of relief after a long, difficult wait.

Have you ever had that experience of being in a very tense, stressful, maybe painful, difficult situation and something happen and you just burst into raucous laughter?  It’s like a catharsis, a release, a restoring of the balance.

Twenty-one years ago my family and I had to walk through what for me was one of the most profoundly painful weeks of our lives.  Under a set of very tragic circumstances my sister died and we had a funeral the week before Thanksgiving.  I can’t describe to you the weight of grief, confusion and pain that engulfed us all.  It felt like all of life had stopped, we were trapped in suspended animation together, and none of us even knew how to take the next breath.  We just let others tell us what to do and we kept shuffling through the process of a funeral.

The morning of the actual funeral a very kind, older gentleman (probably well into his eighties) named Vance arrived in the limousine to take us to the funeral home.  Vance had requested to personally take care of my family because he knew my Mom.  I am not sure he usually drove the limousine (foreshadowing).  So eight of us piled into the car, my husband sat in the front seat and I sat in the middle with my parents and some other family members got in the back seat.  Three more family members got into a van to follow behind us.  And that’s where things got complicated.

As sweet Vance turned left out of my parents’ neighborhood onto an EXTREMELY busy four-lane road, he pulled into a lane of ONCOMING traffic and threw up his left hand in front of his face as if to say, “Stop” to the traffic barreling down at us.  He was trying to get traffic to stop and allow the other family vehicle behind us to pull out as well.  He was trying to maintain the procession.  In the South a procession for a funeral is almost mandatory…like waiting until Easter every year to wear white shoes and not wearing them one minute past Labor Day…processions for funerals are required.

As I saw what was happening all I could think was, “There’s going to be eight more funerals this weekend because we are all going to die right now!  At least we’ll all go together.”  No one else in the car seemed to move or flinch so I just held my breath, closed my eyes and prayed.  Once we were all safe again I just forgot about it.

That night as we all sat around pretending to eat dinner, we were really just moving food around on our plates, my husband said, “Did anyone notice anything when we pulled out of the neighborhood this morning?”  Then my Dad (who was born with the most wonderful smart aleck gene and a fabulous sense of comedic timing—I am very much like him) said, “Yeah, I thought we were all going to die or at the very least they were going to have to hose out the car because I’ve had diarrhea for three days!”  With that all the tension of the worst three days of our lives broke with laughter and the slow process of healing began.

On page 50 Ann says, “God brings the weary woman laughter.  Laughter is a gift—oxygenated grace.”  I know that a birth and a funeral are wildly different, but for everyone life is filled with hard things, even when they are good.  Birth is hard on a woman’s body in her twenties, I can’t imagine what it was like for 90-year-old Sarah.

God comes for us in the middle of the hard things, in the middle of life and death and gives us “oxygenated grace.”

Photo Credit: Sophie Pope

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selections December 1^st – 5th
Additional Reflections

At this point I’ve read through five days of Advent readings by Ann Voskamp in her latest book, “The Greatest Gift:  Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas.”  So far we have encountered Adam and Eve, Noah, and Abram, in some of the most profound, history-altering moments in Scripture.  I keep wondering about their perception of these moments as they moved through them.

I suspect that none of them understood the reverberation their life-altering moments would have throughout all of history when they actually walked through them.

Did Adam and Eve understand that when they ate the fruit, that every human after them, save One, partook of sin and death?   Did they understand the full extent of the curse until years of toiling with the earth and birthing babies had passed?  Did they know that one poor decision would result in separation from their eternal Love?  Did they even know there was life outside the Garden before they were put out of Eden?  Did either one of them wake up that day and think, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this day,”?

When God told Noah to build the ark, what was he doing?  And when he spent 120 years building the ark did he realize he was partnering with God to save a remnant of all of humanity? Did he even possess any carpentry skills?  Did he know that thousands of years later a special sign and promise God made to him would speak love and hope to every other person whose ever seen a rainbow?  Did he know millions of children (young and old) would smile with wonder every time they see the colors of Love displayed in the sky?

What was Abram doing when God came to him in the land of his fathers?  What about the day God made a covenant with him and he believed and was counted righteous?  I don’t know, but whatever he was doing, he probably did it almost every single day.  Did he wake up one of those mornings and think it was somehow special?

I think all of these extraordinary moments in Scripture people were right in the middle of the day-in, day-out, ordinary moments of their lives when God decided to show up.  Just like us they had jobs (so to speak), kids to raise, laundry that needed washing, homes (tents?) that needed keeping, and people that needed caring for.  And when those extraordinary moments arrived and passed, just like us, I am not sure they understood the full scope and importance of what had transpired.  In fact, I am almost certain they didn’t.  Why? Because most of the time we don’t either.

The extraordinary dressed in the ordinary.  God wrapped in humanity.  All of our moments are holy and extraordinary, because He comes for us, extends Himself to us in all of them.  Even when we think we are just folding the clothes, making dinner, or driving to and from work, He’s coming for us.  Can you feel it?

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selections for December 5^th
“Living by Faith”

Genesis 12:7 (NLT) – “Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘I will give this land to your descendants.’  And Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the Lord, who had appeared to him.”

Have you ever wondered why God chose to appear to Abram?  For that matter, have you ever wondered what was so great that the Creator of the universe chose to speak to, appear to, or even work through ANY of the people recorded in Scripture.  Let’s face it, there’s only one Perfect man who ever walked the earth and it wasn’t Adam, or Noah, or Abram.

All we really know about Abram before God appeared to him is that he must have been a descendant of Noah and he’s from an area of the world that over time has developed a reputation for being opposed to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  That’s it.  Nothing distinctive.  Nothing special.  Nothing particularly godly.  He was just a man.

So why did God choose to appear to him?  Why did God promise to bless him and all the nations of the earth through him?  Why did God transcend the heavenlies and insert Himself into time and space to appear to just an ordinary man?

Because that’s the nature of unconditional Love, it truly has no conditions.  Which means it is wholly dependent on the person who loves, not the recipient of that love.  Abram did absolutely nothing to earn Love coming down in person, extending Himself to him and then choosing to bless him.

And we don’t either.  Christ comes to us in the middle of all of our humanity and if we will allow Him, joins with us and takes up residence in us.  And this was His plan from the beginning.

I love these Old Testament pictures of God extending Himself to man long before He literally did it through the Babe in a manger. The entire Bible is Advent – God coming for us.  What occurred to me as I was reading this passage in Genesis was that the Bible records history from a certain perspective.  It doesn’t record every single thing that’s ever happened since the beginning of time.  What about all the other ordinary people God came to, spoke to and blessed?  What about you and me?

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 4^th
“Rise”

Genesis 6:6-8 (NLT) – “ So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. ⁷ And the Lord said, ‘I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I am sorry I ever made them.’ ⁸ But Noah found favor with the Lord.”

Put yourself in Noah’s sandals for a moment.  Imagine living in a world where man has become so evil that God is sorry He created him (and her).  The Creator, the One who had created an entire world to express the essence of Himself, Love, was so sorry He had made man that He was willing to destroy them.  If the state of the world was heartbreaking for God, think how hard it must have been on Noah to live in the middle of it every single day.

But Noah found favor with God.  The Hebrew word for favor has in its root the idea of God bending, stooping in kindness, extending Himself to man.  God came down to Noah and extended Himself out of Love and compassion to Noah.

Do you know what the favor of God looked like to the human eye?  It looked a whole lot like Noah’s circumstances went from bad to worse.  When God flooded the earth with His grief over sin, Noah’s human frame was caught right there in the midst of it.  He had a front row seat for the destruction of humanity (except for the handful of family on the ark).  And while it rained for forty days and forty nights it appears from Scripture he was cocooned in that ark for a lot longer than that…maybe about a year.  Let me remind you, he was in that ark with a remnant of animals and a remnant of people (given evidence after the flood, the remnant of people didn’t seem to be of stellar character).  Five minutes after God closed the door on the ark I would’ve have been climbing the walls!

I don’t know about you, but if I had been in Noah’s position I might have really struggled with the idea of what it means to have the favor of God.  But that’s what happens when we judge eternity by our circumstances.  Life viewed from our position on this spinning globe does not afford us the correct position to judge our circumstances as good or bad.

As bad as things looked, Noah couldn’t have been in a better position or safer hands, even though it literally looked like his world was falling apart with the rocking of that ark.  Day after day on that boat, with every rise and crest of a wave, he probably felt like he was coming unglued.  And if you’ve ever spent even a brief time in tight quarters with your family in a stressful situation, you know he wasn’t the only one coming unglued.

But having the favor of God, having God come stoop right down to his human level wasn’t about his circumstances.  It was about a relationship with the living God IN his circumstances.  It was experiencing a new level of trust and belief in the only sure and safe thing there is, the God who is Love.

On this side of the cross of Jesus Christ, we have the favor of God and we miss the point when we waste time judging the good and bad in our lives.  Right now in the middle of where you are, can you throw wide your arms, letting go of expectations and outcomes in a fallen world, and simply receive Love Himself?  Can you trust Him implicitly even if your circumstances never change or, like Noah, actually get worse?  Can you simply trust He’s coming for your heart in EVERY. SINGLE. THING. that comes your way?  He’s bending low, stooping down, bringing all of Himself to you right this very minute.

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 2^nd
“Life Begins as a Love Story”

Genesis 1:27 (NLT) – “So God created human beings in His own image.”

As a kid I used to wonder why God created humans last.  In my childish way of thinking, I would have created the most important thing first.  But growing up in a church tradition that was way more concerned about good behavior than a relationship with the Creator of the universe, we tended to focus on the part of the story where Adam and Eve fell and sin entered in.  My big take away from that emphasis on human failure was to spend the bulk of my life simply trying not to make mistakes because it made God mad.

That’s not living.  Trying not to mess up, trying not to sin, trying not to fail is not the abundant life Jesus came to give me.  Behavior management is always an inferior goal.  The gospel, what God intended all along, is so much more than that.  But I digress…

Back to Creation…beyond childhood Sunday School, I hadn’t thought much about it until a few years ago our Bible study group did an intense study of Genesis.  For several weeks I was immersed in the study of that first week and the wonder of all that happened.  As we talked about the order that came from nothing it became apparent to me, as I am sure the rest of the class already knew, that man was created last because God was preparing a place for him first.

My practical, efficient mind that strives to sort and order all the information it takes in, blessed God’s decision to do it that way, and so I finally said, “Oh, that makes sense.”

Well, of course it makes sense, but recently I’ve been looking at the totality of Scripture a little differently.  Instead of looking at it as a sum of 66 parts of information, I’ve started seeing it from beginning to end as one continuous Love story.  As I move through Scripture and allow God to reveal His Love for me, the journey has changed.  It’s no longer about gathering facts to build a case for why we must live up to God’s perfect standards, it’s about knowing the Author and allowing His Love to transform me.  The journey has become about intimate relationship with Him and it’s no longer about behavior management.

So once again back to Creation, now I see that yes He was preparing a place where we could live.  But it’s more than that– He was lovingly preparing a home for His bride.  All of Creation was intended as a gift for us to enjoy.  The Creator wanted to “Wow!” us with His Love and beauty.  He wanted us to be wonderstruck at just what great lengths He would go to in order to Love us well.

He’s been coming for us even from the beginning.

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 1st pp. 1 – 7
“It is Advent: Come”

This first Advent reading selection is based on Isaiah 11:1 (NLT) – “Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot— yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root.”

Out of the stump of Jesse, Isaiah writes. I don’t know about you, but to me stumps represent things that once were and what no longer is. Things that appear to dead.

My husband and I still live in the home we bought one month before we were married over 22 years ago. It seemed so large and grand when it was just the two of us and not one stick of furniture. All we brought to that house were ourselves, some hand-me-down furniture (some of which I still own), our dreams and some memorabilia of life before we were an Us.

I don’t remember taking note of it before we bought the house, but once we moved in and started taking stock of our little homestead, both of us quickly fell in love with a little mimosa tree in the front yard. I don’t think I had ever seen one before. When it was in bloom each morning as the sun came up it would unfurl its fronds as if to display its beauty just for us to see. At night the branches would sort of close in on themselves as the sun went down, like the tree was going to sleep. I think that it bloomed twice a year. And for those few weeks each time it bloomed, it was like receiving a personal, “Good morning” and “Good night” from the Lord, just for me and Popey.

People who knew about these trees warned us that they are fragile and usually don’t last very long, but ours did. For 18 or 19 years that tree welcomed us every time we pulled into the driveway and even tucked us in at night. It beckoned a newlywed couple into an adventure of life together; it smiled on us as we brought home three beautiful babies from the hospital; it comforted us as we arrived home from funerals; it sent us out into the world each day with a smile; and it waved at kids getting off the school bus every afternoon. That tree said, “Home” to me and my family.

It grew so tall that it overshadowed everything else in the front yard. It felt like a protective canopy spread over our home. I loved that tree. I even loved it when the wind blew its fronds to the ground and the driveway and yard were covered with the tiny seeds. I loved it still when the blooms died and fell onto the driveway. I loved it a little less when it rained on top of those blooms and fronds and made our driveway so slick that you could practically skate down it.

Sadly a few years ago we woke up one morning after it had stormed and a significant branch was lying across our driveway. We had known the mimosa was too big, too weak and even though we had cut down some of the dead branches it wasn’t enough. It was time to cut the whole thing down. To me it was like cutting the hopes and dreams and expectancy of those newlyweds down. It was like saying good-bye to those two precious, unsuspecting kids who, in spite of themselves, had made a home in the blue house with the beautiful mimosa.

What had once looked so welcoming and comforting to me, looked barren and sad after Popey cut down that tree. In some ways it felt like I moved from a season of everything being a new adventure to the middle years where a heavy sense of resignation moved in for a long, cold visit.

A couple of years later, I pulled into the driveway one day and for some reason glanced over at the stump that used to be our grand mimosa. Right in the center of that stump were several mimosa shoots starting to pop up. I couldn’t help but smile. In the middle of that ugly stump was the hope of something new, something potentially grand. Popey told me not to get my hopes up, that it is very unlikely they will ever grow into a full-sized tree. But my hopes are up, I can’t help myself. I am smiling right now thinking about it.

As I read the verse for the first day of Advent, it reminds me that in things much bigger and more important than trees, I can have hope in the stump-y seasons. Right in the middle of seasons that seem dead and impossible. The coming of Christ two thousand years ago was the hope, the promise of new life in the middle of the dead stump of humanity. He came and He’s still coming. Every day, He’s still coming for us.

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection pp. xiii – xiv, “Jesse Tree Invitation and Instructions”

Before beginning the journey of leading readers through the 25 days of Advent, Ann Voskamp includes two brief pages inviting us to decorate what she calls a Jesse Tree, each day. Each of the reading selections that follow include a picture of a paper ornament that could be a family craft project to work on together to help process the truth that “He has been coming for us from the beginning.” It’s an artistic way of internalizing the journey.

Let me say up front, if I haven’t before, I am probably the least “craft-y” girl you know, but I live with extremely talented, “craft-y”, artistic people. There’s a beautiful mix of visual artists, performing artists and musicians that live in my home that I get to share my life with…and unfortunately, for most of our time on this earth together I have completely misunderstood and probably misrepresented them as messy, inefficient people who would be so much more “productive” if they would just focus more.

When my oldest was a little girl, maybe 3 or 4, someone gave her an ENORMOUS bead making kit for Christmas or her birthday, I can’t remember which one. Within five minutes, which was as long as it took her to figure out how to unseal the case, that kit had exploded in my living room and about five million beads went everywhere. I remember saying unkind things under my breath about the person who gave her the kit, as I spent the rest of the day on my hands and knees trying to clean it all up. We had an infant learning to crawl and all the beads just looked like a snack to her.

It became apparent that all those beads were never going back into their case, so I found a huge gift bag with handles and just started dumping stuff in the bag. Once it was all in the bag I handed it to Liv Loo and told her she could play with it as long as everything went back in the bag after she was done. Well it didn’t take long for her to start putting her other valuables in the bag. She stuffed it not only with the bead kit, but glue sticks, bits of string, construction paper, gum wrappers, play dough molds, safety scissors and anything else that looked interesting to her. When asked what was in that bag she would say, “That’s my make-stuff.”

She carried that “make-stuff” bag around like it held the crown jewels.  She even slept with it sometimes.  Or more likely she simply fell asleep in the middle of her “make-stuff” when she pulled it back out long after the door was closed, the lights were off and she was supposed to be asleep.  She would sit for hours dumping it all out and creating beautiful art. She was processing her world. Her art included Barney, Popey and me, her sister with the “tight ears”, Mimi and Cod, Aunt Missy, her blue house, her green van and her school.

Back then I cringed every time that “make-stuff” bag came out because it meant days of finding beads and bits of string and paper everywhere. But in hindsight I smile and love all the beauty that came out of that mess.

So, now as I look forward to the season this year of celebrating the Christ who is Love and who has been coming for me since before time…coming for me right in the middle of my mess, I have a much greater appreciation for the “make-stuff” bag. Life is a lot more art than formula. A lot more messy than neat. A lot more about expression than production. It’s all about Love and not having everything tied up with a pretty little bow.

On this 31 Day journey, my artistic processing of these truths will be with my words. But this December I think I’ll see if I can find that “make-stuff” bag. And if I can’t maybe it’s time for a new one. I am pretty sure if I moved some furniture in the blue house, I’d still find a few beads and bits of string.