Photo Credit: Sophie Pope

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 14^th
“Light to Warm Us”

Isaiah 9:2 (NLT) – “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light.  For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine.”

I love Ann Voskamp’s words from page 140 of today’s reading selection:

“It’s Christmas that dawns on you, and you only really believe in Christmas when you really live it.  When you light a dark world and the unexpected places with a brave flame of joy; when you warm the cold, hopeless places with the daring joy that God is with us, God is for us, God is in us; when you are a wick to light hope in the dark – then you believe in Christmas.  When you really believe in Christmas, you believe there is really hope for everyone.  When you get Christmas, people get hope from you—they don’t lose it.

Unless you keep passing on the miracle of hope, you live like Christmas is a myth.”

The last line particularly resonates with me because the longer I live the more I am convinced that our behavior follows what we truly believe.  I may say I believe something, but if my behavior reflects something else entirely then I am only lying to myself…I may even be able to deceive a few around me, but the One who searches the heart, He knows the truth.  And He knows this Gospel He’s given is so much more than behavior management; it’s Life and it’s freedom.

If I am living like Christmas is a myth, if I am not passing on the miracle of hope, then I truly don’t believe at my core that the Messiah Himself came for me. I am not living as the beloved of God.  I may want to believe, I may like the idea of it, I may even be able to pretend I believe, but until I fully believe I am only living in the shadow of truth, not in Truth Himself.

The Truth is that Love came down and gave us the Way back to our true Love.  The Light of the world pierced my darkness and exchanged my existence for abundant Life on a cross.  When I truly believe the Truth and choose to abide in Love then passing on the miracle of hope is simply bearing eternal fruit.

Passing on the miracle of hope isn’t a call to action it’s a call to belief.  What do you believe?  Does the gospel of Love, all things made new, resurrection Life seem too good to be true?  Does it seem too risky to believe that there is only One Way, only One Truth?

In this season of Advent, in the anticipation of His coming for you—the Messiah, the Deliverer, the Savior—what do you believe?

I would like to pause here for just a minute in this 31 Day series on Advent to simply say how much I am enjoying this experience.  While each day my writing has been in response to a reading selection from Ann Voskamp’s new book, “The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas”, I don’t want anyone to miss the fact that the book itself is AMAZING and so worth reading.

Every day’s reading selection takes me on a journey of not only seeing how beautifully and clearly Christ has been coming for mankind since before the beginning, but He’s been coming for ME since before the beginning.  There aren’t adequate words to describe the overwhelming sense of God’s great Love for me, for all of us, as I sit down to read and write each day.

I didn’t want this series to appear in any way rote or mechanical or as just a writing exercise.  For me it’s been a beautiful experience as Jesus and I sit down each day to read and then create art together.

I also want to say thank you for joining me on this journey, whether you read one post or all the posts.  Traveling together is always more fun.

Amen.

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 13^th
“Looking on Hearts”

I Samuel 16:7b (NLT) – “People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

In the story of the prophet Samuel seeking out the son of Jesse to anoint as king, the Bible tells us that seven of Jesse’s sons appeared before Samuel and the Lord rejected them all as the next potential king.  Even though to the human eye they may all have seemed to be future-king-material, God said no.  Samuel had to ask Jesse if he had other sons before it was revealed that the youngest was not there.

David, the youngest son of Jesse, was overlooked and unseen, except by God.  God knew David wasn’t there.  In fact, God knew exactly where David was the whole time – he was out faithfully tending his father’s sheep.  It seems to me God could have sent Samuel straight to David and bypassed the whole parade of rejection of Jesse’s other seven sons.

But God was making a point.  God is always making a point.  He’s always speaking, He’s always wooing, He’s always calling, and He’s always coming.

That day God was coming for David.  He was calling him because even then, David was a man after God’s own heart.  Even in the everyday ordinariness of the pasture, God took notice.  God always takes notice.

Have you ever felt forgotten and unseen in the mundane, ordinary things of life, in your own version of sheep tending?  Have you ever felt like you were missing out on the party while you were busy doing laundry or changing diapers?  Have you ever wondered if there is anything more than the pasture you’re currently in?

God hasn’t missed a thing.  He sees you, right now in your holy ordinary and He’s coming for you.

Photo Credit: Sophie Pope

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 12^th
“Every Little Thing Is Going to Be Okay”

Ruth 1:16b (NLT) – “Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.”

Yesterday’s post in response to the reading selection for December 11^th in Ann Voskamp’s The Greatest Gift, talked about God coming for Rahab the prostitute.  Later in Scripture we find out that Rahab marries a man from the tribe of Judah named Salmon, a leader of the tribe.  To me one of the interesting things about Rahab and Salmon is their son, Boaz.

In the story of Ruth, Boaz becomes Ruth’s redeemer and husband.  This son of a former Jericho-ite and prostitute has mercy on a Moabite woman and saves her from a life of poverty, loneliness, abuse, slavery and even potentially death in a land of strangers.  Rahab the former prostitute became the mother-in-law of Ruth, the Moabitess.

And in that one act of mercy and love, the Sovereign God of all creation beckoned a daughter, an alien and a stranger, into His own family.  Love welcomed her in, enveloped her and transformed the life of this young widow.  She left behind a past of despair and death and entered the genealogy of the Redeemer who was still to come.

The genealogy of Jesus Christ was no accident.  The people, men and women, in his lineage were all humans (in every sense of the word) chosen at their specific points in time to carry forth the seed of the Christ, the coming Messiah.  And in every generation, in every life, in every moment God was proclaiming, “Jesus is Coming, Jesus is Coming!”

Can you hear it echoing in your heart even now?  He’s coming for you.  All of you – the good, the bad and the ugly.  In the middle of your own messy, painful Rahab or Ruth story, He sees, and He’s coming for you.  Absolutely nothing, not any person nor any circumstance, is beyond His reach.  Don’t give up, He’s still coming.

Foster Bible Pictures 0084-1 Rahab Helping the Two Israelite Spies (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 11^th
“A Scarlet Lifeline of Hope”

Joshua 2:1,18 (NLT) – “¹Then Joshua secretly sent out two spies from the Israelite camp at Acacia Grove. He instructed them, ‘Scout out the land on the other side of the Jordan River, especially around Jericho.’ So the two men set out and came to the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there that night. …¹⁸‘When we come into the land, you must leave this scarlet rope hanging from the window through which you let us down. And all your family members—your father, mother, brothers, and all your relatives—must be here inside the house.’”

I love the story of Rahab, for several reasons.  While Scripture tells us that Joshua sent the spies to scout things out before the Israelites came in and conquered Jericho, I think God had other motivations for sending them.  I realize I am going out on a limb here, but I think God sent those two spies so that Rahab the prostitute and all of her family would be saved from the total destruction that was coming their way.

God looked down and saw a woman in a hopeless situation and right in the middle of her circumstances He showed up to rescue her.  He had already announced His coming to her:

Joshua 2: 9 – 11 (NLT) – [Rahab told the spies] ⁹ “’I know the Lord has given you this land,’ she told them. ‘We are all afraid of you. Everyone in the land is living in terror. ¹⁰ For we have heard how the Lord made a dry path for you through the Red Sea when you left Egypt. And we know what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan River, whose people you completely destroyed. ¹¹ No wonder our hearts have melted in fear! No one has the courage to fight after hearing such things. For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below.’”

She heard Him declare who He was through His mighty acts and she believed.  She simply believed and it gave her the courage to ask for mercy.  With those simple acts of faith a prostitute and her family were saved.  And a prostitute married into the family of Judah and became part of the genealogy of the still coming King, Jesus.

Many teachers and Bible scholars work hard to explain that either Rahab wasn’t really a prostitute or the Rahab listed in Jesus’ genealogy is not the same one as the prostitute in Joshua.  The idea of a prostitute, a dirty, unholy woman being in the lineage of Christ seems incomprehensible to some.

Why do we have to make things fit into our clean, nice, neat boxes marked “Christian” for us to believe they are God?  Life is hard.  People are messy.  Relationships often don’t make sense.  We are broken, some of us are just better at hiding it than others.

We are all the liar, cheater, and prostitute who needs Jesus.  Not only do we need Him, He wants us.  He desires relationship with us.  In fact, He’s died for it.

Do you hear Love calling your name and declaring Himself for you?  Announcing His coming for your heart, right this very minute?  Love is coming, believe it!

Photo Credit: Sophie Pope

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 10^th
“Covenant of Love”

Deuteronomy 5:29 (NASB) – [The Lord said,] “Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!”

Page 89 of The Greatest Gift, Ann Voskamp writes, “The Ten Commandments are more than God saying, ‘Here is My Law for you’ –they are God saying, ‘Here is My love for you.’”

Paul, the author of much of the New Testament, has some interesting things to say about the Old Testament Law that give us perspective from this side of the Cross.  To boil it down, the Law was very good at pointing out that God’s people could not keep the standard (it was right there pointing the finger every time they made a mistake), but it was powerless to help them actually keep it.  In fact, in Romans it says that the Law provokes sin.  In other words, when I hear “Don’t” on some level I immediately want to “Do”.

Paul goes on to tell us that the problem wasn’t with the Law, it was in us.  With our old, pre-Christ, dead-to-God spirits, there was nothing available to us to help us keep God’s standards.  All we could ever do was try…and fail.

However, Believers, with our new, Christ in us, alive-to-God spirits, we have everything we need pertaining to life and godliness.  God has given us new hearts and has even written His Law ON our hearts.  Christ in us empowers us to live as children of the living God.  God has taken up residence in us to do what we never could apart from Him.

Prior to the crucifixion of Christ, God’s people had an external righteousness that depended on what they did.  Believers in Christ have the righteousness of Christ, not based on what we do, but who we are.

So why the Law?  If Christ in us the hope of glory is what God desired all along, why were there 2000 years of Law?  Why all the frustration of never being able to 100% measure up and meet the standard?

Because just like in the Garden it’s about God pursuing a relationship with mankind.  It’s a Love story and you can’t just skip to the end.  Just like us, He wants to be chosen.  Two thousand years of Law created a lot of longing and desire in mankind’s heart for not just a remedy, but a Savior and a relationship.  He wanted us to know for certain that apart from Him we could do nothing.

On page 92 Ann continues, “God gives the commandments to us—and God gives God to keep the commandments for us.  God gives us the love at the top of Sinai, and He staggeringly keeps our commitment to love at the top of Calvary.”

He’s been pursuing us, His beloved, since the beginning and even the Law proclaimed Advent.

Photo Credit: Sophie Pope

The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 9^th
“Never Undone”

Genesis 50:20 (NLT) – “You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.”

The words above were spoken by Joseph to his brothers toward the end of his story.  At the point where he could look back over his life and see how a beautiful tapestry had been woven out of a  lot of really ugly thread.

Where are you in your story right now?  Are you in a place others intend for harm?  Are you hated, persecuted, and misunderstood by those closest to you?  Are you misrepresented by others?  Has the presence of God in your life caused your own pride to swell?  Are you in bondage in some way, not free to move about on your own?  Have you been falsely accused?  Are you far from home, alone in a place where you don’t know the customs and don’t even speak the language?  Do you have a dream deep in your heart that’s buried under lots of rejection, confusion, fear and doubt?  Do you have a sense that there’s more to your story, but you feel so far removed from the main plot that it hurts too much to think about?

At one time or another we’ve all been able to identify with one of these situations, if not all of them.  That’s why I love the story of Joseph, it’s so RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE.  Ultimately, Joseph delivered his entire family and preserved the clan that was going to spend about 400 years in slavery while they became a nation of people.  A nation of people God has used to demonstrate His Love to the world.

A nation of people who would welcome their Messiah and hail their God in the Flesh King…oh wait…that’s not how the story goes.  The delivered nation didn’t welcome their Deliverer.  The saved didn’t welcome their Savior.  Instead they become the haters, the persecutors and the misrepresenters.  They falsely accused and even followed through on their murderous plot –even Joseph’s brothers, or at least one of them, drew the line at murder.

But when it looked its darkest and the slain body of the Word made flesh was sealed in the tomb, the stone was rolled away and Salvation emerged – it came for all the haters, persecutors, misrepresenters, liars, and murderers – for me.

When things looked their worst, Love conquered sin and all things worked together for good.

Right now, wherever you are in your journey, all of it, every single bit, God intends for good, for you and others.

Can you trust Him?  Will you stop grasping for control and demanding rights?  Can you say, “Amen” and extend your arms to receive Love?

He intended it from the beginning.  He saw all of your days before there was one of them and He’s been coming for your heart in every single one – even in the hard and the ugly ones.  Every moment is Advent.

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.”