Resting Merry

Merry Christmas! I would love for each of you to be rested in God's merriment. Like the hilarious giver the apostle Paul spoke about. To see each of you possessed by the kind of unceasing, overflowing, practically-laughing-out-loud kind of joy that makes the world think you have just possibly lost your mind – but yet they're jealous. Like what happened in George Bailey's heart at the end of It's a Wonderful Life: the kind of joy that takes you from despair to delight even though none of your circumstances have changed. Like what happened to the Grinch when his heart finally expanded and he wanted to give rather than take, to bless rather than curse, to share life with others rather than isolate in quiet all alone. Like when Ebenezer Scrooge went from from being the stingiest, meanest man in town to throwing open the windows, giving his money away, and laughing uncontrollably like he had been let in on the biggest and best joke of the universe.

Every life matters and touches the lives of others in ways we seldom realize. Giving is always a blessing to the giver and brings far more life than trying to selfishly hold onto our pile of stuff. And the big secret of life, built into its fabric by its creator...? Well, Jesus summed that up best – greater love has no one than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends. And he said that in the context of the commandment he wanted his followers to keep – that they love one another as he had loved them.

And, of course, this was spoken hours before he would quite literally lay down his life for them in love on the cross. But it was also spoken with a promised expected result if his disciples loved each other – they would know fullness of joy. In other words, life is found (paradoxically) in giving it away. Not throwing life away. Intentionally, willingly giving it away in love. Serving, sharing, touching, comforting, healing, visiting, blessing, praying, speaking edifying words, encouraging, helping, listening, caring, letting others know they are not alone in life, that they are loved, that their life has meaning and value.

Certainly Jesus lived his life that way. Giving away his time, his energies, his wisdom, to lift up the downtrodden, to comfort the brokenhearted, to heal the diseased, the crippled, the hurting, to give hope to the hopeless, to let the isolated and marginalized know they were neither forgotten nor unimportant.

But Jesus didn't come only to be an example of how we should live. We are already messed up. To simply tell us how we should live would be to tell us how far short we fall of the mark. Unless he gives us power to live differently, unless he changes our hearts and our basic orientation from self-centeredness to others-centeredness, then telling us how to live better is just an exercise in frustrated futility.

The apostle Paul tells us that when Christ came, he didn't come just as an example to us. He came to make all things new. He came to make us new. He brought salvation, and he gave it freely (that's what that word grace means) to the world. And with that salvation, he also gave the gift of his Spirit, the very power of God to live a washed, redeemed and glorious new life. And by embracing the gift of new life that Jesus brought, we are also given hope of a glorious everlasting future.

So what is Christmas all about in your house and in your heart? Is it about family, and lights and gifts and the laughter of children, or is it about new life in and with God in Christ? What story do you tell yourself about Christmas? You know – the stories we tell ourselves are critical. They chart a path to our future and are formative to who we are becoming. Who you will be is largely shaped by the story you adopt as your identifying story (you know, “this is me, this is my story, this is who I am”).

We all have a story. What's your story, I wonder?