God's Favorites

It is that festive time of year to begin the joyful (sigh) process of “hanging the greens”.  This, of course, means that for me to begin the process, I am going to have to face “the closet”.  The closet that houses my pathetic overflow of clothes that won’t fit in the closet in my own bedroom, but now also consume the closet that was my daughter’s before she married.  The closet that convicts me that I might have a problem with hoarding.  The closet that dashes any pride I have in being an organized person.  The sad thing is that “the closet” is not the only place that I have to rummage through to get to my Christmas decorations—there is also the basement and garage.  Even the Christmas music doesn’t set me in the mood for this task.

Facing “the closet” is not the only reason that I stall from the whole decorating thing.  There is the emotional effort it takes to reconcile Christmas, the American way, with the simplicity of God’s design in Christ’s birth.  How does my celebration of the birth of God’s son fit into His design?

He chose a manger and entrusted the care of His son to a poor couple who could not even afford a lamb, but had to bring a pair of doves or two young pigeons as their offering when they brought Jesus to be consecrated, a symbol of their poverty (Luke 2:24).  The Lamb of God did not have a lamb to present at his dedication.  I can only imagine that this particular act of presenting Jesus to the Lord was probably a milestone for the baby book at that time and even God’s own son did not have parents with status to provide a lamb at His consecration.

God chose such simple and humble beginnings for the early childhood years of His son and an even more humble lifestyle of homelessness for Jesus’ adult years.  He chose to weave His DNA in such a way that Jesus did not have physical attractiveness (Isaiah 53:2) and allowed Him to live a life of oppression, sorrow and suffering during His time in our world and Jesus willingly surrendered to His father’s plan.

There is so much about God’s character and His will revealed in the Christmas story.  The Word truly becomes flesh and displays to us His ways and this commands us to worship.  We must consider how the Christmas traditions imposed on us by society hold the potential to hinder worship and seek to weave worship into every part of our celebration.

So…as I hang my greens, I will hang them in such a way to create an environment of worship, not just satisfaction with my decorating abilities.  When I shop, I will consider what is reasonable and question whether my spending reflects worship and would please God and Dave Ramsey.   I will also worship by considering how I can use my resources to bless the poor which seem to be God’s favorites.

Marketing Strategies

I recently read a passage of scripture that I had read and heard quoted many times presented in a rather fearful manner, perhaps this was just coming from my own neurotic frame of reference, but this time the passage illuminated with fresh revelation that fed my soul a juicy morsel of sustenance. 

The passage is in 1 Corinthians 4:5 where Paul is addressing the idea of apostleship and confronting the Corinthians on following different leaders instead of Christ.  Paul says, ”Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time, wait till the Lord comes.  He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s heart”.  This has always made me kind of tremble in my boots, but there is more to this passage that somehow I failed to understand.  It continues to say that “At that time each will receive his PRAISE from God”. 

The idea behind this is that what we do in the secret to further the kingdom of God, those unnoticed acts of ministry that we don’t post on facebook and receive kudos for from our fellow peer Christians will receive praise from God.  Our true motives and our inner lives will be exposed and the result will be praise from God when the driving force behind our acts is obedience to God and not self affirmation.

This reminded me of one of my favorite passages of scripture that Jesus taught to His disciples when He presented the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew Chapter 6 where Jesus begins by warning against doing acts to be noticed by men.  He proceeds to proclaim three times in the chapter that what you do in secret will be seen by the Father and He will reward you.   The chapter exhorts us to consider that when our deeds are done for others to see, the praise from them will be our reward, but when our deeds are done as a secret with our Holy Father God, our reward will come from Him.

I’m trying to figure out how Jesus’ marketing strategy works into our 2011 technological world where every good deed is advertised.   I am sure there are times when advertising is necessary to further the kingdom of God, but I do think it can be a terrible pitfall for the feeding of our already over-indulged human nature and the stroking of our egos.   We can easily use the world’s technique and put a spiritual twist to it, but the result is still a worldly result…vanity.

Paul is writing to the Corinthians addressing the problem of boasting in the church and the kind of chaos that has been stirred up as a result....boasting in their wisdom and spiritual gifts, boasting in the certain leaders they are following.  Paul suggests that if we are going to boast to boast in our weakness.  I don’t see many fathers writing about their sons walking the “green mile” on facebook…that’s just not good marketing.