A Hard Call that Ends Well by Wil Triggs

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Mark Sutkowski is the manager of the LifeWay store in Wheaton, the one that’s closing in just a few days. That means that he will soon be out of work.

If you’ve ever been there, you may have seen him. Mark’s a big friendly guy who is happy to help people.

Because he has also been the point person for the College Church Book Stall, which is an extension of the LifeWay store, Mark called me yesterday. I had emailed him a list of new titles we’d like to add. But I’ve also been hurting for him and the other staff at the store. I thought this would be a hard call.

We talked about displays and fixtures that we are getting from the LifeWay store to help us better display our books. We talked about new titles that are coming to the Book Stall in a week or two. We talked about the shift we will have from working with the LifeWay store in Wheaton to the one at Moody Bible Institute in downtown Chicago. He told me that I’ll really enjoy connecting with the manager at the other store and how the three of us will meet soon to talk about the transition.

I asked him how he was doing and if he had any plans for what’s next.

Mark was so positive. He’s excited that he can help us for a few more weeks. He's happy to bless us with a couple of fixtures for the Bookstall and the Library. He loves LifeWay and is grateful for the ministry they’ve had in that retail space, the opportunity to witness. He’s looking forward to probably moving to the Dallas area to be near children and grandchildren. He’s even looking at ways he might be able to stay in Christian retail or work with LifeWay in some way in Texas.

Here’s the thing about Mark. He was every bit as positive during our phone conversation yesterday as he was the first time we met when there was no inkling of the store shutting its doors. It wasn’t even close to a hard call.

In the days ahead, I look forward to connecting with him and the other manager as we transition working with one store to the other. I’ll keep praying for him and the other staff who are losing their jobs. But for Mark at least, I see a man who is trusting God in the course of big change.

This brings to mind some of my notes from what Josh Stringer preached January 1 in his sermon on Psalm 130:

What brings conviction to your soul? Think back to the troubling headlines of 2016. What about the headlines of your life in the past year? I’m talking about the things that don’t leave the walls of your home or the trappings of your mind. The real distresses of mind.  . . . You can trust that God hears your prayers. We wait because he loves. Hoping and waiting are inextricably linked. . . . waiting, hoping, watching, telling. Bring people to the hope of the Lord. We need each other. We need each others’ stories.

Thinking of the story in his sermon of Josh and Adam running that marathon together, I’m grateful to run this little piece of life with Mark as he runs this challenging part of the course set before him. He’s finishing well.

What to Take into the New Year by Virginia Hughes

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I've been making a lot of lists lately. That's what we Virginias do this time of year, now that we have the "yes," answer to the Santa Claus question all cleared up. Here goes another list. At the top of the page I write: 

RIDICULOUS NOTIONS THAT WILL NEVER COME TRUE

This could be a list of many things. Among them:

1. My Christmas wish list or 

2. My New Year's Resolutions

Making the most of the holiday season for some of us includes pursuing that fleeting corner of stillness and hoping that just the silent stars go by. But it's never just the silent stars that go by is it? 

During the season, add to your regular jobs all the new lists. There are lists of lists: decorations to put up indoors and out. Ugh, replacement lights, weren't these lights new just last year?  Gifts to be bought, wrapped and given. Favorite foods to buy and cook. Travel arrangements, visits to coordinate. House to clean. Where will family meet? My house? All at once? Deeper layers of house to clean, and re-clean. 

Where is the joy? Oh, the check engine light is on in the car. There it is. It's suddenly flashing now. It's serious. "Joy to the world, all the boys and girls," as one sits within the aromatherapy of oil and fumes waiting for the tidings of great joy: what needs to be replaced on the car. It's a long list that is single spaced with a staple on the printout, looking rather like "the decree that went out from Caesar Augustus that everyone should be counted and taxed." Wait, no, that's coming up later. Let's stick to Christmas joys for now.

This year also brought the joy of being numb with nose biting cold right during those key shopping days before Christmas along with some midnight snow shoveling. If you're one to Christmas shop in hands on, real type stores and not exclusively online, the cold may have added to your sturdy Midwestern character, or shrunk your inner Grinch's heart even smaller. It hasn't been that cold since walking to grade school in an itchy wool coat covering a thin cotton dress and knee socks. Maybe it has been that cold since then. I can't remember since my brain went numb from the recent cold temps.

There is important work to be done on all levels. Traditions to build in one's family, that you hope are more lovely than the annual family meltdowns. Memories to make, photos to take. Cards to send. Always another pile of laundry. Special concerts and worship to attend.

If you're the reflecting sort, this may be your most difficult season of all. It's the pace of everything that's so rough. The only reflecting you can manage is a bleary image of yourself in a mirror needing Windex. One must fight for those quiet moments, steal them even.  

A beautiful verse of Scripture will renew one's mind, that's where the rest is. Rest in it. In the beginning was the Word . . . The angels said it too: "Peace on earth, good will to men on whom his favor rests." The peace they promised was deep and real, from Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Not the Pax Romana, so proudly enforced by the physical might of the Roman Empire at that time. "You people will be peaceful or the sword will strike you," is not a peace that gives one's soul the assurance it needs to sleep in heavenly peace. 

So busy, so tired, yet blessed if you still feel enough to know your heart outgrew the Grinch's when you held the candle high at the Christmas Eve service with your daughter smiling on one side and your husband recovering from recent surgery, yet standing tall on the other. Prayers have been answered and the Lord has "Risen with healing in his wings." We are blessed.

In some cultures, the home is swept, and spotlessly cleaned and even painted inside and out between Christmas and New Year's. Maybe you added that to your list this year.  

You may want to sit in a moment, hold onto a memory, breathe in just being together with a family member for the first time, or possibly the last time on earth. “Be near me Lord Jesus I ask you to stay.” Read a story to your family. Play a game. Fit together a jigsaw puzzle. Sit together. Laugh a lot.

By now, you have Christmas and New Year's celebrations perfectly figured out. Know just the right thing to do to make it extra meaningful, right? 

Add that to the list of RIDICULOUS NOTIONS THAT WILL NEVER COME TRUE.

Mary Lou Bayly (Joe Bayly's wife) put life in perfect perspective when she said, "You are not God. God is God." That's the truth that guides us gently into the new year. And it's time for a true silent night, and a new year that is in God's hands.

The Boy with a Face Like Moses by Rachel Rim

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If you were to ask me about the closest I’ve come to seeing God, I would tell you about Nouwi.

I would tell you about the small, dark-skinned boy in the adaptive PE class I helped with in high school—limbs scrawny, eyes mistrusting, a mouth that, in rare moments, curled upward in a private smile. I would tell you about his strange gait, as if he was testing each step further into the world to see if it could hold the weight of his private pain, and about his voice, low and nasal and almost melodic in its slow cadence. His shyness was a fortress. It was implacable. Head always ducked, hands always finding pockets, and if he didn’t happen to be wearing any, he’d use armpits and t-shirt sleeves or fold his arms across his chest to protect himself against-—something. Everything. A frightening world. The need for eternal, wearying suspicion.

I would tell you about Nouwi’s horrendous basketball skills—the way he flinched every time someone gently tossed him a ball, how he couldn’t dribble to save his life and didn’t believe in salvation anyway. But someone signed him up for Special Olympics that winter, and so I went from seeing Nouwi three times a week to four, each time trying like water to break through his impenetrable gates, wishing he played defense half as well as he lived it.

The closest I’ve ever come to seeing God was one frigid December night in a rubbery middle school gym. Teams of specially gifted kids played basketball with each other, having so much fun that the scoreboard was simply a curious afterthought. Nouwi always came and never played, choosing instead to sit cautiously on the sideline, his dark eyes narrowed against a world hell-bent on hurting him. But one night Coach called Nouwi into the game and he reluctantly joined the bodies jogging back and forth across the court, trying his best to remain a ghost. Except somehow, unbelievably, the ball ended up in Nouwi’s hands—to no one’s greater surprise than Nouwi—and suddenly he was a ghost no longer, and in his shuffling gait he ended up in front of the basket, and he pushed with all the desperation of his thin arms and thinner childhood—and the ball swished gently through the net.

For a split second, everything stopped—time, voices, the lonely trauma of being alive and human—and then sound broke like the crest of the ocean upon our heads and we were on our feet, shouting, shouting his name, and Nouwi was sprinting back toward the other end of the court with a smile splitting his face, and it was the opening of a gate, the lowering of a drawbridge, and his hands covered his face because, like Moses, surely so much joy had to be blinding. And we were, oh we were. Blinded, blinking, for all the world unable to look at him without seeing sunspots.

If God was anywhere that freezing winter night, he was in that old gymnasium in an utterly forgettable suburb of Chicago. In the laughter; in the mothers watching every move of their children; in the fathers eagerly offering arms and legs for extra practice; and in the small, dark boy streaking across the polished court with a face too radiant, eyes too bright, and we all of us blinded by something too sacred to put into words.

That night meant something for me the moment Nouwi put the ball through the hoop, and like wine it has only ripened since. I carry that memory in my pocket and take it out every so often, on nights when I struggle to find God in the Bible or in church or in my too-dark self. I wonder about God’s relevance sometimes, when you believe and are still sick and I believe and am still lonely. I wonder if maybe the only true part of Scripture is the Preacher crying, “all is vanity.”  But that night remembers me better than I remember it. That night tells me that once God was present and alive, and like the Israelites, I squint into the staggering brightness, because as much as it pierces it also promises: that God has indeed been in our midst. That his presence is light and the darkness has not overcome it. That at least one among us has met with him and lived to tell the tale, and against all odds the tale is good, so good, and so stop fearing Nouwi, let down those walls, unfold those arms… For a moment you were more real than all of us, more real than we could bear and we could not behold your face and live.

Further Up and Further In

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When this life ends, you'll draw me across the void,

as my soul is set free and my sin is destroyed.

The old will melt away to be replaced with the new,

and I'll know the perfect mystery of my life, all through.

Sun, rain, and snow will all now bring peace,

as from man's curse, your earth is released.

Every mountain, wood, and stream will be perfected,

and anything less will be wholly rejected. 

As we climb further, we will long to see more

of the glorious wonders our home has in store.

Every desire and longing will from now on be sated

by the beauty and joy your loving mind created. 

Your children will be joined in an eternal choir

to praise your Son for saving us from the fire.

Each of us will be seen, inside and out,

and our minds cleansed forever from doubt.

As you draw us in, we will know and be known,

free to cast ourselves at the feet of your throne.

Finally, at last, we will enjoy eternity in your presence,

from which there will be no loss or severance. 

I will see you face to face and hear your voice like thunder,

which will be as familiar as my own, but still fill me with wonder. 

by Alyssa Carlburg

One Warm Christmas Eve

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For one of our cross-cultural workers, the wonder of Christmas is that it comes even though it isn’t wrapped in childhood memories.

One warm Christmas Eve . . .

This still doesn’t make sense to my Midwest American senses. Most of my memories of Christmas Eve involve cold weather. Bundling up to go caroling and returning to drink hot chocolate and eat Christmas cookies, going to the Christmas Eve service at church, having soup and homemade bread for dinner, followed by a drive to look at all the Christmas lights on the neighboring houses. Always with family, friends, good food and music.

But here in Indonesia, we have definitely experienced the Christmases that you hear about from someone else’s exotic vacation—sunny blue skies, tropical breezes, swimming, drinking cold lemonade. We enjoy salad and ice cream on a warm Christmas day, wear flip flops and tank tops, celebrate with the local people and with new, and often, very different food.

Last Christmas – our second here – we broke down and bought a fake Christmas tree. This was tough for me since I grew up with a fresh-cut tree every Christmas, so I embraced yet another change in our celebrations. As we welcomed a new family to the field and helped them get settled right before the Christmas season, we lamented the fact that they were celebrating their first Christmas in a place that wouldn’t even be their home a few weeks later.

We discussed various changes that we would experience during the season as we were away from “home.” As we talked about missing Christmas traditions in different parts of the world, my new friend gently stopped me with a poignant question: “Isn’t Christmas really about focusing on Jesus . . . no matter what?”

Needless to say, wherever we are in the world – America, Germany, Indonesia or anyplace in between – we take joy in knowing that once again we can celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ (as well as his life, death, resurrection and triumph over sin and death)!

Despite the company, the weather, the traditions, songs, foods or type of tree, we can still choose to celebrate the greatest gift of all: Jesus Christ! We pray this will always be our attitude for this season of Advent.