June Bugs in February by Lorraine Triggs

Dr. Jack Van Impe, president of Jack Van Impe Ministries International, died on January 18. A popular revival speaker among independent Baptist churches like my childhood church, Dr. Van Impe was an end-times, accordion-playing preacher and televangelist. He had memorized an incredible number of Bible verses and never shied away from calling people to believe in Jesus.

I first heard about the news of his death on my former church's Facebook group. It buzzed with activity throughout the day as people posted tributes to Dr. Van Impe. I immediately thought of June bugs.

My parents modeled and taught respect for church leadership, especially our pastor, especially guest preachers. They didn’t complain about his suit, his haircut, his personality or mannerisms in the pulpit. Nor could we. We could, however, weigh in about the content of his Sunday sermons. Ours was a lively, opinionated dinner table.

Unfortunately, my parents didn’t have a contingency plan for June bugs.

Every June, the first real week of summer vacation, Jack Van Impe and his lovely wife, Rexella, held revival meetings at the church. At my church, revival meetings were meant to stir our hearts to go and win others to Jesus. Dressed in our Sunday clothes, we crowded into the non-air-conditioned auditorium and stirred the hot stuffy air with cardboard fans, courtesy of the local funeral home. We looked out the windows, wondering if the gathering thunderstorm clouds would knock out the electricity, wondering if Jack Van Impe would even notice if the lights went out. We chewed on lint-covered peppermint candies my dad doled out from his suit pocket. We refrained from kicking the seats in front of us and each other.

One revival meeting night, my sisters and I were suddenly focused on the man in the pulpit. A June bug was flying around Dr. Van Impe’s head. He brushed it away once, twice, three times. It returned. Van Impe kept preaching and waving. My parents gave up on keeping us still.

We began cheering for the June bug as it flew closer and closer to its mark. Would the June bug fly into his mouth? Would he swallow it? Choke on it? Stop preaching?

Then it happened. The June bug flew into his mouth.

My parents, my two sisters and I gasped.

Jack Van Impe spat that June bug out of his mouth, pointed a finger at the five of us and shouted, “Satan sent that June bug to distract you!”

All of us dissolved into laughter. So much for a revival that night.

These days, Satan probably sends a lot more—and a lot less—than June bugs to distract me. Ones that aren't flying into a preacher's mouth but lodging in my mind and heart. This morning, the lesser distractions include the The New York Times app, the pile of laundry, the overdue library book in the stack on the nightstand and our barking dog—all designed to distract me from 1 Peter and morning prayers.

Lesser distractions buzz around all day. Not really sins—yet. It doesn’t take much, however, for annoying distractions to morph into greater distractions: anxiousness or frustration or impatience with people who just don’t want to change or difficult situations that go on and on and on. How many things can I check off my list before lunch? Why can’t the person snap out of it and see things my way? Why doesn’t this issue go away so I can have my much-deserved peace and rest.

The accumulative effect of these distractions is my sure and steady gaze on the present, the here and now.

"Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" (Matthew 6:26)

I barely look up from my downward gaze—so concerned about the June bugs in February sowing and reaping and gathering—at the birds of the air, let alone the heavenly Father who feeds them.

But one look at the clear blue sky of God's Word and I know. It's a grace, then, as I swat at my own version of June bugs to look further up and further in and to hear Jesus’ words, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)

All the Things We Think We Know by Wil Triggs

U.S. Department of Agriculture - 20111110-OC-AMW-0012\, Public Domain

When I was growing up, healthy living was different than it is now. This is true for you, too, no matter your age.

For me, a suntan used to be a good thing, a thing of value. Today, does anyone even use the term without thinking of skin cancer?

Before SPF was added to sunscreens, we basically slathered some form of oil or butter onto our skin, went out into the sunlight and soaked in as much of it as my friends and I could. Coppertone—just the mention of it summons up the smell of summer with little bits of sand here and there.

The old food pyramid was uniformly accepted as authoritative. Here is a look at a visual representation from the past.

The best part of this food graphic is really a dream come true for all of us: “In addition to the basic 7 . . . eat any other foods you want!” (Exclamation added by me.)

Today, it’s more complicated. Studies show health benefits of chocolate, coffee, red wine, marijuana . . . and there are other studies that say the exact opposite. My family doctor told me recently that if we are going to eat a steak, choose one with a lot of fat and stay away from the leaner cuts.

We think we know what’s good for us, but in 40 or 50 years, some of what we think is healthy is going to be as comical for the people of that time as this “basic seven” poster is for us today.

People eat all kinds of things that didn’t used to be available at grocery stores. Who knew about kale chips, avocado oil, rembutan, cauliflower pizza, kombucha . . . the list goes on. The search for alternative foods with a healthy spin, exploring the world for new and different food is not new.

“Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.”

This quote comes from a television commercial for Grape Nuts cereal. The speaker was a man named Euell Gibbons, who was a nature writer, cookbook author, health explorer and proponent of healthy eating in the 1970s. A precursor to the current foraging movement, Gibbons was featured in National Geographic magazine in discovering food in the least likely places.

One other thing about Euell Gibbons. He died.

Wikipedia reports his cause of death as “a ruptured aortic aneurysm, a common complication from Marfan syndrome.” No matter what Euell ate, he couldn’t escape the genetic disorder he was born with. Kind of like sin for all of us.

After Gibbons died, John McPhee wrote in The New York Times:

“Euell Gibbons had begun learning about wild and edible vegetation when he was a small boy in the Red River Valley. Later, in the dust-bowl era, his family moved to central New Mexico. They lived in a semi-dugout, and almost starved there. His father left in a desperate search for work. The food supply diminished until all that was left were a few pinto beans and a single egg, which no one would eat. Euell, then teenaged and one of four children, took a knapsack one morning and left for the horizon mountains. He came back with puffball mushrooms, piñon nuts, and fruits of the yellow prickly pear. For nearly a month, the family lived wholly on what he provided, and he saved their lives. ‘Wild food has meant different things to me at different times,’ he said to me once. ‘Right then it was a means of salvation, a way to keep from dying.’”

As people, we get excited about food, diet and exercise discoveries, fads and fashions. We put faith in these things. We live so much of our lives by the studies we hear related to diet and environment. People can easily get entranced by the adventure of discovering new food and trying to find a kind of salvation in the things we eat.

Ultimately, there is only one food that satisfies, only one that saves.

Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. . . . 

So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. . . . Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. . . . I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Let’s try something this week. Think about the time it takes to buy groceries or prepare a meal, the time spent reading about the food you’re baking or blending or putting in the Instant Pot or whatever; think about the time you use to follow posts about health and food and exercise or other forms of busyness. And then, take at least some of that time to reflect on the Bread of Life and the eternal feast he’s preparing for us.

We can start this Sunday at the table—the Lord’s Table—as we take the bread and drink the cup and remember that this is his body broken for us; this is his blood shed for us. Extend that reflection at our thoughts about all the things we eat through the week.

This is the one thing, or should we say person, that we can know for sure. He is our food, our light, our only hope.

Give us this bread always.

A Place to Pray by Cheryl Warner

“My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (Psalm 42:2 NIV)

And the related question: Where can I go and meet with God?

Where can I go where we won’t be interrupted? Where can I talk out loud or cry or sing or sit silently and listen to him?

Meeting with God happens regularly at home, and Jesus contrasted the fruitless, attention-seeking public prayers of the hypocrites with secret prayer at home that God values. “When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:6). Spending time alone with our loving Father is reward in itself.

Yet home is filled with distractions, making prayer difficult. And what about when I’m traveling and won’t see my front door for weeks? Or when I have something pressing to talk to him about and long for deep, intimate connection? Where can I go and meet with God?

Sacred prayer space can be found tucked away in public places. In the Munich Airport, I discovered a simple, quiet prayer room supplied with Bibles and hymnbooks—the perfect place to pray, to sing, to worship. It was a refuge from the stresses of travel as well as a prompt to pray for the people from many nations passing through the airport that day. I left refreshed, having met with God.

Praying in an empty church with no one else there but the Holy Spirit provides a respite from the frantic pace of life. When we lived in Vienna, my friend and I used to meet in the city for apple strudel and then go “church sitting.” We’d slip in the back of an ancient place of worship and be still for a while, then whisper our prayers to God about our children, our husbands, our church, our joys, our sorrows. Those prayers are still being answered.

Memorable moments of meeting with God have happened in these places: the pine forest near our home in Ukraine; on planes, looking at the clouds below and gaining more of a heavenly perspective; on a grassy knoll overlooking the lake at Blackwell Forest Preserve; under a birch tree on the front campus of Wheaton College; in a quiet corner of College Church.

Some prayers are shouted at full volume, fueled by raw emotion that holds nothing back. This may happen when I’m alone in the car, bellowing at God because only he can hear me and I know he’s not shocked by my tirade. Or, Bible open, I borrow the words of psalms that express how I feel. “Hear me, O God, as I voice my complaint.” (64:1) “Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief.” (31:9) I’m learning that my angry prayers actually drive me closer to him because he already knows my heart and wants me to come as I am, no pretending, no hiding. I long to be heard and seen and loved, even in my mess. Then he quiets my heart and comforts me, “like a weaned child with its mother.” (131: 2) At those moments, he brings me back to a place of trust, with deepening intimacy and security.

In the last year, most of my tirades had to do with my dad’s recurring skin cancer on his scalp and one violent surgery after another. I yelled at God about the holes in Dad’s body and the wounds in his flesh. In a breathtaking moment, Jesus reminded me of the holes in his own hands and feet and thorns in his brow. He knows. He cares. He suffered for us, and he suffers with us. He came close in a new way that day.

During a trying season of sitting by Dad’s hospital bed, the hospital chapel was a place I could slip into for a few minutes each day to pray for him, to pour out my heart to God and tell him why my soul was downcast and disturbed. (Psalm 42:8) Kneeling before the cross, again I saw that Jesus knows firsthand about physical suffering and he weeps with me. Taking communion with a handful of believers there on a Sunday morning reminded me that Christ’s body was broken for me, and by his wounds I am healed. He gently lifted my eyes upward with an invitation to put my hope in God, for I will yet praise him. (42:11)

Prayer and trust multiplied as others came with me to the chapel and we shared our burdens and lifted up the one we love. We prayed in other times and places, to be sure, yet there was something powerful about interceding with intentionality and purpose in that place with wooden pews and stained glass and echoes of a century of prayers.

The extravagant privilege we have of coming before the Almighty himself, who is seated in the throne room, is staggering. The Book of Revelation shows us an astonishing picture of the Lamb standing in the center of the throne, with the twenty-four elders falling before him in worship, “holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” (5:8). Those prayers have reached the throne room, fragrant and precious to God.

One Sunday by my dad’s bedside in the hospital in Texas, we read together from Hebrews 4:16: “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” That afternoon I watched a video of the service from our church in Ukraine and heard that same verse read in Ukrainian. What a gift, connecting Scripture with a very immediate physical need in an American hospital and with our dear brothers and sisters in the worldwide church. Mercy and grace, help in our time of need—available to all believers in all times and places.

My sweet dad is now present with the Lord, no longer suffering, and singing praises like never before. And the Lord is also present with us, comforting and loving us in our grief. A graveside is another powerful place to meet with God and rest in the hope of the resurrection.

How grateful I am to be able to approach the throne of grace and meet with God behind closed doors at home, or anywhere, adding my prayers to the golden bowl of incense and finding mercy and grace.

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 5:10-11)

A Pastor Prays for His People by Dr. Wendell C. Hawley

Prayer Number Ten

Lord of power, Lord of grace,

All hearts are in your hands, all events are of your sovereign will.

You alone do all things well.

Sometimes we don’t think all is well.

We pray for the change of hearts in others,

But maybe it is our own hearts that need your transforming power!

Perhaps the failures we condemn in others are really our own failures.

Perhaps the situations are distorted because of the log in our own eye

even as we complain about the speck in another’s eye.

If this be the case, help us to focus on what you want to teach us . . .

the changes needed in our hearts.

Convicted by your Holy Spirit,

enlightened by your holy Word,

enabled by your powerful presence,

assured by your matchless grace,

I confess my sins, my failures, my foolish independence, my lovelessness,

believing that

If we confess our sins, you are faithful and just to forgive our sins and

cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Thank you, God, for complete forgiveness.

Now I pray honestly and earnestly, God of great power: Control my tongue.

Keep me from saying things that make trouble;

from involving myself in arguments

that only make bad situations worse,

only cause further alienation,

and make me think everyone else is at fault except me.

Control my thoughts.

Shut the door of my mind against all envious and jealous thoughts.

Shut the door of my mind against all bitter and resentful thoughts.

Shut the door of my mind against all ugly and unclean thoughts.

Help me to live in purity and love.

Henceforth, may my focus be on the completion of your work—your good

work—in my soul.

Then, Good Shepard, I shall not be ashamed on the day of Jesus Christ.

Amen

Walking the Dog on a Snowy Morn by Wil Triggs

It has been my habit the last couple years to listen to our daily Bible readings using YouVersion on my phone. Most days I do this as I walk my dog Pongo. It’s a good app that helps focus my mind on something higher than my dog doing his business.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. But sometimes my mind wanders. Or things happen. Or both.

One day recently Pongo was pulling on his leash extra hard. It could have been because he saw another dog or a person walking in the street in a mummified get-up to keep him/her warm. Or maybe it was that super-fit couple who always nod at me with kindness that borders on some kind of pity because I’m not in shape or I’m too old or I have to walk my dog in my resale shop layers instead of their heat-retaining, moisture-wicking, air-permeable gear.

I don’t remember which of those it was that prompted Pongo to pull. I half-tripped. Then my old-school earbuds that still needed to be plugged into my phone became disconnected.

The Bible-reading voice kept going. Uh oh. I was losing my place. So I stopped and plugged back in. Now then. Where was I again?

I wasn’t sure. Were we in Acts still, or had we jumped to Genesis?

No, it hadn’t skipped; it was still Acts where Stephen was preaching his sermon as I listened that early, windy, dark morning. Interesting, I half said out loud to Pongo as we walked, that Stephen was talking about some of the very same passages that the reading plan was covering in the Old Testament.

It was true. After turning a couple more corners, there we were in Genesis reading some of what Stephen had just been preaching.

So I went back and listened again. What an amazing sermon it was.

I mean, Stephen really put it out there. What an amazing presentation of Jesus and the Old Testament—penetrating, scathing, convicting.

You stubborn people! You are heathen at heart and deaf to the truth. Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit? That’s what your ancestors did, and so do you! Name one prophet your ancestors didn’t persecute! They even killed the ones who predicted the coming of the Righteous One—the Messiah whom you betrayed and murdered. You deliberately disobeyed God’s law, even though you received it from the hands of angels.

In our circles, an amazing sermon, we hope, would result in revival breaking out. In the context of Acts, the response was different. The people listening to Stephen understood what he was saying.

Now our introduction to the human hero of Acts—Paul—is that he’s not even Paul yet. Not only was Saul there, but he understood, like the others, what Stephen was saying, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit.

The crowd picked up stones to kill, and Saul was good with it. Acts doesn’t say that he picked up stones himself, but he heard, he watched and he approved.

Stephen’s words, his preaching, really got to everybody. I can’t imagine that Saul didn’t think about them. And after he became Paul, surely he remembered.

But it wasn’t instant; things got worse before they got better. Saul had to be struck blind. No screen time. It was just something that had to sink in over time, with fasting and a lot of prayer, helped by the Holy Spirit.

How could the church possibly trust this persecutor?

Years ago I interviewed a pastor/elder at a church in the former Soviet Union. He started attending church as an informant to the atheistic Soviet government. His task was to keep an eye on the church and make sure nothing got out of hand. Think of him as a spy, well, sort of. It was just a normal part of their church life to have people like this in their midst.

While he was monitoring the church, the Holy Spirit was infiltrating his heart. Eventually he came to faith. This man fought it. He didn’t really want to believe. I mean, this was professional suicide. But when it came right down to it, that didn’t matter. Because the little mustard seed of faith was growing.

The truth of the gospel became undeniable. Jesus wanted him. And he was amazed himself that Jesus was real and the gospel was true. So he repented.

The church was skeptical to say the least. Everyone knew who he was. But over the coming years, the church grew to believe his conversion and trust him.

Real change can really happen, even to the worst of our enemies. Our hope is not in human might but in divine blessing and change. Enemies can become brothers.

Our Sovereign God does the transformation, not us. Do we believe it?

After walking the dog that day, I came back home to start working on the prayer sheet for the persecuted church. Headlines from all over:

• China: Early Rain Pastor Sentenced to 9 Years in Prison

• Colombia: Pastor Murdered in His Home

• India: Church Demolished by Suspected Extremists

• Kazakhstan: Pastor and Wife Imprisoned

• Kenya: Al-Shabaab Murders Three in Bus Attack

• Laos: Abusive Husband Demands Return of Children

• Nigeria: Boko Haram Kidnaps Pastor

• Vietnam: Church Spared from Demolition

Hostile crowds all around us, Sauls everywhere, anger, hatred, terrorism, martyrdom.

Here in Wheaton, our lives are more sanguine. I certainly don’t want to equate our struggles with people forced to flee their homeland or to witness the death of a loved one. Still, in our own way and in our effort to witness, it’s challenging. What about people in our lives who simply seem not interested in Jesus? Maybe they get hostile, or perhaps they’re too polite to come out and say it. There are thousands of ways to say “no thanks” with body language alone. Still, mustard seeds sprout.

As I finish the Friday prayer sheet, my dog jumps up next to me and curls himself around my side. He lets out a sigh. I know how he feels.

God, thank you for being in the business of turning people from Sauls to Pauls. May you do that work near and far.

We believe; help our unbelief.

Home by Terri Kraus

Even when life is good, during seasons when all seems right with the world, I sometimes still experience unnamed longings. They are deep, elusive feelings, as if there is something that I know I need but is not within reach. When I sit with them, I come to understand that these longings are not for something physical, some material thing that I lack. Nor are they longings for something from another person, such as love or acceptance. I believe I am longing for a somewhere.

I am an extremely curious individual, and, since a little girl, have always wondering what’s over the next hill. In all my travels, I’ve been to many beautiful places and have seen a lot of “must see” things that had been glowingly described in my pre-trip research, but I’ve yet to find the perfection that completely lives up to my expectations. I pictured Rome’s Trevi Fountain as being out in a lovely bucolic setting, but found it confined between closely huddled ancient buildings on a narrow pedestrian street in the middle of the busy city full of the buzzing sound of Vespas speeding by. I remember the first time I saw DaVinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, after years of anticipation from my art history studies. I was so surprised that she is a relatively small painting, when in my mind’s eye she should be a lot bigger, and she was displayed well behind a rail and a thick sheet of protective glass. The experience was somewhat, well, dissatisfying. Some of Europe’s most famous well-preserved historic villages I’ve looked forward to visiting came with tacky souvenir kiosks and were often overrun by tourists, somewhat tarnishing the pristine places shown on travel sites’ photography.

I’ve come to realize that I’m longing for something this world cannot give me, that I’m a soul yearning for where I truly belong. I am longing for home.

Madeleine L’Engle, in The Rock That is Higher, says, "We're all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”

But Psalm 90:1-2 tells me,

Lord, through all the generations

you have been our home!

Before the mountains were born,

before you gave birth to the earth and the world,

from beginning to end, you are God.

As a believer, I am not completely at home here. I’m a pilgrim just passing through. The Bible calls me a sojourner, an exile, and tells me that my citizenship is in heaven. Hebrews 13:14 say, “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” I have been created for a different place.

I know my true home is with God. The temporary longings of my soul can only be satisfied in Him. He is my eternal shelter—now, and in the life to come when I arrive, finally fulfilled, in the place he’s preparing for me—my perfect home, that will never disappoint.

Describe your idea of home. What are you longing for that this world cannot give you?

Lord, You’ve Been Our Dwelling Place (lyrics) by Tommy Walker

God of glory, God of wonder, God of beauty

You reign through all eternity

Before the mountains

Or the earth had been formed

You were our everlasting Lord

You’ve been our home

You’ve been our shelter safe

For young and old

To generations past

We stand in awe of a God so great

We stand in thanks for your faithfulness

O Lord, you’ve been our dwelling place

Visit Terri at terrikraus.com

The House of the Bread of Life by Wallace Alcorn

“In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab...” 

How humilitating it must have been for Elimelech to admit to wife Naomi that the House of Bread had no bread. There in the center of Israel's bread basket, there was no grain in “grainland” (Ephratah).   

Their men now dead, Naomi brought daughter-in-law Ruth back from Moab to find the area once again flourishing, with grain and bread in abundance. Ruth had been redeemed by her kinsman, Boaz, and from their love came Obed. From Obed came Jesse and from Jesse, David. When Samuel, father of the prophets, annointed him in Bethlehem as king of Israel, the village came to be known further as the City of David.  

Then another, Micah, prophesied messianically that a son of David was to be born there: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephratah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.” 

As time was fulfilled, “Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem...” The angel sent shepherds of Ephratah back into town “for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”   

Despite crops in the field, the land was then groaning from the worst famine imaginable. The Ephratah fields were yielding their usual harvest of grain as in the days of Ruth and Obed, mind you, and Bethlehem's ovens were producing a wealth of bread—but the people were yet starving. With full stomachs, their souls were dead. 

But from the virgin womb, that day in Bethlehem the city of David, there was born the son of David, our Kinsman-Redeemer. Some years later, in arid and hilly Galilee, he took a snack of bread and fed over five thousand people. The silly crowds clamored for more bread, which would only perish. Against this, he offered himself: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”  

Yet again, the night he was betrayed “he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” 

We need not journey to Bethlehem in Ephratah for this bread. Our journey is to the House of the Bread of Life.

Christmas Disgrace by Lorraine Triggs

We three girls determinedly walked the six blocks to the Christmas tree lot. We were going to find the perfect tree like we did every Christmas. It was Christmas Eve and the pickings were slim. The tree lot was about to close for the season.

Cue the Hallmark movie. The beautiful young widow and her three charming daughters go to tree lot on Christmas Eve only to find that the last tree had just sold. Up steps the handsome, spiritually sensitive Christmas tree lot owner who just happens to have an eight-foot Balsam Fir and saves the day as snow falls softly from the crystal-clear night sky.

Back to my story.

Our father had died, and then, as if on cue, a week later, our cellar flooded after a storm. We three sisters waded down into the mess and pulled out boxes of Christmas ornaments. Mom had never celebrated Christmas before marrying Daddy. When she saw the damaged but rescued ornaments, we thought she would be happy.

But every ornament we saved was a painful reminder of love found and lost. Never mind. Save them we did. 

So my sisters and I were headed to the tree lot against my mother’s wishes. She didn’t want a tree this Christmas, the first without her much-loved husband and our father. Her grief sat too close to the surface.

We were on our own. If we wanted the tree, then we would have to get it home and put it up ourselves.

When we got to the tree lot, we weren’t exactly charming to the owner as we went through the motions of finding the perfect tree. Too short, too scrawny, too crooked. Most of the trees looked pathetic as we repeatedly told the owner.

In a rush of Christmas charity or an overwhelming desire to get rid of us, the tree lot owner told us to hurry up, pick a tree and we could have it for free. Spurred on by his generosity, we quickly found the tree and sweetly asked if he could tie twine around it so it would be easier to drag home. We could be charming when we wanted to.

The tree helped some, but that Christmas was closer to miserable than merry.

In his Advent devotional, Repeat the Sounding Joy, Christopher Ash writes about the disgrace of Elizabeth and Zechariah—the disgrace of childlessness. Ash writes that their disgrace is a “vivid example of the misery of living in a world under sin and the righteous judgment of God. Every sickness, every sadness, every disability is—in this sense—visible evidence that we live in a world under the righteous judgment of God.” 

Ash points out that we all are marked in some way with Elizabeth’s disgrace, and the “removal of this ‘disgrace’ is a sign of the kindness and mercy of God, as ‘dis-grace’ is swept away by grace.”

My mother’s marks of disgrace that year were widowhood, sorrow, little income, uncertainty. There was no Hallmark Christmas movie ending that year. Fortunately, my mother didn’t need the movie ending to Christmas. And she didn't stay there. In years to come, we shared the joy with redeemed friends and family and of rescued ornaments from the flood. (I still have a few.)

In retrospect, that first miserable Christmas was closer to grace and truth than we ever imagined.

Christmas came because the Savior had come. His grace had removed the biggest disgrace of sin. His grace would remove the disgrace of my mom’s poverty and sorrow, not with a Christmas windfall but with the Christmas affirmation that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Miserable or merry, Christmas comes to us full of grace and truth, full of promise of salvation and righteousness, full of grace.