How Does God Work In The World?

If you’re like me, there are specific moments in your life where you wish God would have showed up and… [fill in the blank]. When my little 13 year old brother started to go blind, we wanted to know why God didn’t step in and restore his eyesight. When Ben died later that summer due to a brain tumor, we wondered – with deep bewilderment – why God didn’t show up and save our dear brother’s life.

Watch the news. Hear the statistics. Listen to painful stories of loss, abuse, neglect, violence, mayhem, terror, insanity. With all that is wrong in the world, how is God working? Is God doing anything? I’m still not immune to the bewilderment. Like a lot of people, we wonder at how God can be God and let so much evil wreck so many lives.

But: a thoughtful and prayerful reading of the Gospels in the New Testament reveal a Jesus of Nazareth who speaks to the pain that perplexed the people of Israel, Rome, and now us. In the gospel according to Mark, there is a short parable where Jesus explains how God works in the world:

“This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain – first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

Obviously this parable doesn’t explain everything, nor is it meant to. But it does shed some important light on the questions the people of Israel asked while under the brutal rule of Rome. How God works in the world is attuned to the ways of the earth.

Just as a sower accumulates wisdom of seeds and soil while using diligence to prepare for the needed harvest, the sower must also trust in the mysteries of the seed and soil. So with us, as we work with God in Christ among the real world. The wisdom and diligence we attain from doing God’s will adds to the flourishing of each other, while we trust the Lord with what we don’t understand.

We want peace on earth? God wants it more. We want everyone to flourish in life? Jesus wants it more. I don’t know all the reasons for why Rome oppressed Israel or Ben died of a tumor. But I do believe that in both cases God was present with his people, in the midst of the suffering, always working through our sowing of faith, hope and love to produce a harvest that heals.

If we learn anything from this parable, Christians are ones sent out together into our community as little Christs to sow good works everyday, for the nourishment and flourishing of all, in the face of evil, amidst our own suffering, done with unstoppable love.

You Become The Christmas Music You Listen To

Ha! If that were literally true, we’d see a lot more talking snowmen and flying reindeer around town. But on another level, it’s profoundly true. What we hear shapes who we become.

My mom always use to say, “Garbage in, garbage out; but good stuff in, good stuff out.” This applied to the music I listened to, the movies I watched, and the friends I hung around with. Parents, researchers, and advertisers know that words and music are powerful shapers of identity.

During these weeks leading up to Christmas, if you’re like me, you’ve had a lot of holiday music playing in the background – maybe in the car while out shopping, or home while baking or doing chores, or at work while getting stuff done. Because it’s background noise, we don’t think it’s a big deal. But: if we became the Christmas music we listened to, what kind of person would we become?

Jesus has a cryptic parable in the gospel according to Mark, in it he says: “Consider carefully what you hear.” Maybe this is starting to sound petty or picky to you. Jesus, though, goes on to say in the parable: “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you – and even more.” This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s also really similar to the laws of thermodynamics. You get out of it what you put into it – but more so.

What you listen to and who you become will be made evident – it will be experienced by the people closest to you, and by those affected by the decisions you make. “Consider carefully what you hear.” This is about more than just what kind of Christmas music you listen to, obviously. Jesus wants you to hear him, his words of hope, joy, peace, and love.

If we don’t put much of our listening-heart into Christmas, we won’t hear much from Christ. Same goes for our relationships. But it gets worse: if you don’t listen, it’s not just that you lose out, you lose what you had. This isn’t an arbitrary punishment, this is how it works in real life. When you don’t listen to people, it’s not just that you don’t hear them, you start to lose them.

Jesus opens up the parable with this observation: “For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.” He’s saying what we know to be true: if you don’t listen to people, if you don’t listen to God – it’ll come out sooner or later, in this lifetime and after.

You become like who you listen to, and what you listen to. Of course it’s fun to listen to songs about old St. Nick and chestnuts roasting over an open fire, of a holly jolly Christmas and how it’s the most wonderful time of the year! But we want more than fun in our holidays, we want joy that lasts, peace that endures, hope that prevails, and love that heals. There is music towards this end, “if anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.”

In this fourth week of the Advent season, a time when we remember that Christ will come again to finish what he started at Christmas, let us keep our ears open to the words of the Lord.

May we do the work of listening, of loving, of being light.

May the measure we use on others be measured back on us – and more so.

How To Be Joy To The World

I’ve got a few favorite Christmas carols. How about you? (And no, Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, and Here Comes Santa Claus does NOT count! haha!) One of my favorites is O Holy Night– I really love belting out the second verse:

“Truly He taught us to love one another
His law is love and His gospel is peace
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother
And in His name, all oppression shall cease
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we
Let all within us praise His holy name.”

I also really like O Little Town of Bethlehem (this version by Kari Jobe) and Hark the Herald Angels Sing (especially by Charlie Brown and Friends). My second favorite carol, though, is Joy to the World especially the opening lines:

“Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.”

Here we are, the third week of Advent, remembering that Christ will come again someday to break our chains, and that all creation will sing sweet hymns of joy – even heaven and nature will sing with us! We don’t realize how potent, powerful and real are the lyrics we’re singing! All that is glorious and beautiful about Christmas will be fulfilled when Christ comes again –  it’s what we work towards everyday. Merry Christmas indeed!

To use an agricultural metaphor, we might think of Christmas as a perennial kind of plant, the ones that come back year after year. But it seems to me that Christmas is more like an annual, a flower that has to be replanted every year in our hearts. We change so much from year to year – so much happens in those twelve months that at least for me, I need to replant the seeds of Christmas inside, again.

Jesus tells a parable in the gospel according to Mark about a farmer who went out into his field to sow seed. Some of the seed falls on the hard ground, where birds come and snatch it away; some of the seed falls in rocky ledges, where it grows but with shallow roots, such that it can’t withstand the heat of the sun.

Some (seeds of Christmas) fall in among thorny ground, and the worries of this life, deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things come in and choke it out. But some of the seed falls on good soil, and it produces a bountiful crop of joy and peace for all.

For some of us we hear the Christmas songs and they go in one cynical ear and out the other. Some of us listen to the carols, but once the season is over, we forget about them until next year.

Others sing the songs with gusto, but then when suffering strikes, we sadly wonder – are the lyrics rooted in reality? But some hear the carols with a trusting heart, and then work to live them out in this world as it really is, all year round. Who are we this Christmas?

How to be joy to the world? Believe what you sing! Live what you sing! Hear Christ’s word to you in these Christmas hymns. Join in song and soul with others who hear these words of joy, accepting them as true, and become open to a heaven and nature that sings!

What’s a Christmas hymn that you could really pay attention to this season? One that you could let the gospel of Christmas get sown into your soul? What’s one carol that you could dwell in, inspiring you to work Christmas joy into your everyday life?

How to be joy to the world? Make room in your heart for joy- even if it’s space for a seed – for the poetic, lyrical, beautiful words of Christ Jesus the Lord, by which he teaches us to love one another.

“Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.”