Since the 1930′s, my grandmother’s family has gathered together on Christmas Eve night for food and fellowship with one another. We continue that tradition today, and each year we end the evening with a reading from Luke 2 and a brief devotional. Since my husband is relatively new to the family, he was invited to lead the devotional this year, and I adored it.

Ike has never written on my blog before and not many of you know him, so I thought I would share his devotional words with you this Christmas. I think it will give you a little insight into the kind of man he is and his heart for the Lord. I also think his thoughts will provide you with a different kind of perspective on the Virgin Birth. They certainly did for me.

So without further ado, I’m handing it off to my husband, Ike. Wishing you a very merry Christmas from the Millers!

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Often we begin the Christmas Story with Luke 2: “In those days a decree went out from Caeser Augustus that all the world should be registered.” However, I want to back up and begin the story where Luke begins.  Luke begins not with the story of the birth of Jesus, but with the story of another birth, which he uses to set up the birth of Jesus and its significance: Luke 1:5-17.

What we have here in this first chapter of Luke is the story a child born for a purpose. He is to prepare people for the coming Lord.  This child, John the Baptist, is the one who will prepare the way for the Lord.

The God of Zechariah, who we meet in these verses, is the God whose trademark we see from the beginning.  This is the God who works miraculous births.  We see this from the beginning with Abraham who is promised to be the father of a nation, and yet his wife Sarah is barren.  Then we see this with Isaac and Rebekah, and also Jacob and Rachel.

By allowing these barren women to have children, God was making a way where there was not a way. Where there is a wall, God puts a door.  Where there is a forest, God makes a path.  Where there is a cliff, God makes a bridge.

In opening Elizabeth’s womb in Luke 1, God is reminding His people that He still works miraculous births, and because we know what happens in Luke 2 we know that he is crescendo-ing toward the most miraculous birth of all, The virgin birth of our Lord.  Although the virgin birth often seems strange and random, this history of miraculous births show us that the virgin birth is not out of no where. It is the climax of a history of miraculous births that have all foreshadowed the birth of Jesus.

This is why the theologian Karl Barth insists that the first two chapters of Luke are not to be divided and disconnected such that the first chapter is about the birth of John and the second about the Birth of Jesus.  Instead, the birth of John the Baptist belongs to the birth of Christ. The birth of Christ is what makes sense of John’s birth. John the Baptist is born for the purpose of preparing the way for Christ the Lord.

Therefore, the birth of John the Baptist reminds us first, that this God is a God who does not abandon his people. This God knows that we not only need a way, but that we need our broken and weary hearts and minds prepared for the way. The advent of Christmas is the time of this preparation as we anticipate the coming of the Lord.  Luke 1 reminds us that from the very first Christmas, God did not leave his people without a preparer.

Second, the Christmas story reminds us that we have desperate need of this God.   We have desperate need of this God because this God provides a way where there was not a way.  He knows that without him we are up against a wall, that we are wandering in a forest, and that we are on the edge of a cliff. And so He does not leave us without a savior.  In this way, Christmas shows us that Jesus did not just die for the salvation of all people but that he was also born for the salvation of all people.

And finally, the Christmas Story reminds us that the birth of Jesus is the reason, the purpose and the hope of all of our births. It could be said that history is but a series of births and lives and deaths.  If so, it is Jesus’ birth and life and death that make sense of this seemingly purposeless history.

Each of our births belongs to his, because his birth gives ours a reason.  Our lives belong to his because his life gives ours purpose, and our death belongs to his because his death gives ours hope.  This is why the angel said that first Christmas,

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Lk. 2:10-11)

This question occurred to me today as I listened to a Christmas song about Mary. I don’t know why I’d never thought about Mary having morning sickness, but then again, I’d never given much thought to her pregnancy at all.

Artists rarely depict Mary in her pregnancy, a reality which may explain my lack of thought on the matter. When I visualize Mary she looks a lot like the marble statues and oil paintings that populate so many cathedrals and museums. She is a neat and tidy young woman with porcelain skin, dainty features, and an angelic face. I can see her now, sitting at home with her pregnant belly, perfectly poised while she waits for her baby to arrive. Her hands are folded in her lap as she sits by the fire and gazes up into the night sky, pondering things in her heart.

It is strange that Mary is rarely remembered in her pregnancy, and NEVER in a realistic way.  Artists never portray Mary with stretch marks and a vaguely nauseous expression. But why not? It it too human? Is it too real? Is her actual experience not worthy of contemplation?

If Mary was only 14 years old, pregnancy must have been frightening. I can’t help but wonder what she was thinking as her body changed and she felt tired and sick. God had told her the “good news” of Immanuel, yet her physical circumstances were anything but good. Her out-of-wedlock belly was a scarlet letter of shame, and her body was out of control. As she dealt with morning sickness, heartburn, and fatigue, as she lost control of her body, was she confused? Was she angry? Did she feel as though her body and her health had been hijacked? Did she ever question God’s goodness? Did she ever wonder if He was really in control?

Pregnancy is a deeply intimate experience.  Those nine months constitute an incredibly personal journey for a woman, so it is remarkable to think about them through Mary’s eyes. I can’t help but wonder if she felt less like a married woman anxiously awaiting the birth of her child, and more like a teenager who, today, might wander into a crisis pregnancy center for help.

The story of Mary’s pregnancy is a compelling one. It epitomizes the spirit of Advent, the waiting in darkness with the light of hope ahead. But Mary’s story is also a powerful reminder about the nature of calling. God called Mary to something good, but she did not experience that goodness for quite some time. In fact, she bore the negative consequences on her body in the most personal way. She lost her reputation and sacrificed her body. Throughout her pregnancy, there must have been days when the call seemed anything but good.

Calling is a lot like that. Sometimes God calls us to things that are immediately difficult or even counter-intuitive. Sometimes God calls us to sacrifice our reputations for His glory. And sometimes we might experience obstacles, such as illness or financial hardship, that lead us to wonder if God really called us at all.

Pregnancy is such a powerful analogy for the hardship of calling. A mother sacrifices and labors and gives the most personal parts of herself to bring forth new life. That is what Mary did, and that is, essentially, what many of us do every day. If you find yourself in the morning sickness part of your call, or if those labor pains are becoming unbearable, remember Mary. Her sickness and her fatigue, though difficult, were also symptoms of the growing life inside of her.

I don’t know about you, but I am historically horrible about observing Advent. I owe this neglect primarily to the fact that, for a large portion of my life, I didn’t even understand what Advent is. Growing up, I associated Advent exclusively with the candlelit wreath at the front of the church. Each year four special children were chosen to read Scripture as our pastor lit the candles, and one year I made the cut. That was Advent.

As I grew older, I left the mainline tradition and began attending more contemporary churches. That’s when my knowledge of Advent took a sharp decline. I don’t know if this is true of most contemporary churches, but I have never attended a contemporary church that observed Advent in any sort of discernible way. In fact, this is probably my one and only beef with contemporary worship (which, ironically, has nothing to do with contemporary music as a form): Contemporary worship services rarely follow the church calendar. Year in and year out, we sing Chris Tomlin and Hillsong and the same general line-up that we sing the rest of the year. Christmas is no exception, so Christmas music that prepares our hearts and minds for the season is also noticeably absent.

But I digress. All of that to say, Advent has generally held little to no meaning in my life. In fact, it tends to be the season of my life that is the MOST hectic and least focused on quieting my spirit before God. As a student, it is the time when the semester is winding down and projects are due. As a consumer, it is the time I least enjoy shopping though I am most likely to go to a mall. The weeks leading up to Christmas are crazy and busy, so whenever I hear “Silent Night” wafting through the air at Crate and Barrel, a part of me suspects the writer had a rather different Christmas experience than I do each year.

Advent, which means “coming,” is a time of preparation, but it’s not the kind of preparation that has come to define American Christmas culture. It’s not the “Martha” kind of preparation in which we scurry around buying presents and decorating our homes just so. It’s not even the kind of preparation we usually witness before a wedding day, even though a wedding is also an important metaphor in the Christian church.  Like the Christmas season, wedding preparation is a rather frantic affair as the bride and a fleet of helpers scramble to make sure every detail is in place.

Now that I think about it, we rarely observe the kind of preparation for which Advent calls. Perhaps we don’t have a category for that kind of preparation, a preparation that is less about preparing our surroundings and more about preparing our hearts. Advent preparation, unlike the kind with which we are most familiar, is spiritual preparation. It is a preparation marked not by doing but by waiting.

Not only does waiting seem antithetical to preparing, but it is also hard, which is probably why so few of us do it well. We would rather distract ourselves with activities and gimmicks than be patient. But Advent preparation is forged in the waiting. It is hoping in the darkness. It is a time when we look at the broken world around us and remember that we need not despair, because Christ came to us once, and he is coming again. As the Assistant Dean of Duke’s Chapel, Craig Kocher, once preached,

There is nothing wrong with being cheerful and positive, but Christian hope is distinctly different from cheeriness or a positive attitude. Christian hope locks its steely eyes on the devastation of the world around it, and readily acknowledges that life may not be too sunny. Christian hope does not bury its head in yuletide cheer and artificial lights, but like an Advent wreath glowing stronger and brighter each week, this hope gamely pushes its way into the brokenness of the world, clearing a path in the wilderness so the true light might burst into the darkness. The coming of God in the Christ-child at Bethlehem’s manger is not the sentimental vision of a Hallmark greeting card, but a revolution, an act through which God takes back what belongs to him. Christian hope is the conviction that God has given us everything we need to take part in Isaiah’s vision of justice, healing and liberation, for ourselves and for others, the fullness of which is Jesus, the light of the world.

As we prepare for Christmas during the season of Advent, we choose to be a people of hope in a world that is hopeless. However, to be such a people requires more than the mere acknowledgement of Jesus’ coming; it requires that we live out that hope, that we become fundamentally different from the world. It requires transformation, as we no longer conform to the patterns of this world. But that transformation only occurs when our preparation is of the spiritual kind.

During the season of Advent, silent nights–and silent moments, for that matter!–are few and far between. Even so, I intend to seek them out this year. I want to be quiet before God and prepare myself for the coming Light that pierces the darkness. God already came near once, and I know He will come again, but how I prepare for that coming makes all the difference.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once praised the influence of her father, saying,

“I just owe almost everything to my father [and] it’s passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.”

I love this quote because it goes to show the power of a father investing himself in his child. What I love even more about her words is the simple, everyday-ness of her father’s investment. While the grand memories of learning to ride a bike or going to a baseball game with your dad are very special, they are not the stuff of fatherhood.

A man is most influential in the life of his child through his every day presence and intentional, often sacrificial investment in her formation. That is the standard set for fathers by Jesus himself. Both 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5 speak of the husband as the head of the family, and that headship is to be a reflection of Christ’s headship over the church. Shockingly, Christ exemplified his responsibility in two inglorious ways: First, by becoming human and dwelling among us. Second, by sacrificing himself for us on the cross.

Those two actions define Christ’s headship over the church and set a counter-cultural standard for husbands and fathers. Ironically, Christians often miss that contrast as often as the world around them. The language of daily parental presence and self-sacrifice is more often used about moms than it is dads. Mothers are frequently reminded of the eternal value of their sacrifice as they stay at home with their children and endure the day-to-day banalities of parenting. Motherhood is both a blessing and a cross to bear, so mothers are exhorted to take it all in joy as their special calling in life.

I think that message has its place, but it is a lop-sided one at best. If some women are called to motherhood, then their husbands must have a similar calling on their lives. When a child enters this world, it is the responsibility of both parents to nurture and raise her, not just the mom. In fact, the language of motherhood as a “special calling” did not emerge in the church until 150 years ago. As much as we use this language to exalt the role of mother, it simultaneously downplays the role of the father.

Fathers do have a special call to model Christ in the home, one that entails presence and sacrifice. It is not always a glorious calling by the world’s standards, and it may involve setting aside earthly ideals about manhood in favor of a more Christo-centric one. But it is glorious to God and invaluable to their children.

A father is therefore a parent first and a provider second. Financial stability is important, but it is secondary to the investment of faith and love. Jesus certainly provided for the physical needs of his followers, but his greatest gift to us was himself.

I say all of that as the daughter of a man who invested himself in me profoundly. In many ways we had a traditional family structure: My dad worked every day until 4:30, and my mom taught piano lessons in the afternoon. My mom was responsible for a lot of the chores around the house while my dad managed our finances, fixed things that broke, mowed the lawn, etc. However, my childhood is not marked by the presence of one parent more than another. I can count on my hand the number of times my dad was gone on business. Every weekend was spent doing fun activities as a family.

But most importantly, my dad took a special interest in shaping my brother and me into people of character who honored God with our lives, and he did this through his own daily actions. My dad is a tough guy who survived a childhood with alcoholic parents and the premature death of his own father. He is a self-made man who is as smart as he is strong, but you’ll never hear him brag about it. His strength and wisdom instead manifest themselves in the forms of humility and gentleness. If, for instance, my dad ever responded to me in anger, he was quick to apologize and ask forgiveness, even if I was in the wrong.

My dad also believed that God granted him financial success only for the purpose of blessing others. As a result, my parents were very generous with their money and my dad instilled in us that same priority of stewardship.  Even today, my dad writes a financial blog that is primarily about the economy but is peppered with spiritual insights on stewardship from his own Christian faith.

My dad always put us before himself. Always. In fact, he does this to a fault. Sometimes he worked so hard to plan the perfect vacation for us that he would become utterly distraught when the slightest thing went wrong. When I was younger I found this tendency kind of annoying, but the older I get the more I recognize it for what it was: An urgent desire to make us happy and show us his love.

Now that I am a grown woman, my dad continues to shape the way I live out my faith on an almost daily basis. He holds me accountable if my lifestyle choices do not match up with the gospel. He believes in me more than anyone else in the world (except my mom) and regularly affirms the gifts God has given me. He helps me to be a better wife to Ike by sharing lessons from his marriage to my mom. He is unconditionally supportive of the choices we make as a couple, but he is also there to help whenever we need it.

The woman I am today is a beautiful blend of both my parents. Both of them were ever-present in my childhood, and I continue to discover new ways in which their careful sowing into my heart is bearing spiritual fruit.

Reflecting on all the things my dad has taught me, they can be summed up as this: What I have learned from my dad is both the character and magnitude of the love God has for me. That is, I believe, the ultimate calling on every Christian father–to point his children to the love of the heavenly Father by the way he lives his life. In doing so, fathers make faith a little bit easier for their kids to embrace. We can conceive of the perfect, unconditional, sacrificial, self-investing love of the Father because we’ve experienced a shadow of it here on earth.

So on this Father’s Day, I want to say THANK YOU to my dad for being the kind of father for whom I am intensely proud. Thanks for investing yourself in your kids at a time when many fathers in our country have not. And thanks for loving and serving God with a consistency that gives me something to aspire to. I am so fortunate to have a dad like you, and I pray my generation will reclaim the calling of fatherhood to a vision that looks less like worldly masculinity and more like Christ.

Well it’s hard to believe that Lent is over and my blogging fast has ended! Thank you to all the wonderful people who supported me in my decision. It meant a lot to be loved and missed, but I am also confident that it was the right decision. Not only was it a tremendous time of rest, but it highlighted some especially stubborn areas of sin in my life.

In particular, this time has taught me how slyly and sinisterly my motives run askew. I discussed this some in my last post, but it became all the more clear over the last 40 days. Every time someone commented on how much better my writing would probably be as a result of this fast, I secretly thought, “I sure hope so!” Obviously the simple desire to write well is not wrong, but at the heart of this desire is an ugly self-interest. A part of me wanted to use this fast, which was meant for God, to serve my own gain.

However, this self-serving orientation did not begin with my blog. It has been entrenched in my heart throughout the course of my life. And while God has certainly refined me over the years, I am still very much interested in my own personal success, placing God’s glory at a distant second. For a blog titled “She Worships,” it seems as though a name like “She Worships Herself” would be more fitting.

Fortunately, there is hope! While this season has opened my eyes to the stubbornness of my pride, I have also seen growth. For instance, God used this time to remind me of my own unimportance. I know that sounds a little self-deprecating, but for a pride-addict like me it was a healthy antidote. When I stopped blogging, the world did not fall to pieces and I continued to have meaningful ministry opportunities as well. Whereas I used to agonize over missing a few days of blogging, I now have a healthier perspective on my role in God’s work. Yes, I matter, but only as much as any other member of the Body of Christ.

Finally, this fast has reminded me why I need the Gospel every day. Even the good things in my life, the things I love to do and the gifts I enjoy to exercise, can become prisons of my own making. If I am not careful to remember that I am free in Christ and that there is NOTHING I can do to add to my salvation or improve my value, I will slip into a production driven ministry.

Freedom is a reality I have to fight for. To some of you, this blog fast may have seemed silly or difficult to relate to, but my writing idolatry is attached to something deeper and more dangerous. My heart perpetually gravitates towards bondage and destruction, and I take that temptation very seriously. If I don’t keep it in check, my freedom in Christ will be freedom in name alone.

That is why my main take-away lesson from the last 40 days is to change my writing schedule. It may not look much different on the outside, but I’m going to stop writing for the purpose of blog traffic. I’m going to stop writing so that fresh material is always up. Instead, I will only write when I feel free to, not because I have to. And I will only write when the Spirit provokes. If I have something to say, then I will write. Otherwise, I’ll let it lie. It’s funny how inaction can be the most powerful action you take.

Thanks again for all the love and support! I love my wonderful blog community!!

I could not have timed this any better. Four years ago today (I am writing this on Tuesday, March 8 ) I posted my very first blog on She Worships. I created the blog as a place where Christian women could be challenged to dig deeper in their relationship with God. Since that first day, not a week has passed without publishing at least one post. While on vacations or trips overseas, I still managed to publish steady material each week. I even had guest bloggers posting during my honeymoon. That’s how committed I was.

But committed to what? That is the question I have been asking myself lately. As I mentioned in my last post, I did a lot of soul searching over the weekend and I didn’t like everything I found. On Saturday I spent time reflecting on Matthew 16:24-27, the famous passage where Jesus asks, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” I knew that I had been neglecting or “forfeiting” my soul, but for what? What had I been working to gain at the expense of my spiritual health?

As I pondered and prayed over that question, the answer came to me quickly and clearly: ministry success. My greatest drive, the thing I think about more than anything else, is to be effective in ministry. Given my personality type, I have a very competitive drive and if I had landed in the corporate world I would have climbed the ladder mightily. But I didn’t. I’m in ministry. So I work hard on my calling and I do all that I can to push ahead. For a writer, that means networking and promoting my blog and writing for as many publications as possible. The aim is to get my material out there. The more people who read my writing, the more effectively I am using my gift. In theory.

Unfortunately, somewhere in the midst of pursuing my calling, I stopped writing for God and started writing for me. And for that I have paid a price. My writing has become production-driven and me-centered. You may not have noticed it in the material itself, but those elements were embedded in my motives. What started out as a service to God became a service to self. The “idol factory” that is my heart had perverted an initially Christ-centered work.

So what now?

That is the question I found myself asking God once I realized my mistake. In verse 24 of Matthew 16, Jesus instructs his disciples to “deny” themselves and follow him. Whatever they were striving after instead of God, whatever they sought to gain instead of a healthy soul, they were called to deny. If my blog is the means to my “gain,” what would it look like to deny myself in this area?

As I prayed over this question a frightening thought came to mind: “Don’t blog during Lent.” Immediately, I panicked. My blog has finally gained momentum and I now write more frequently for high traffic sites. I feel as though I’m just on the cusp of something big. I can’t afford to take a break from writing! This just isn’t a good time for me.

But if this isn’t a good time, when will there be a good time? Next year? In 5 years? Ever? If I don’t have time now to stop and place my passion at God’s feet, if I am unable to hand it back to the one from whom it came, then when?

That’s when I realized that I have to do it now. I need to take a break. I need to spend time examining my heart and remembering why I started writing in the first place. I need to prune out my false motives and purify them. And most of all, I need to surrender myself to God’s love and grace so that my heart is captured by Him in a way that breathes life into my writing and directs me toward His glory, not my own.

For some of you it may be difficult to understand how tough a decision this was for me. But there is still a part of me that feels stupid for doing it. Whenever I think about the passage of 40 days without a single update on here, all I can see is my blog traffic plummeting. It hurts me to think about it. But the fact that it hurts shows me just how necessary this break is. My heart isn’t breaking for the ministry opportunities lost, but for the loss of readership I worked so hard to build. It’s me I’m hurting for.

So this is me signing off until Easter. You might run across my writing in other online locations because I either wrote pieces that are scheduled to be published during Lent, or I have deadlines I am committed to uphold, but this blog will be silent. I will miss sharing my heart, my joys and my struggles, but God has more important plans for me right now. If I’m not writing for Him, then I don’t want to write at all.

Love you all, and see you after Easter!

Lately my husband and I have fallen into a bit of a bad habit. In fact, even as I write this post I’m engaged in the very act of it! We are sitting on the couch, next to each other, both on our laptops with the television on, not speaking. We are together, but we aren’t interacting with each other. And unfortunately this happens a lot. At the end of a long day we are both exhausted and barely up to the task of talking, so we opt for the low maintenance quality time of studying together or watching t.v. together  (although the “quality” aspect of it is rather questionable).

I think this is a pretty normal problem for couples, as well as friends. It is amazing how less intentional I became with friends after we moved in together. Rarely did we schedule meals to catch up and chat. We just assumed that, by the very nature of living together, we knew what was going on in one another’s lives.

The thing is, intimacy is not a passive activity. It’s not something that just happens on its own. In fact, it can require a lot of hard work, which means we’re likely to take the path of least resistance instead. Rather than put in the effort of getting to know someone, we either make no effort at all and spend our time on less demanding activities, or we find less demanding, superficial ways of bonding.

When I realize this has happened to a relationship in my life, I work toward re-centering it. Oftentimes, that means cutting out the activity that has distracted us from genuine closeness. For example, one of the ways that women bond with one another is through gossip. It may start out with the best of intentions–concern about a friend, perhaps–but it easily morphs into something dishonorable. Another way that women bond is through shopping together, which is not in itself wrong, but it can reinforce bad habits or encourage materialistic temptations.

In both cases, the strength of those friendships might benefit from an intentional pruning of the unhealthy behaviors. When it comes to shopping or talking about others, the women might consider taking a break. In the case of me and my husband, we might consider turning off the t.v. for awhile. In each of these scenarios, the relationships would benefit from a period of fasting from the habits that stifle their growth.

Fasting is perhaps one of the most unobserved Christian disciplines in all of Scripture. I suspect that one of the main reasons Christians brush off fasting is because we don’t understand it. It is difficult to discern any direct correlation between fasting and discipleship. Why would God ask us to abstain from something like food in order to seek Him? Is prayer not enough?

Given this confusion, I hope the above illustrations are a helpful way to conceive of fasting. Of course, there is more to fasting than intimacy with God–such as obedience–but one of the chief functions of fasting is to temporarily remove distractions from our lives in order to focus more intentionally on Him. Through fasting, we remove those low maintenance security blankets that have gradually morphed into God-supplanting idols. And food is a significant one. What else do we depend on more for our very existence? What sustains us more on a daily basis? Is there anything more basic than this most basic necessity?

Practically speaking, most of us depend more on food than on God. For that reason, fasting from food is a relational wake-up call. We might be following God but we are depending on food, and that mindset has an effect on our relationship with Him. So we fast, on occasion, to check our hearts and remove anything that has grown to a place of unhealthy standing between us and Him.

With all of this in mind, I encourage you to consider fasting during Lent this year. It begins in just over 2 weeks (Ash Wednesday is on March 9) and extends until Easter. It is a Christian tradition to fast during this season, but many believers observe the practice as an act of sheer willpower, a test of their personal discipline. They approach it the way someone might approach running a marathon, not growing in intimacy with the Lord.

To resist this pitfall, I encourage to spend the next 2 weeks searching your heart and studying your life. What stands between you and intimacy with God? What does your heart gravitate towards instead of doing the hard work of cultivating a relationship with Him? Once you have pinpointed an area that needs to be pruned, resolve to fast from it during Lent and choose an accountability partner in the process. Maybe the two of you can fast together! Ultimately, the challenge is not whether you can last the whole 40 days, but whether you are closer to the heart of God afterward.

And if you have any particularly creative ideas for observing Lent, please share them here! I’m still praying about how I will observe Lent this year, and I would love to hear from you.

I know this sounds like a ridiculous question. The answer should be pretty obvious, especially for a Christian. But before you assume that you already know the answer, and before you click out of the window because Christmas is over and this post seems a little late in coming, you should know that I have a reason for posting this now. Just stick with me for a moment!

But first, let me back up to the weeks leading up to Christmas. This year I happened to come across a number of articles and television programs that “exposed” the elephant in the Christmas room–namely, that Jesus was not born on December 25th. In fact, he wasn’t even born in December. Judging by the information given to us in the Bible, he was probably born some time in the Spring.

While seemingly a scandal of the Christian faith, this “mistake” was made for a reason. The specific date of December 25 was chosen by earlier Christians in an effort to subvert popular pagan rituals associated with the day. An article on Christianity Today’s website explains:

“The eventual choice of December 25, made perhaps as early as 273, reflects a convergence of Origen’s concern about pagan gods and the church’s identification of God’s son with the celestial sun. December 25 already hosted two other related festivals: natalis solis invicti (the Roman “birth of the unconquered sun”), and the birthday of Mithras, the Iranian “Sun of Righteousness” whose worship was popular with Roman soldiers. The winter solstice, another celebration of the sun, fell just a few days earlier. Seeing that pagans were already exalting deities with some parallels to the true deity, church leaders decided to commandeer the date and introduce a new festival.

Western Christians first celebrated Christmas on December 25 in 336, after Emperor Constantine had declared Christianity the empire’s favored religion.” (“Why December 25, Elesha Coffman, Christianity Today, Aug. 8, 2008)

Why not aim for accuracy? Why choose a date so glaringly wrong? As one atheist critic put it, “What religion celebrates the birth of its leader 4 months early?” Although the answer to that question is partially provided by the above excerpt, the full answer comes from understanding WHY Christians celebrate Christmas at all. After all, Christians have not always done so.

To understand why Christians celebrate Christmas, you have to understand the role of Christmas in the larger life of the church. If you were raised in a Baptist or non-denominational church, then you probably grew up celebrating TWO main holidays each year: Christmas and Easter. However, you are also in the minority. For hundreds of years, Christians have observed numerous seasons of Christian holidays all year round. You may have heard of terms  like “Advent” or “Lent” without knowing what they meant, but they compose what is commonly known as the Christian Year.

The Christian Year is a calendar of Christian seasons that trace the life of Jesus. It begins with Advent, the season of preparation for Christmas. And as the Christian Year progresses, Christians remember the life of Christ. They prepare for his birth, celebrate his life, prepare for his death, mourn his crucifixion, and celebrate his resurrection. As Christians, we are called to follow the path of Christ, and the Christian Year is a brilliant way of helping us to do so. Every single year, Christians throughout the world embark on a year-long, spiritual journey that follows the life of Jesus. With the help of the Christian calendar, Christians train themselves to remember Jesus’ whole life, and live it out accordingly.

I love this idea, and it’s one of the old church traditions that I wish evangelical churches embraced with greater consistency. It’s also the reason I am posting this today. Having just finished Christmas, we sit near the beginning of the Christian Year. Rather than take a break until Easter, this season sets us on a journey of remembering the scope of Christ’s life.

So if the Christian Year sounds interesting to you and you would like to learn more, below is a brief outline of what it means. If you would like to join your Christian brothers and sisters who trace the path of Christ each year, I encourage you to start out by picking one season this year to study and learn more about. A good one to choose is Lent, which you may have already heard about. During Lent, Christians prepare for Easter by fasting and repenting over the sin that crucified Christ. Lent is a dark season, but it is also a powerful one!

Remember, the old traditions of the church may feel unfamiliar but they were a valuable part of discipleship for ancient Christians. You may not celebrate all the same traditions today, but Christmas is a vestige of those long-established practices. We celebrate Christmas, not because December 25th is a special day, but because we are forgetful people who lose the beauty of grace if we do not intentionally remember it each year. Christmas is just one day in the year-long discipline of remembering.

The Christian Year (excerpted from christianitysite.com)

• Advent: The four weeks before Christmas are a preparation time for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus. The color purple symbolizes penitence and a readiness to learn. The first Sunday of Advent is the Christian New Years Day.
• Christmas: (Nativity of the Lord) Remembrance of the birth of Jesus Christ, the coming of Creator God into the midst of the human family. The colors of gold and white symbolize a festival time.
• Epiphany: January 6, through the beginning of Lent, remembers the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. The word itself means “revelation,” and the day not only celebrates God’s self-revelation through the birth of Jesus but also commemorates God’s revelation to the Gentiles (as symbolized by the magi).
• Lent: This 40 day event is a time of fasting in imitation of Jesus’ experience in the wilderness of temptation. It is a time of preparation for Easter and  of repentance by people.
• Holy Week: The days between Palm Sunday and Holy Saturday before Easter are known as Holy Week. These days observe the events in the life of Jesus from his entry into Jerusalem through his crucifixion and burial. Palm Sunday is sometimes called Passion Sunday because of the tragic events of the week to come. The primary observances of Holy Week are: Maundy Thursday (remembering the Last Supper); Good Friday (the passion and death of Jesus); and Holy Saturday (the burial of Jesus).
• Easter: The principal and most ancient festival of the Christian church year is Easter. It is a celebration of Christ’s resurrection, his victory over sin and death. Each Sunday is also a weekly celebration of the resurrection of Christ.
• Pentecost: This is a celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit to a gathering of believers shortly after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. The festival is observed 50 days after Easter. The day takes place on the Jewish day of Pentecost, thanksgiving for the first fruits of the wheat harvest. Pentecost signaled the birth of the Christian church, which has in turn led some Christians to celebrate the day with baptims. Pentecost begins on Sunday and continues through the Saturday before Trinity Sunday.

Last year I wrote a post that opened the debate about whether or not to tell your kids about Santa Claus. The topic was actually just a minor part of the post itself, but in that short paragraph I managed to totally scandalize my parents, who later left me sarcastic voicemails about how unfortunate my chidlhood must have been. Apparently my declaration that “When I was little and discovered that my parents had been lying to me my ENTIRE LIFE about Santa Claus, I felt very much betrayed” was a little dramatic. So, my apologies to my WONDERFUL parents who I love more than words can express! But, the problem nevertheless remains: To Santa or not to Santa?

Last year a number of readers posted some helpful comments, and feel free to post more of your family traditions here now. However the reason I am revisiting this topic is that I just read a great article by Mark Driscoll on this very issue. In it he describes his own family’s tradition, and his conclusions not only reflect a lot of my own feelings on the subject, but he also seems to reach a truly balanced solution. Here is one helpful excerpt:

Tis the season . . . for parents to decide if they will tell the truth about Santa.

When it comes to cultural issues like Santa, Christians have three options: (1) we can reject it, (2) we can receive it, or (3) we can redeem it.

Since Santa is so pervasive in our culture, it is nearly impossible to simply reject Santa as part of our annual cultural landscape. Still, as parents we don’t feel we can simply receive the entire story of Santa because there is a lot of myth built on top of a true story.

So, as the parents of five children, Grace and I have taken the third position to redeem Santa. We tell our kids that he was a real person who did live a long time ago. We also explain how people dress up as Santa and pretend to be him for fun, kind of like how young children like to dress up as pirates, princesses, superheroes, and a host of other people, real and imaginary. We explain how, in addition to the actual story of Santa, a lot of other stories have been added (e.g., flying reindeer, living in the North Pole, delivering presents to every child in one night) so that Santa is a combination of true and make-believe stories.

We do not, however, demonize Santa. Dressing up, having fun, and using the imagination God gave can be an act of holy worship and is something that, frankly, a lot of adults need to learn from children.

What we are concerned about, though, is lying to our children. We teach them that they can always trust us because we will tell them the truth and not lie to them. Conversely, we ask that they be honest with us and never lie. Since we also teach our children that Jesus is a real person who did perform real miracles, our fear is that if we teach them fanciful, make-believe stories as truth, it could erode confidence in our truthfulness where it really matters. So, we distinguish between lies, secrets, surprises, and pretend for our kids. We ask them not to tell lies or keep secrets, but do teach them that some surprises (like gift-giving) and pretending (like dressing up) can be fun and should be encouraged. We tell them the truth and encourage them to have fun watching Christmas shows on television and even sitting on Santa’s lap for a holiday photo if they so desire. For parents of younger children wanting them to learn the real story of Santa Claus the Veggie Tales movie Saint Nicholas is a good choice.

To read the whole article, which includes a brief history of the person of Saint Nicholas, click here.

So what do you think? Agree? Disagree? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Well it’s the end of the semester which means it’s crunch time for my school work! I had fully intended to sit down and write a new post tonight, but about 60 seconds after opening my lap top I realized that wouldn’t be possible. I have got to go to bed! Instead, I am re-posting a blog I wrote this time last year. I think it’s a fitting message during this season of Advent, and I hope it will be a source of life-giving reflection as you seek to keep the proper focus this Christmas. And I promise to have a brand new post up in a few days!

On a completely unrelated note, one of my former Bible study girls is currently in Haiti helping with the cholera outbreak, and they are in desperate need of financial aid. If you’re interested in helping the people of Haiti during this Christmas season, click here for more info.

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Luke 1 is where we find the traditional story of Mary’s virgin pregnancy. In this chapter, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary and informs her of God’s plans. We then read Mary’s response in verses 46-55, where she proclaims what is often referred to as “Mary’s Song.”

If you read almost any commentary or book about this portion of Scripture, you are going to find one thing: A glowing commendation of Mary’s faith. In the face of such unexpected news, Mary bursts out in song proclaiming the goodness of God. She makes statements such as:

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (v. 46-47)

“From now on all generations will call me blessed” (v. 48)

“For the Mighty One has done great things for me” (v. 49)

She is only 13 or 14, she could be cast out of her family and abandoned by Joseph for being pregnant out of wedlock, and she is facing life as a single mother. Yet she responds with such amazing worship of God! Clearly a faithful woman deserving of praise.

However I have to admit–I can’t really relate to that Mary. According to most interpretations, she is too faithful to be afraid. That’s why we admire her so. But where is the humanity in that interpretation? Even Jesus felt fear in Gethsemane. Was Mary really impervious to the doubts that most of us would have experienced in her situation?

I don’t think so. And here’s why:

It’s important to know that Mary’s Song is not original to her. She is actually repeating Scripture found in 1 Samuel 2, also known as Hannah’s Song. Though not identical, it is obvious that Mary is intimately familiar with the passage and is calling on it now.

The reason this is significant is that Mary’s Song is not an eruption of spontaneous praise. There words and thoughts are not necessarily an overflow of her heart. She is instead speaking of what she knows the be true about God, even if she doesn’t feel it.

Mary is engaging in an act of discipline. She is actively conforming her heart to her mind. She knows God has been faithful in the past and will continue to be so in the future, but it will probably take her heart awhile to catch up with that knowledge. Until then, she preaches to herself the truths of Scripture. They comfort her at a time when her entire future is totally unknown.

That is a Mary I not only relate to, but can learn from. Mary’s faithfulness is not displayed by her blind joy but her discipline and perseverance in the face of fear and doubt. Tim Keller once described this very type of Scriptural meditation as follows: “Meditation is an inward dialogue with oneself…It means taking your heart in hand, reasoning with it and exhorting it until it becomes engaged in blessing and rejoicing in God. We are not helpless before our emotions, sometimes almost pummeling them into submission.”

The Christmas story is one of hope, yes, but it’s also a story of waiting. Mary was given a promise, but the fulfillment of that promise was yet to come. We will often find ourselves in that same place. God has promised us hope and salvation, but we still live in a world of brokenness, pain and frustration. So as we dwell in this place of waiting, we must respond as Mary did–meditate on the truth of God that we have in Scripture. The same God who delivered the Israelites and the same God who delivered Mary will also deliver us. We must be actively speaking that truth into our hearts every day.