When Christmas Comes to Annoying People

Two things have heightened my awareness of others’ bad habits—Christmas and childbirth. Both bring relatives near. 

Aunt Linda, the chain smoker, who never covers her mouth when she coughs suddenly becomes intolerable. She is outdone only by Uncle Phil who needs a surgical mask when he talks to keep spit from flying into the potato filling. Someone needs to cover their offenses--for the sake of dinner and the baby. 

I had my first baby in East Africa. I left my village a month before she was born to give birth in better facilities than what was available locally.   When I brought her back to the village, we were surrounded by a friendly mob of dozens of villagers. They had been my friends, but now, all of them seemed far less appealing than Aunt Linda and Uncle Phil.

Their kids suddenly looked like the ones on the Save the Children commercials with snot and flies on their noses.  My neighbor, who I spent time with every day had recurring scabies. Up until the baby came, I never really thought about the danger of catching it. But now she stood there, scratching, beside all the women who shouted childcare instructions to me. I remembered that most of them practiced community breastfeeding, and I clutched my kid.  There I stood, and there they stood, arms outstretched and making my baby the business of the village.

Minding the Business of Christmas

I wonder if that’s what Mary might have felt, having just given birth, to this long awaited son—this little miracle promised just to her and Joseph. They had a rough start, but everything had turned out okay.  Then a band of ruffians burst into their world—shepherds, perhaps scratching their itchy skin.

Scripture says they told everyone what the angels had said-- this baby represented good news of great joy for all people. Everyone who heard was astonished and amazed. Mary’s baby had not only become the business of the village—but the business of the world. The shepherds said that He would bring great joy to all peoples.

The shepherds left Mary and Joseph, still excited, praising and glorifying God. But there’s a little verse between their coming and their going—it says "but Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart."

What did she ponder ? Most likely she thought about all the ways this little infant would grow up to become a leader great enough to bring great joy to all people. 

I had reflective moments at the tiny bush hospital before my daughter was born. An acquaintance of mine named Laura had given birth to a little girl a few days before me. Her baby was perfectly formed and full-term, but her lungs kept filling with fluid. The doctors were beside themselves because they didn’t have the medications to deal with the problem. They would drain her lungs, and we would pray, and her lungs would fill back up again.

After two days the baby's heart stopped.  I remember walking in the nearby missionary graveyard of the compound and noticing that most of the headstones were little ones—more missionary children had died in this place than adults. I didn’t understand why God would ask people to give up everything to serve Him only to lose their children as a result.  I was too afraid to ask whether it would happen to me. The thought was more than I could bear.

A few days after my daughter was born I saw Laura at the mission commissary. I wanted to sneak away but she saw me—me with my baby, alive and well, and hers having just been buried. Laura made a b-line for me—putting her hand on my arm and looking me in the eye she said, “Nan, it is okay to be happy.” 

I’ll never forget her gift. It was an invitation to rejoice from one who was broken to one who was whole.

What Mary heard the shepherds say was true for Laura in that moment. Jesus was her joy in the midst of her brokenness.  

The business of Christmas is us

Mary would one day lose her son in an unthinkable way--it would have been too much to bear had she known from the beginning. Instead, that first Christmas morning Mary did what we all want to do; she embraced joy. 

I’m not a Christmas person. I don’t like the dinners with Aunt Linda and Uncle Phil. I can be easily annoyed by the inconveniences and expectations, particularly of people I do not prefer.  But these intolerant traits of mine reveal that I’m like my African friends.

I may be put together on the outside, but on the inside, under the mask, I'm a child, hopelessly assailed by snot and flies.  I have recurring scabies of the soul—a disease that I cannot relieve on my own terms.  What's more, for every Aunt Linda and Uncle Phil in my life—I am one of them for someone else. I am needy and grievous in ways that you may not be able to clearly see—and if you are really honest, you'll know that to one degree or another, you are too. 

Our joy is that God has made this son of Mary my business and your business and He invites us to open our arms to Him just as we are. We know how He became great joy to all people. He is the cure for our diseases. He brings hope to the brokenhearted, and He is the light of the world--and that is something to celebrate.    

Three Hacks to Understand the Bible for Yourself

You don’t have to go to church to hear good Bible teaching. You may, in fact, hear or read the best Bible teaching outside of church. Christian books, radio, television, and the internet provide us with more Bible exposure than ever before.

Yet, we may be the most Bible illiterate generation in our history. How can this be? 

One possibility is that we have become spiritual consumers who don’t believe we can feed ourselves. Our spiritual food is digested, processed and spoon fed to us by someone else. 

Good Bible teaching is needed. It is part of discipleship. It affirms what we believe. It challenges us to walk more closely with Christ—and it should also make us hungry to search the Scriptures ourselves. 

Below are three principles that will help you to understand God’s Word for yourself:

 1.      Trust Scripture to explain itself.  We all know of media outlets that take portions of what people say—a phrase out of context—and twist words to mean something other than what was intended. Be careful, because even popular Christian teaching can do this too. We tend to remember what sounds good to us without checking to see if it’s really true.

When Paul wrote in Philippians 4:13, for example, that  “I can do all things though Christ who strengthens me.”  He didn’t mean that he could become a millionaire or fly off a building in red and blue spandex.  You can know what he meant because Paul wrote in a context that makes the meaning clear. The verse before it (Philippians 4:12) and the verse after it (Philippians 4:14) tell us that he was talking about being able to live with contentment through Jesus whether in abundance or in need. What great truths we miss when we forget about the context! Be sure to determine the meaning of a passage by reading the verses surrounding it.

2.      Ask questions, and then move on. Educators know that something happens in our brains when we hear or read what we don’t understand. We tend to stop right there. How many times have you sat in a meeting or in a classroom and missed 20 minutes of what was said because you were stuck on one thing that you didn’t get? It’s not your fault. Your brain did it. Your question became a road block. 

Here’s how to get around it: turn what you don’t understand into a question. Write it on a piece of paper, and then move on. It’s that simple!

Your brain will allow you to pass, as if to say “Okay. We’ll get that later.” Keep a notebook of questions if you want—or not. Pray for God to show you the answer in His time and see what happens. Part of understanding Scripture is knowing that you won’t understand everything. That is okay!  

3.      Don’t go beyond what is written.  Not every motive or purpose is explained in Scripture. Some teachers and theologians read their own interpretations or guesses into Scripture and teach opinion as if it were fact.  This can color how we understand Scripture when we hear it. Gideon, for example, a judge in the Old Testament, is popularly known as having been a coward, an opinion derived from one verse: 

Judges 6:11:  “The angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press in order to save it [hide it] from the Midianites.” 

Normally when Bible experts draw conclusions that are not clear from the text itself, we tend to think, “Oh, I guess they must be right because they know more than me.” Not true! More than likely, they just heard it from someone else and accepted it as fact, just like you are tempted to do.

Scripture never calls Gideon a coward for hiding the wheat as he worked. If anything, hiding his goods in a wine press from marauding bandits made him a genius. That too, however, is an opinion. It’s best to understand Scripture simply by what it says, not by what it doesn’t say.


* If you are interested in a study, online or in a group that teaches you in simple terms how to read and study for youself, let me know. 

 

© Copyright 2014, Nan Maurer