Faith Venture

“We are called to prove in our own lives that Christ is born.”

I came across that challenge in my reading during Advent. Some people think that all you have to do is say you believe aloud and that you will be saved and all is good. You would not find that in any definition of discipleship.

Jesus challenged us to live as if God were right there with us. Live in the kingdom of God, he called it.

There used to be a phrase making the rounds—if you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

That is looking at that thought from the outside in. If someone followed you around, like say in a spy novel, taking notes of what you did and how you acted, would they suspect that you were a follower of Jesus?

We have passed through Advent and are living the twelve days of Christmas. We celebrated in our own way the commemoration of his birth. Have we once again brought that into our lives from the inside out? Will people we meet and people observing us say, “That person proves there is a God in the way they acted”?

It’s not the megachurch pastor saying good words to thousands while masking a sordid life. It’s each and every one of us through our daily random acts of kindness that prove the birth of Jesus.

The solstice is a point in time when things flip. Ancient people even laid out their villages with stakes that would show the movement of the sun marking the seasons. By four days after the winter solstice, they could tell that the days were getting longer. Warm weather was coming. It was a reason for celebration.

Today is winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. Many are celebrating a “longest night” worship tonight. A recognition of the hardships and grief encountered in the past year and the hope of better things to come.

My wife and I can’t say that we’ve had hardship and grief. Life is different moving to a new community in the pandemic. She has forged a small social connection with the women in our cul-de-sac. I have none. All my contacts are long distance.

Still, we moved about 200 miles north. So the days are almost an hour shorter here than where we came from. I think that has some impact on us. I’m reading more detective fiction than normal.

It is no coincidence that Christmas comes at that point in the northern hemisphere calendar when the days are noticeably longer bringing hope for better days. Christmas is the celebration of the coming of Jesus also bringing hope for better days. To all the literalist Biblical interpreters out there—no, this is not a birthday celebration in the sense that we mark the day of our birth. This is not Jesus birthday. But it is a celebration of a birth that totally changed the world.

And we pray it changes us—for the better.

Wisdom is the perfect good of the human mind; philosophy is the love of wisdom, and the endeavor to attain it. The latter strives toward the goal which the former has already reached.

Seneca

The Christian Bible contains a significant amount of wisdom literature to complement history and prophecy. Check out the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Scriptures, for example. In the Christian part, check out especially James, but also Peter and some of Paul. Jesus’ teachings often come from Proverbs and other wisdom teaching.

Taking an aside—we are approaching the end of the year. A good way to start your new year is to read the Proverbs throughout January. 31 chapters, 31 days, a chapter a day. A solid foundation for the new year.

This concept from Seneca intrigues me. I would translate it from his first century experience and point-of-view and language like so: God is the perfect good of the universe; contemplation and service show the love of God; following Jesus is the endeavor to live in oneness with God.

This formulation leaves something to be desired. Yet, I think it captures my attempts to verbalize this concept of loving God and desiring to live in the Spirit.

In this final countdown to Christmas this year, let us live with anticipation of the coming of God to the world.

I have returned home to below freezing temperatures after four days in sunny and warm Florida. This is my second business trip since February 2020. Once again I am reminded of how many nice people there are in the world.

These people are the professionals—engineers, technicians, managers—whose role is maintenance and reliability of equipment. Think huge turbines and motors that provide power. Or equipment that manufacture the pharmaceuticals you take or the car you drive or the gasoline in your car. All week there were polite, helpful people.

We made connections. We discussed problems and solutions and got to know new people and renew old acquaintances.

It’s too bad that the news we feed our minds with from social media or TV lead us to believe the world is filled with loud-mouthed, violent, hateful people.

Then I thought, what if one of these people didn’t do their job correctly and your electrical power went out? My house is heated with natural gas. The house cools to a certain temperature and a device tells the furnace to fire up. But, with no electricity, the blower doesn’t work.

The furnace supplies a lot of heat, but it has nowhere to go.

Sounds like many Christians that I bet we know. They are all fired up, but to no good use.

Perhaps their churches could be like this conference where everyone is nice to others. They make connections and discuss problems and solutions helping each other out. The people are curious desiring to learn new methods and technologies and products. They learn how to lead teams. And we say good-bye agreeing to meet again at the next conference.

They spread the warmth to others.

Go spread a little warmth. And if you are a little chilly, I pray that someone enters your life for a bit offering to spread a little warmth your way.

Do you ever take time off? Get away from everything? In the Hebrew Scriptures (Christians call it the Old Testament), God introduced a concept of Shabbat. Take a day off a week. Take a year off out of every seven.

I am listening to a man called Jerry Colonna being interviewed on the Tim Ferriss podcast. He is talking about how he was feeling burned out and learned to take a 2-month sabbatical. They discussed how hard it can be to take that step away from everything to do something different.

It isn’t all sitting in mediation. He travels. Reads books he wouldn’t necessarily have time for. Contemplates where he is going in life.

He talked about clients who can’t even take one weekend day off. They think.

Some people cannot even take time during the “Christmas to New Years break.”

If you are not on a cycle that includes breaks, you should consider beginning a Shabbat cycle. Perhaps just a day to begin. Maybe you can figure out two weeks. Then two months.

Yesterday, one of the keynote speakers told us that we have the power to choose to be a leader. We have the power to choose what kind of leader we will be. We can choose to be a jerk. We can choose to be motivational.

We cannot always choose our circumstances. But we have the power to choose our response.

We don’t like the way some people celebrate Christmas or “the holidays.” We can choose to celebrate in our own way refusing to let other people determine our mood.

We came to Florida for a winter vacation. It was a chilly, rainy day. We can say, “We came here, but it rained.” We can choose to say, “We are on vacation, and it rained, so we…”

One of my favorite lines from the movies is spoken by the old Crusader in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. After the bad guy dies in agony after drinking from the wrong chalice, he says in a flat voice, “He chose poorly.”

Don’t choose poorly. Choose life.