Gobble, Gobble, Give, Give

I will praise God's name

in song

and glorify him

with Thanksgiving.

Psalm 69:30

 

 Perhaps the key to giving thanks isn't in the thanks. Perhaps the key to giving thanks is actually in the giving. 

 

Perhaps when we give . . . of our time, of our money, of our talents, of our love . . . we aren't simply giving.  We are living out the gratitude in our hearts.  We are living thankfully.  And in that, we aren't simply whispering a "Thank you" to our God.  We aren't simply offering him a fleeting moment of worship as we look around to take stock of the blessings he has provided - family, friends, home, health, food, freedom. 

 

When we live thankfully, we shout from the rooftops and scream from the valleys and holler from the nations that
we will give to serve the One who gave it all for us. 

 

No, I don't think the key to giving thanks is really in the thanks at all. 

 

It's in the giving.  

 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, my friends!  May your extended family not drive you crazy, may the calories not count at all, and may we all find a way to live out the gratitude in our hearts this holiday season.   

 

 

 

 



26,280 Hours

I heard an interesting statement a few weeks ago, and . . . yep, you guessed it . . . it got me thinking.  Aren’t you glad you don’t live in my brain?  It’s like the world’s largest bumper car rink in there – a whole lot of bad ideas racing around in every direction, slamming into each other for no reason, accomplishing absolutely nothing except for causing a terrible headache.

Still, I simply have to share.

There are a TON of words in the Bible.  It’s incredibly thick and the pages are ridiculously thin and impossibly hard to turn.  Aren’t you just dying to read it now?  I should probably work on my sales pitch for God’s word, huh?

Where were we?  Oh yes, a TON of words.  Now the Old Testament doesn’t tell you about Jesus’ life.  Notice I didn’t say it doesn’t tell you about Jesus, because I assure you, the Old Testament is entirely about Jesus – every page foreshadows his very name.  It just doesn’t use his actual name.  

The name ‘Jesus’ isn’t mentioned in the Bible until the New Testament begins with the book of Matthew, and we hear the Christmas story.  You know the one . . . Mary, a virgin engaged to be married to Joseph, receives a visit from an angel.  This angel (Gabriel) tells the young girl she is pregnant with God’s own son and she is to call him Jesus.  Sure enough, about nine months later Mary gives birth to a king, in a barn, and names him Jesus, as instructed. 

The book of Matthew is the first of four books, also known as the gospels, which recount the events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  All four of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, tell the Christmas story in some fashion.  Matthew is the only gospel that also tells us about the three kings visiting their messiah and showering him with gifts, which most Biblical scholars believe occurred not at the time of Jesus’ birth, but more than a year later.  Luke is the only gospel that mentions anything about Jesus during his adolescence.  This happens in the second chapter of Luke when we read the story of Jesus traveling eighty miles from Nazareth to Jerusalem to visit the temple for Passover – an excursion that might not sound like much, until you remember that such journeys were made on foot during Jesus’ time.  So basically, a four day walk to church. 

Although there are four gospels, we don’t learn anything else about Jesus’ life as an infant, child, teenager, or young man from any of them, except that he grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men (Luke 1:80, 2:40).  Instead, the gospels pick up when Jesus is about thirty years old, and all four tell of the final three years of his life on earth. 

There is much to tell. 

There are encounters with a prostitute by a well, a tax collector in a tree, a leper, a bleeding woman, a blind man, and a lady with some very expensive perfume.  There are little children on the lap of a king.  There is a boy with a basket of food that feeds thousands.  There is a walk across water, the calming of a storm, overturned tables in a temple, and a once empty net overflowing with fish.  There are healings and miracles and palm branches and many references to yeast.  There are disciples, friends, family, strangers, traitors, and a donkey.  There are men and women, Jews and Gentiles, and a Roman governor named Pontius Pilate who has not even the hint of a backbone.  There is the last supper, the washing of feet, the prayer in the garden, and the kiss of death.  There is an arrest, a trial, a mob, and utter brutality.  There is a crown of thorns, a cross to bear, a final breath, a veil torn.  There is sorrow and suspense, beauty and betrayal, happiness and heartbreak, torment and truth.  There is loss and life and the single most incredible love of all time.

In three years.

Three years.

Thirty-six months.  One hundred fifty-six weeks.  One thousand ninety-five days. 

Jesus changed the entire world and all of its inhabitants forever and ever and ever for all of eternity . . . in three years.

That just blows the bumper cars right out of my mind.  And I can’t help but wonder . . .

What could I do in three years?

What could you do in three years?

What could we do in three years, in the name of the One who did it all for us? 

How many people could we tell? 

How many lives could we change? 

How many souls could we save?

How many hands could we hold and mouths could we feed and hearts could we heal?  How many of the hurting could we serve and touch and help because we choose to follow the One who showed us exactly how to do it?

Jesus’ life on earth ended before he reached his thirty-fifth birthday.  I don’t know how much time I have left to live on earth – it might be days or decades – but either way, I want to live it well. I want to live it in a way that honors the sacrifice He made for me.  I want to embrace the peace and grace and comfort and freedom His life and death offered to all of humanity.  I want to live each day with my focus on truth and my confidence in the fact that with God, all things are possible. 

Because with God . . .  

A baby born in a barn

To a carpenter and a virgin 

Grew up to be a man

And in only three years 

Became a Savior.

Bella Amare

Have you ever read Romans?  It’s . . .WOW.   I’m not even half way through it, but . . . just . . . WOW.

Romans is a letter to, yep, you got it, the Romans.  It was written by Paul, and can I just say . . . that dude means business.  You want a speaker at your next meeting who is sure to get everyone’s attention?  Paul’s your guy.  You want someone explaining things to potential clients?  Paul’s the fella for the job.  You want a person who can straighten out your employees?  Go with Paul.  Never underestimate a man who spent much of his life on the dark side, only to become a major player in the greatest story of all time.  Man can tell it like it is.

The first few chapters of Romans are a bit of a wake-up call.  Actually, ‘wake-up call’ is far too trivial a comparison.  This isn’t a Bose radio playing your current favorite Christian song as the sun rises, the notes slowly increasing in volume with each minute you choose to cozy deeper under the covers.  It’s more like Paul shows up beside your bed at three am, when you’re still deliriously asleep, and just as you float into a glorious dream about winning a $50,000 kitchen renovation from HGTV that will be completed by Ryan Gosling, Paul begins slapping you in the face.  Over and over he swings, stopping just long enough to let you take a breath and try to shield yourself with your hands, but you’re too slow, and WHACK, he hits you again.  Hard.  It stings, pulsing with heat that seems to come from deep under your skin, burning in a way that lets you know the pain won’t end anytime soon.  Your brain throbs with the knowledge that you can’t fight back, and your heart breaks as you realize you lost this battle before it even began.  You’re fully awake now.  You can never enter that state of idyllic dreaminess again.

YOU. ARE. A. SINNER.  

Paul makes no bones about the truth.  He is clear about the spiritual state of humans, and it is ugly my friends.  Very ugly. 

‘Godless and wicked’ are two terms Paul uses to describe mankind in the first chapter of Romans.  He also uses words like futile, foolish, shameful, insolent, arrogant, boastful, and evil. 

Feeling the sting right about now? 

I’m afraid it gets worse. 

Paul says human beings are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice.  He claims we are gossipers and slanderers who suppress the truth and have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.

Need a tissue . . . or perhaps an entire box of them?

The thing is - I don’t think Paul is trying to hurt anyone’s feelings. His goal is not to simply ignite emotion in his audience.  Paul just wants to be sure we completely understand the depth of our sinful nature, and he wants us to realize he is speaking about everyone.  We are all on the same playing field.  We are all on level ground.  There is no need to compare ourselves to anyone else – we are all counted guilty.  You can thank Adam for that.  Just as we inherit traits from our ancestors, we inherited Adam’s sin nature.  We are fallen to our very DNA, people.  Every single one of us has witnessed the irrefutable evidence of God’s existence and goodness, and we have all chosen to deny it when we live our lives in ways that do not glorify Him. 

“For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.  So they are without excuse.”  Romans 1:20

We are without excuse.

Paul goes on to speak of God’s wrath, and after what we’ve just heard, we know without a doubt it is justified.  We deserve it.  But here’s where Romans starts to get interesting.  At first, the idea of God being intensely angry - having wrath, if you will - makes me squirm a little bit.  My God?  Furious?  At me?  Nah, that doesn’t sound like MY God.  My God is a peaceful God.  My God is healer and comforter and redeemer.  My God doesn’t get mad at me . . . right?

Wrong.

The truth is, God’s wrath is nothing like human wrath.  God’s wrath is neither irrational nor vindictive, because God’s wrath comes from his holiness.  Because God is holy, he must have hostility towards sin, and we must understand this fact if we want to be in a relationship with him, because it is such an important part of who he is. 

There’s more.  And this is where Romans isn’t just interesting.  It’s good.

You see, Paul refuses to let us remain in the sin of Adam’s mistakes . . . in the sin we are born with and which follows us all the days of our lives.  After he’s beat us down with the truth of who we are as human beings, of why we are sinners to the core, and how we are wholly responsible for the wrath of God . . . Paul tells the rest of the story . . .   

The gospel is the power of salvation for all who believe.  Romans 1:16

The gospel is the power of salvation for ALL WHO BELIEVE!     

This is the message of Romans.  This is Paul’s message of victory. He has knocked us to the ground and it hurts all over – we are bruised and battered and burning with the knowledge that we are sinners and God hates sin.  But we don’t have to stay there, defeated and damned.  Yes, we are sinners.  Yes, we totally suck sometimes. 

But there is good news! 

We don’t have to give up because God didn’t give up on us. Instead, he sent his one and only son to die on a cross so we could be his forever.  Christ’s power and grace are greater than our sin . . . greater than ALL sin. 

We can’t claim to be a follower of Jesus and only speak of God’s love and grace – that will never be the complete picture of who he truly is.  To comprehend God’s unbelievable love for us, we must first comprehend how much he despises our sin.  The perfect fullness of God only makes sense when we see both sides of the picture.  God fully hates our sin, yet fully loves us. 

Now I need a tissue. 

God fully hates my sin, yet fully loves me. 

Like I said . . . WOW.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be writing about Paul, and Romans, again.   Every chapter I read gets under my skin and remains there, taunting me with new information and more conviction and the hint of an idea that what is coming next might not just challenge me, but instead . . . change me?

Stay tuned, and in the meantime, I hope you’ll remember something . . .

God hates every bit of your sin, because he has to.

God loves every bit of you, because he chose to.

To Whom It May Concern

Dear Barnes and Noble,

One day, she will need a bra.  One day, she will ask me to buy tampons and Advil on a monthly basis.  One day, she will have her first crush and her first date and her first kiss and the first stirrings of something in her heart that she can’t explain.  One day, she will have a boyfriend, and a fiancé, and a husband, and one day, she might hold a tiny bundle of love in her arms until all hours of the night and wonder if she’ll ever be able to let go.

I’m not trying to stop her from growing up.  One day, I want her to become a tween and a teenager and a young woman and an adult and a wife and a mother.  I held that tiny bundle of love in my arms until all hours of the night and thought I’d never be able to let her go, but eight years have gone by and slowly, surely, I am letting go.  I have to. 

My jobs have been many as I live out the gift of being her mother – I’ve held and hugged, rocked and read to, kissed and soothed, fed and bathed, led and observed, corrected and cheered, pushed and pled and prayed and prayed and prayed.  But mostly, I’ve loved and protected.  These are the two most important responsibilities I have as her mom.  To love her . . . to protect her.  One day, she will have left my home, but she will forever occupy my heart, and so I’m trying to do these things right for this one and only daughter of mine.  I’m trying to love and protect her to the very best of my ability. 

The loving part is easy.  There was never a doubt, never a question, never a moment when I couldn’t find endless love for her, despite her insistence on testing the depths of my adoration.  There is always the love – in the middle of a night, in the middle of a mess, in the middle of a meltdown.  It fuels every action I make on her behalf, and it’s why I’m writing this letter.  Because, you see, loving my daughter isn’t enough.  Plenty of well-meaning parents love their children.  It’s simply not enough.   I must also protect her, and that’s where parenting gets difficult.   And so I can't let another day go by without telling you . . .

Barnes and Noble, YOU are one of the reasons parenting is so difficult.

Oh, you aren’t the only one.  I heard a completely ridiculous song playing in Gap Kids last week.  Gap KIDS, as in, there will most likely be children in the store every single day it is open.  Still, someone found it perfectly okay to play a song about casual sex in Gap KIDS. 

Yes, you are one of many.  I’ve seen at least a dozen cars driving around my native Atlanta with the words “Sexy Senior” written across the windows.  I wonder . . . do the little girls driving those cars have mamas?  Where are their daddies?   And why oh why haven’t they told their precious daughters that when someone says you are “sexy,” it’s because they are looking only at your outward appearance, and not at what really matters . . . your heart.

There are others just like you.  Victoria’s Secret decided it was a good idea to put words on the backside of shorts and pants for young girls, so anyone behind them will be encouraged to look at their bottoms.  Never mind who is looking, or why.  Never mind prostitution and child predators and the pornography industry and sex trafficking and . . . never mind.

No, it isn’t just you, Barnes and Noble, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you think you’re doing everything right.  You offer an enormous children’s section in all of your stores – even a wall of Christian books I’ve frequently perused while shopping for gifts.  You have story time on Saturdays and invite Girl Scouts to sell cookies on your doorstep and provide discounts for educators.  Yet every time I walk to your checkout counter with my daughter, there are dozens of magazines placed directly in front of her eyes that undermine everything I’m trying to do as her mother.

She started reading at the age of five, and overnight, my job as protector grew in leaps and bounds.  No longer could I feel certain I wasn’t exposing her to things she wasn’t ready to understand.  I did everything I was supposed to do – refrained from talking about inappropriate subjects in her presence, permitted only ‘G’ rated movies and television suitable for young children, provided only Christian music and kid-friendly classics in the car and at home.  I did everything I was supposed to do.  Except for one thing.  I took my daughter to buy a children’s book at Barnes and Noble, and suddenly, my five year-old child wanted to know about mind-blowing sex.

I’m fully prepared for the reality that is having a daughter.  One day, someone will call my little girl “sexy.”  One day, my little girl will want to be sexy for someone.  One day, my daughter will be a
grown woman, and she will have sex with someone she loves.  One day. 

But not today. 

She is not ready to hear about sex.  She is not ready to think about sex.  She is not ready to learn about sex.  In a world that seems to have made sex its number one priority, a mother’s job has to include keeping her children’s innocence intact as long as possible.  Yet you, Barnes and Noble, expose every child that enters your store and walks through the checkout line to sex, regardless of their age or maturity level. 

Are you contributing to teenage pregnancy?  I don’t know.  Are you contributing to the growing number of young girls in America with low self-esteem and eating disorders and anxiety and depression?  I don’t know.  But you are knowingly exposing very young children to topics they aren’t ready to understand, and it is infuriating.

Am I picking on you, Barnes and Noble?  Maybe.  Like I said, there are many other culprits.  There are nationally recognized and widely respected businesses contributing to the sleepless nights of mothers all over this county, and I imagine, all over the world.  There are magazines my daughter shouldn’t have to see in the checkout lines at Publix and Target too.  There are billboards on every interstate that encourage my child to ask me what adult toys are, or how a doctor gives a woman implants, or what the word  ‘abortion’ means.  When I try to find my daughter an appropriate children’s movie to watch using the On Demand feature on our television, there is a completely inappropriate movie playing in the upper right hand corner that she shouldn’t have to see.

Why? 

Why is this happening?  Why is anyone okay with this?  Why are YOU okay with it?

Have you read the statistics on teenage pregnancy?  Have your read the statistics on eating disorders and anxiety and depression in young children?  Have you read the statistics on prostitution and pedophiles and pornography and sex trafficking?

HAVE YOU READ THEM?

I am incredibly blessed to be a mother . . . to be her mother.  I am so grateful to have been entrusted by God with the extraordinary duty of raising a daughter, of protecting the child in my care for as long as she needs me, and I fully accept the responsibilities that go along with my title of 'mom.'   My responsibilities include guiding her and leading her and teaching her the things she needs to know about the world when she is ready to comprehend such worldly things. 

When she is ready to comprehend such worldly things. 

As her mother, when she is ready should be my choice.  I should be the one who gets to decide when my daughter learns about sex.  The world wants to throw sex at her from every direction and I have done my best to intersect it before it reaches her every time.  But I cannot protect her alone.

Help me.

Please, Barnes and Noble . . . Gap Kids . . . Victoria’s Secret . . . Publix and Target and mothers who let your little girls drive around with the word “sexy” written on their car for an entire city to see . . .

Please . . . I beg you . . . help me.

Let’s work together to protect the children of the world.  Who knows, maybe we’ll see a decrease in teenage pregnancy.  Maybe we’ll see fewer children with eating disorders and anxiety and depression.  Maybe we’ll make an impact on the tragedies of prostitution and pornography and sex trafficking.  Maybe.  But only when we work together to make a positive difference.

And so Barnes and Noble, I ask you . . . will you do the right thing? 

Will you realize that there are good mothers all over the country who want to shop in your stores, but who want to protect their children even more?

Will you remember that just because sex sells doesn’t mean it is okay to sell it to five year-old girls? 

Will you remove the magazines placed at eye level for young children from your check out lines?

Sincerely,
ABW