This and That

We put our Christmas tree up yesterday. Well, in the interest of honesty, we decorated it yesterday. My parents put the tree itself up last weekend. They were saving the decorating until I came home, a decision I was very much in favor of. Christmas in the Reid family has always been a bit of a homemade affair—another word I might use is “ramshackle.”

When my brother and I were growing up, a yearly tradition was to make a new Christmas tree ornament every year. Looking at our tree tonight, I see sheep, angels, snowmen, gingerbread people, and stars all in various states of artistic genius and carefully marked: “Elizabeth, ’96,” etc. This, mixed in with the usual lights and tinsel and store-bought gifted ornaments, makes for, as I said, a bit of a ramshackle effect. Our tree looks best as I’m looking at it now—lights off, illuminated by the tree itself and a candle or two on the window sill.

It’s a strange way to celebrate, I’ll admit. What does the mystery and awe of the Incarnation have to do with this tree and these craft projects and this rush to buy and wrap and bake and give? Why do we celebrate that like this?

It ought to be a familiar thought for us as Christians: Why do we celebrate that like this? Why do we eat this bread and this wine and call it the body and blood of Jesus? Why do we let ourselves be pushed underwater and call it our death, burial, and resurrection? Why do we look at this infant and say, “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”? (Do we really mean it?)

This could change our lives if we let it. Take it out of the nativity scene. Lift it out of “Away in a Manger.” Forget about baby Jesus with a halo floating over his head. This is important—bigger than your nativity scenes, your Christmas carols, and your spiritualized understanding of what it means to celebrate Christmas. This is the culmination of a cosmic battle being waged for your soul since the dawn of time. I AM has waited long enough. The days are accomplished. The Ancient of Days is acting, moving into human history to undo every wrong which has been done since the dawn of time. God is about to turn the entire world upside down. Are you ready? Can you feel the anticipation? The whole world has been holding its breath for this.

It’s also so much smaller. The Ancient of Days moves into our world as a baby, only a few hours old. A baby, utterly dependent on its mother for everything it needs. Whose idea was this, anyway? How could I AM rest all hope and expectation on this tiny, hapless infant? How can this baby be that? He can’t even hold his head up yet.

Application lies in several directions. I could remind you that, as God acts, we also ought to act—the cosmic battle is fought and won in our own lives with our incarnational actions. I could urge you to make Christmas tree ornaments with your children in the hopes that one day they’ll think big thoughts while looking at their childhood hanging from a branch. I could ask you to consider: why do you celebrate this with that? And do you need to eliminate part of your celebrations in favor of a more genuine “that?”

But I won’t—can’t, really. The newly born Ancient of Days is beyond my attempts to speak. And for this I am glad.

These thoughts were fleshed out in a conversation I had with Andrew Cox tonight. I am deeply indebted to his influence.

Right Here Now

"Where else would we go?" asks Peter, not because I don't have anywhere else to go, but because I'm exactly where I want to be.

Life in the Middle

You are born, you live, and you die in the middle. Certainty is hard to come by and even harder to hold on to. You come from the deep south; morality is black and white: if you claim to be a Christian (and who doesn’t, down here?) then your life will look a certain way. You won’t drink—alcohol is verboten. Boys are only after one thing and as a girl, you can’t give in. If you do, you’re a slut and your partner gets a firm admonishment… and a wink and a smack on the butt in the locker room. And if you get pregnant? There’s a place for people like you: alternative school. Cursing is another no-no. Homosexuality is wrong, a sin of the worst order, and if you think you might be gay? Then prepare yourself for the life of an outsider. Only bad people do drugs—but if you made some mistakes in high school, then we’ll be prepared to forgive you as long as you don’t mind parading your dirty laundry in front of younger kids as a warning against following your path. Only bad people do drugs—and if you’re still doing them now then there will be no grace. You’re a Republican, of course. Those Democrats believe in killing babies and they might even be communists.

And theology is equally black and white. You’re a Christian, because you’re a Republican. You believe in the separation of church and state (as long as everyone acknowledges that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and that the founding fathers were Christians just like you). The biggest debate in your life is creationism versus evolution. You scoff at global warming. The Bible is a literal, historical document, the infallible word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit. You might play at being a liberal Christian. You might read books to annoy your parents like Is It Okay to Call God Mother? and Theology in a New Key: Responding to Liberation Themes and maybe you even incorporate some of what they say into your walk with God.

But then you go to college and make friends with a man who has a husband and a hobby of cross-dressing. You start befriending people who exercise their right to drink lots of alcohol. Your professors admit to believing in a non-literal creation story. You find yourself crushing on a man who confides to you his history with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. And who freely admits to his experimentation with the full gamut of illegal substances with little to no remorse. You room with a girl who is probablymostlikely sleeping with her boyfriend and who has no shame about it. Another girl on your hall says, “Yeah, I’m having sex with him but we’re married in God’s eyes so it’s all right, okay?” And you’re flirting with your personal favorite addiction again.

And you attend a Bible college.

You sit with him in Bible classes and listen to your professor read the Sermon on the Mount: “You are the light of the world.”

You laugh with her in the caf and in the coffeehouse.

You cry with her in private and share the hurts of your heart with her and you listen to hers.

You sit with him in chapel.

You worship next to him, you take communion with her, and you love them.

You are born, you live, and you die in the middle, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You live in a world of shades, a world where black and white fade into unnameable hues. You try to contain this awful gray within what you know about God. “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” You lose yourself in the middle ground. You lose yourself in between what you’ve always thought to be right and what your experiences teach you. You lose yourself in between your cut and dry morality and the murky gray you live in.

People are simple, says your friend, and you want to believe him, but you can’t see the simplicity for all these hellish contradictions.

Take the Training Wheels Off and Grow Up

In Sunday school this morning, Leslie Smith mentioned her experience at the Tyrone Founder’s Parade. “There was a band, and floats with people throwing candy, the general hubbub you see in parades and then, in the midst of all this laughter and loudness, I saw a man carrying a cross… with a wheel attached to the bottom.”

Immediately after Peter’s great confession, Matthew writes, “Jesus began telling his followers that he must go to Jerusalem where… he must be killed…” Peter, in a shocking foil to his prior confession, scolds Jesus for saying this nonsense. Jesus, after calling Peter, “Satan,” response thus: “If people want to follow me, they must give up the things they want. They must be willing even to give up their lives to follow me. Those who want to save their lives will give up true life. But those who give up their lives for me and for the good news will have true life. It is worth nothing for them to have the whole world if they lose their souls.”

Some other translations render this as “"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

The man Leslie saw in the parade was clearly referencing this story. But what wonderful irony! Putting a wheel on the bottom of the cross for easier maneuvering kind of misses the point. Jesus’ cross was not light and he never intended for it to be easy to follow him. Like Peter, we are eager to take death out of the equation. “Look,” he says to Jesus, “you’re not going to die. That’s silly.”

We do the same thing: “Look,” we say to the people we’re trying to convert, “you’re not going to die. Being a Christian is easy.” And it’s true: we’ve made Christianity the easiest thing in the world. But it’s a lie—it’s a cross with a wheel on it.

Take the wheel off your cross. Peter’s issue—and ours—was that he wanted to micromanage God’s plan. Take the wheel off your cross. If you’re in this for “easy,” then you need to get out. Jesus never promised you anything other than your death. Take the wheel off your cross and allow yourself to feel the weight of what God has for you.

Less Like Falling in Love

If I were a poet or a musician, I would write a beautiful poem or song about how my love affair with You, oh Lord, is not like falling in love, which I’ve done before. Several times before, really. My love affair with you is not an uncontrollable free fall but there is no doubt in my mind this will never be over. If I were a poet or musician, I would write a poem or song about how I’ve not lost my heart, my soul, or anything else, but nonetheless I am never going back to my life before. I’ve weighed the pros and cons, I’ve counted the cost. I thought about every possibility for the future. I have logically, calmly, and thoughtfully decided that, despite all the drawbacks, I want to follow Christ with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. It was not a free-fall or falling in love but I will never change my mind. I’m in it for life.

When God told Abraham he would be the father of a great nation, back in the beginning of Genesis, He made a covenant with him: “You, Abraham, obey Me. Circumcise your sons; worship Me; love Me. And I will make your family into a great nation and through you and your descendants the entire world will be blessed.” The covenant was sealed with blood and applied to generation upon generation.

When God sent Jesus to earth to die for our sins, He made a new covenant. This covenant had been anticipated for generations and generations, ever since God and Abraham had discussed the future under a night sky. The terms of the covenant were simple: “You obey Me; worship Me; love Me. And I will forgive your sins, and reconcile you with Me for all eternity.” It’s logical, sensible, and the only logical, sensible thing to do is to accept God’s terms as He laid them out.

Dangerous Mercy

I love the ocean. I love the way it looks, the way it smells, the way it feels, the way I feel in it. Everything. My favorite activity is "wave bashing," a bit of a misnomer, really, as I do not bash but am bashed. I stand knee deep in water, or out far enough so the waves are breaking and allow them to push, pull, and force me to bend to their will.

My friend at school has been trying to teach a couple of us to ballroom dance. He taught us the box--forward and backward--and we practiced a bit. It was going... very mediocre, and he looked at me knowingly. "Elizabeth," he said, "the one thing you need to learn is to let the man lead." If you know me well enough to know I love the ocean, you probably know about my control issues. So maybe he says this to all the girls he dances with, but maybe he just said it to control freak me. I, of course, laugh at him and say, "Yeah, sure. That's not going to be a problem." I then proceed to spend the next thirty minutes being pushed and pulled around an empty classroom until I forget I'm not in charge. I go left, partner goes right and we stop, fix our "frame" and start again.

One of the lessons God and I are working on is my need to be in control. I get really bent out of shape when I run late due to no fault of my own. When I don't have time to do X, Y, AND Z. When a person I was relying on falls through. When I fail to live up to this ridiculous standard of perfection I've somehow set for myself as attainable. But I'm not in control and I'm left to the mercies of others and I have experience being let down and failed and also with failing.

I am in the ocean. Outside forces act upon me every day. It feels like lately one wave after another has been pounding me--my friend changing schools, the latest whatever with Boy, my confusion about how to respond to a gay friend, my jealousy over two friends pairing up, my sadness about a friend ultimately not choosing me, my unorganized summer, my stress over the end of school, all the work I have to get done before finals, all the friendly obligations I have to fulfill. It's worse than wave bashing--my feet aren't on the sand. I'm floating and pushed and pulled and slapped by one wave after another. I've passed the point of fun (wave bashing is fun) and I'm into the scary zone where I am completely at the mercy of the water. I could very easily drown. The water has no mercy: it doesn't care about my survival. Its purpose is to subdue me. It's succeeding.

Rich Mullins sings,

"There's a wideness in God's mercy

I cannot find in my own.

It keeps me aching

With a yearning

Keeps me glad to have been caught

In the reckless, raging fury

They call the love of God."

I've never thought of God's love in these terms. It reminds me of Narnia, "Safe? Of course he's not safe. He's not a tame lion, you know." I am caught in the "reckless, raging, fury" of God's love for me. It's not peaceful, or placid. It's violent, uncontrollable, and when experienced right, it leaves the beloved completely and utterly helpless, at the mercy of the Father. The Father's mercy: boundless, unchanging, eternal, relentless.

Either way, I'm not in control. Other people make decisions that crash over me like waves and threaten to drown me, or God's terrifying love--"never safe but always good"--threatens a different sort of drowning. Either way, my feet have left the ground.

First written April 17th, 2010 at the beach

I love this world: I live in the southeast, and right now, early summer, is one of the most beautiful times of year. Spring is also beautiful, with all the green bursting forth seemingly overnight, and fall's colors are as captivating as a Matisse painting. I love being alive, which is something of a change from past attitudes of apathy, and I look forward to my future: continuing my education, reading new books, meeting new people, having new ideas, seeing new things and new places. Getting married. Having children. RAISING those children. Doing something meaningful with my life, whatever that may be.

Life is wonderful and I can't wait to experience all of it.

But at the same time, as I get older, I'm introduced to the duality of nature. The world is beautiful and exciting and wonderful, but at the same time, it's scary, dangerous, and not at all something to be prolonged. This is seen in the deaths of people I love and want with me. In the changing of summer's green to fall's orange to winter's cold gray. In friends moving away, of my moving further away emotionally from people I used to love. In uncertainty for my future, and in not knowing what I will do or whether my life truly does have meaning.

C.S Lewis would say this is God reminding us that we don't belong here, in the most pivotal sense of the phrase. We're not meant to be comfortable in this world, because comfort leads to complacency and a desire to keep the dream rather than to move forward to the reality.

Discomfort on earth is good for us. It keeps us from becoming too attached to "the things of earth" and constantly pushes us forward to something "more." Only one of the reasons I try to accept my discomfort and unhappiness along with my joy.

It reminds me of a Rich Mullins song:

Nobody tells you when you get born here

How much you'll come to love it and how you'll never belong here

So I'll call you my country, but I'm lonely for my home.

I wish that I could take you there with me.

I'll sing His song in the land of my sojourn.

I'll choose to keep singing.

Experience Doesn't Make This Easier

Experience doesn't make this any easier and perhaps that's because we've lessened the meaning of our first death—everyone knows it's not final and unrelenting. If we don't like it, we don't have to continue, a personal resurrection of sorts. Like Christ, we choose to go to our deaths. We choose submission, an end of choice, an end of us, and the death of everything we love and cherish—all our ambitions, dreams, and plans. 

We die in imitation of Christ and in our dying, share his death. In sharing his death, we also share his resurrection—we don't stay underwater and, what's more, “Christ was raised from the dead and we know he cannot die again. Death has no power over him.” Through our death by water, we die to ourselves and allow Christ to kill what makes us “us” —the good alongside the bad. Through our resurrection, we take part in his resurrection and we know we cannot die again!

And so our experience doesn't make it easier. We didn't realize it would be necessary to use our experience to make our second death easier on ourselves and those around us. Those of us down here on earth know all about its and relentless nature. We have become “so attached to these bodies.” We're familiar and comfortable with them. This death—not our choice—kills what makes us “us” —our very self is under an indefensible attack, not from without but from within. Resurrection this time is a lot less certain and clearly must involve more than bursting up from the water soaking wet and gasping.


This is faith. Believing and living the belief that “Christ means everything to me in this life and when I die, I'll have even more.” Believing that, “I can't lose... alive, I'm Christ's messenger; dead, I'm his bounty.” Believing that what we want this time—a little longer here on earth—will take a backseat to what he wants this time as it has in the past. Because we have experience and experience makes it easier.