Category: Christian Spirituality Blog

The Suffering of Christmas

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

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Christmas:  a time for joy and a time for cheer…  But, unfortunately, it is also a time of profound loneliness and a yearning of days gone by for many people.  A few years back, I received a call on Christmas Day.  One of my parishioners was stretching out to put the angel on top of the family Christmas tree, and fell over dead from a heart attack.  The family’s Christmas will never be the same again, a weird mix, a strange amalgam of both happiness and heartache.  Tragedy that occurs around the holidays makes all future holidays awkward and different.

I have also known folks who were expecting a juicy Christmas bonus, finding instead a pink slip and a surprise lay-off from their job.  Children of divorce probably know the strangeness of the holiday the most, being shuttled here and there obtaining more gifts than they need but more bitterness than they want.  For every one of us who look forward to Christmas Day, there is another who dreads facing another season with unpleasant memories of what happened and what could have been….

Whether Christmas is chiefly joyous for one or sorrowful for another, the bald fact of the matter is that we all suffer in some way.  Let me offer a definition/description of suffering for you to ponder:

Suffering occurs when someone or some circumstance acts against your will and damages either your body, mind, soul, spirit, or all/part of them, creating the great need for healing.

Suffering creates a portal, an opening to either love or hate.  It brings us to the point of decision:  We did not choose suffering; it chose us.  But the choice for healing is very much in our control.  Suffering is an event, maybe even extended over time, which will make us either bitter, or better – it’s your choice.

There are numerous people who will offer you a cup of bitterness, the sour wine vinegar which will dull the pain.  Jesus had such an offer while he hung on the cross, and he refused it.  Nothing was going to stand in the way of his full faculties experiencing the vicarious suffering for our sins.  Dulling the pain doesn’t bring healing; it only makes us forget for a time and just prolongs actual healing.

Instead, the wise choice is to take charge of your life and choose the hard path of healing.  There is a world of difference between the pain that is forced upon us, and the pain which we choose so that we become better and healthy.  The pain of violation must be followed with the pain of healing.

A major way you know your choice of healing is happening is when your heart and life open-up to love, when the shape of grace begins to mold your soul and brings a reception to people who benevolently wait to help with kind words and ways.  Your sight becomes different.  The world becomes brighter.  Decisions are motivated more by love than by protection.  There is the willingness to persevere and patiently complete the process of healing and see it through to a new maturity.  You cease trying to manipulate others and focus more on your own responses to people and situations.  Every day becomes a fresh opportunity to love God by serving others.

Because God is love, and we are created in the image of God, this means we were designed to receive and to give love.  We are love, as well.  To not love is to buck our inherent design from the beginning of time.  We are not just to grit our teeth and force-out loving words and actions; we are to tap into the originality of our souls and be love.  The great task of the Christian life is to awaken to who we really are, to become a whole person, complete and mature.  The only means for this to happen is through the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Jesus, our great professor in the faith, knows that suffering is a teacher.

Far too many persons are perplexed as to why they still struggle and hurt.  They have prayed.  They have read the Bible.  They have tried, time and time again.  Hurt and pain might and is very personal; but healing is communal – it demands more than our own efforts.  Unless we open ourselves to the love of others, and risk putting our souls on the line, we will not realize the peace we long for and the mending of our spirits.

The first step is speaking to someone who is safe, someone for whom you trust, and telling them where you are in your soul – not making yourself look better than you are, and providing a real picture of the state of your life – and, not diminishing the very real abuse which occurred against you by saying others have it harder than you.  In other words, be real.  Humility and honesty will always serve you well.

Yes, it’s Christmas.  How will you choose to deal with it?

Is There Hope?

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

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Every single hope and longing of your heart is to be found with a baby born two-thousand years ago.  The birth of Jesus Christ is the mid-point of history, the fulcrum on which the entire history of humanity hinges for its purpose and fulfillment.  Come and take-a-peek inside of a smelly room with stinky sheep and the distinct aroma of fresh hay – a dimly lit room which could be the place of any ordinary ancient family – and gaze upon the infant born.  The Christ child entered this world, this banal common space, just for you – to bring to fulfillment all your hopes and dreams.  The hope of the nations, the anticipation of peace on earth is just beginning….

Now your past, with of all its lack of direction, poor decisions, and missed opportunities can fade away.  “Joseph, the baby that Mary will have is from the Holy Spirit… name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:20-21).

Now your present circumstances, whether good or ill, have meaning and are not random events with no purpose.  “And the star they [the wise men] had seen in the east went on ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.  They were thrilled and excited to see the star.  When the wise men went into the house and saw the child with Mary, his mother, they knelt down and worshiped him” (Matthew 2:9-11).

Now your future, which was so uncertain and filled with worry and anxiety, has direction and a trajectory in which to shape your entire life.  “With my own eyes I have seen what you have done to save your people, and foreign nations will also see this.  Your mighty power is a light for all nations, and it will bring honor to your people” (Luke 2:30-32).  “The Word became a human being and lived here with us.  We saw his true glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father.  From him all the kindness and all the truth of God have come down to us” (John 1:14).

I was once in the mass of people who were familiar with Jesus, knew the supposed facts of his birth, and gave no real credence to it.  After all, that was then, and this is now.  What has an ancient birth have to do with me today?  But I found within Jesus all that he claimed to be, and discovered that his words and ways were more than worth following.  What is more, I realized that forgiveness is real, grace is enough, faith is as epistemically sound as my five senses, and that the world really does revolve on the axis of love.  That is, if Jesus is at the center of it all.

This season, this most blessed time of year, is truly a call to all humanity.  It is a summons to awaken to God, to discern that he is there wooing you to himself through his Son, the Lord Jesus.  It is an invitation to forsake the old life and familiar path, to strike out and find your heart’s truest hope.  It is the chance to make a difference as a new person.  Your past does not need to define you forever.  Your present is awaiting your next move.  And your future can be bright.  Catholic nun, Sister Joan Chittester, has wisely said:

“The challenge of hopelessness is the challenge to re-enter the human race, to take our part in it knowing that it has as much our responsibility to shape life as it is for life to shape us.  It requires us to understand that misfortune is not failure.  It is at most simply a digression through life intended to make us reassess our course, our goals, our aspirations.”

            That reassessment is the opportunity to hope again with the real hope of Christmas and the Christ child.  It is not a call to a job, or necessarily to do something.  Rather, it is an appeal to becoming fully human and alive to the image of God within, awakened by coming to the manger.

Take some time and withdraw to a quiet place, either sitting down in your favorite chair or walk along a secluded path.  Use your imagination in coming to Jesus and see, smell, taste, touch, and hear the birth of the Savior.  What is the sixth sense of faith telling you as you ponder the scene?  How is Christ filling your heart?   Where are the places of your life Jesus is coming and enlarging?  Is there hope as you find an alternative way of sensing God in your life?

Overwhelmed

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

Mary and Joseph on Way to Bethlehem

The Christmas rush we know all too well.  An increase of traffic on the streets and highways and an uptick in cranky people trying to get things done abounds around us.  A decrease of money as we try to fit shopping into the mix of end of the year deadlines, hoping for that Christmas bonus to cover where ends don’t meet.  Maybe just as concerning is the lack of time to get things done.  It’s enough to make a person feel completely and totally overwhelmed.

So, what in the world do we do about it?  Being overwhelmed was certainly not invented by contemporary people.  Think back to two-thousand years ago and imagine for a moment what the couple Joseph and Mary were going through:  Joseph, a poor carpenter, is trying to get by and prepare for his new family, but he is taken away from doing his work because of a census that he and Mary need to show up for in Bethlehem.  This was a trek of some 100 miles, and we aren’t talking over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house on an idyllic sleigh ride.

The trip would typically take about four days, but with Mary nine months pregnant you could easily add another three days.  This made for a grueling week, only to get to a swelled Bethlehem full of people all there for the same reason.  No room.  Mary goes into labor.  If this isn’t the height of being overwhelmed, I’m not sure what is.

It is here that we can take our clues and our cues as to facing this blessed season, even and especially if it is fraught with a lack of time and money and an abundance of headaches.  Mary and Joseph were simply present to their very special son.  The shepherds, watching their flocks that night, simply came and were present with this newborn king (Luke 2).

After Jesus was born, there was a whole lot of praise going on around him.  Mary and Joseph rejoiced; the angels praised God; the shepherds joined the angel chorus in the great praise; eight days later, Simeon and Anna praised God; and, here we are all these centuries later….

Are we praising God?  Perhaps we have become so caught up in our sense of being overwhelmed by our circumstances that we need a different sense of the overwhelmed.  And this kind of overwhelmed can only come through setting the hammer down and leaving Nazareth; leaving heaven; leaving the field with the sheep, and dwelling in the presence of Jesus, Immanuel, God with us.

The writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that Today is the day of salvation (Hebrews 3:12-15).  Not tomorrow, but today is the reasonable and appropriate time to come and enjoy, to come and dwell in the presence of our Savior Jesus Christ.  For he has rescued us from the darkness of monetary budgets that won’t budge and belligerent people who are too stubborn to give Christ the time of day, and has brought us into the light of freedom from sin and peace on earth.

O come, let us adore him… today, and forever.  Amen.

Beginning Again

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

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“The Lord has promised that he will not leave us or desert us.” –Hebrews 13:5

In thirty-two years of marriage, my wife and I have moved twenty-five times.  Yes, you read that right.  Some of our moves were unspectacular ventures across town.  But others were major moves from one state to another, starting a new job and finding new friends.  By far, the hardest moves have been the ones that we didn’t see coming.  It’s one thing to plan far in advance; it’s quite another thing when you need to quickly uproot.

It’s likely you have neither moved as much as us, nor been in the position of having so many new beginnings.  Yet, it is quite likely that you have had a major change of life, either wanted or unwanted.  Whether it is divorce, death, leaving a church or neighborhood, or any number of significant changes, there is one reality that will never ever change:  God has given the promise that wherever we go, he is with us; the Lord will not abandon us.

Life never stays the same.  Even if a person were to make a conscious decision that nothing would ever change in his/her life, that person would still inexorably grow older day after day, year after year.  Even if a mother wants her little one to stay a child forever, it will not happen.  Eventually, we all must come to grips with the great truth that change is a very important part of life.  We all need to, at some point, begin again.

In this time of year, the Advent season and the approach of Christmas, we can gain great comfort from a God who feels what we feel and has experienced what we have experienced.  Sometimes we might get the notion that God doesn’t really know what we are going through because he is so much different than us.  But the incarnation of Jesus Christ says different.  If you think about it, the largest and most significant move of all time was God moving from heaven to earth.  There is nothing more radical than the Son of God becoming a human.  There is no greater movement.

“The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood,” says Eugene Peterson’s translation of John 1:14 concerning Christ’s movement from heaven to earth.  Because Jesus made his big divine move, it brings hope and meaning to our little movements here on this earth.  God is not so otherworldly that he has no understanding of what we go through every day.  The Lord Himself began again with a move like no other.

The promise given to us that God will not abandon us comes in the context of being afraid of what will happen to us because of a lack of money and power.  Surrounding the promise are these words: “Don’t fall in love with money.  Be satisfied with what you have.  The Lord has promised that he will not leave us or desert us.  That should make you feel like saying, ‘The Lord helps me! Why should I be afraid of what people can do to me?’”

God is not some white-bearded old dude who is clueless to our concerns and needs.  God isn’t sitting in his heavenly recliner asleep and snoring.  Instead, God is attentive and engaged in our happenings.  And he has done it through the Lord Jesus, in his incarnation.  “Jesus understands every weakness of ours… so whenever we are in need, we should come bravely before the throne of our merciful God.  There we will be treated with undeserved kindness, and we will find help.” (Hebrews 4:15-16).

Perhaps this holiday season you are lonely.  Maybe you are grieving a loss.  It could be that you, like me, have made a move and find yourself beginning yet again.  Your frame of mind right now might be that you can barely see beyond today and cannot even imagine what will happen tomorrow.  No matter the circumstance, regardless of who you are, where you have been, or where you are going, there is a God who exists on heaven and earth who completely knows and understands your situation.  And he stands ready to help you begin again and start something new.