Reflectionary VIII

"Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel."

I'm not sure our present generation can have any sense of the power and meaning behind the simple prophecy of Isaiah, quoted above.

For any meaning to be clear, there must be a frame of reference. When wearing the lenses of an early 21st-Century person, these messianic prophecies lose all of their magic, their poetry, and majesty. There is no frame of reference. No common themes. The words do not even mean the same thing.

"Look." or, "Behold." To truly look at something, or behold it, as Isaiah intended, you have to be willing to stop and wait. We are enjoined to cease what we're doing, read, ponder, even pray, for understanding of what we are about to hear. This takes patience. It takes the ability to put off anything that does not stimulate our physical senses, instantaneously. It requires a willingness to learn, to gain understanding, to be proven wrong, to reach new levels of awareness, or actualization.

We can't do that. We don't know how to "look."

"The young woman." To the ancient Hebrew culture, it was a given that a "young woman" was what we would call today, a "virgin." But we can't access that concept. When a pre-Christian Era Hebrew woman was a "virgin," that meant she hadn't done "any" of "it." None of the substitute acts that are common today. No "dates." No time alone with another boy. No hand-holding. Her eyes had not seen everything imaginable on cable TV, in her parents' home and even in their presence, with their tacit approval. It was also assumed that the "young woman" was unmarried. If you were a virgin, you were not married, and vice versa. But it also entailed a certain expectation that she would one day become married . . . which was understood to be, to a man . . . and that the marriage itself would result in children . . . many of them . . . because God had created beings in His image . . . like Him . . . which meant we could create others (reproduce) in our own image (our children), just as our creator created us.  The culture believed that God was both Love and Life, and that when you combined the two, new generations of God-imaged humans would result.

No, I am not being naive. I am not suggesting that everybody in Hebrew culture, even in those times, were happy prudes. But when Scripture talks about "the fullness of time," perhaps it's an indication of how rare it is to find a person, let alone a woman, like Mary . . . who could so perfectly fulfill the requirements of her calling.

"With child." Meaning, if you were "with child," then you had to be married . . . prior to getting in that state. Mary was not. To understand the emotional scandal that this entailed, think about what it's like if your best friend unfriends you on Facebook, without telling you ahead of time, or worse yet, your significant other unfriends you as a way to break up. Think about how that feels, now multiply it a couple hundred times and you may begin to understand the feelings of people around Mary, when they discovered she was pregnant.

And I will leave the rest of the text to another time. 

My prayer is that, in the midst of a world that is awash with images that no one should see, or think about (let alone children), that has perhaps eaten too freely of a Tree of Knowledge for which we, as a species, are not morally ready; that you find the power to erase all those images from your mind, and be able truly to look . . . behold . . . see . . . and be blessed.

Reflectionary VII

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. 

How did the season of Advent become the most frantic, stressful, and hectic of the whole year?

Even nature itself, with the onset of an earlier sunset, colder weather, snow on the ground, bids us to take it easy. Get indoors, relax. Put another log on the fire. Brew up some hot cocoa. Watch a movie. Read.

The debate goes on about taking "Christ" out of "Christmas." But the Christian movement, with its fast-paced, road-raged, halls-bedecked demeanor during these months, provides plenty of fodder to the atheistic assault against our favored institution.

And even on Christmas Eve this month, we may very well hear the same intonations from the preacher:

"(long sigh) . . . well . . . we made it!"

Made what? Has this been a sea voyage to the New World? Achieving the chance to run the Marathon in the Olympics? The end of an arduous multi-year campaign for the Presidency?

Advent is all about waiting. And if we have made it through a period of rest and prayer, of contemplation and reflection, then indeed we have earned the right to heave a sigh of relief and proclaim "We made it!"

The Body of Christ should be doing anything BUT acting on edge this month.

Our peaceful demeanor, our refusal to take the bait and complain about traffic, crowds, and the weather, will provide volumes of positive testimony to the rightness of trusting in the Lord.

Glenn Frey once said "Take it easy." The Southern California rockers of the 1970s had this right. In the end, all that other stuff is not so important.

Patience. Please.

Reflectionary VI

Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger?

The LORD sets the prisoners free

the LORD opens the eyes of the blind

the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down.

The LORD loves the righteous

the LORD cares for the stranger

he sustains the orphan and widow

but frustrates the way of the wicked.

If I were interested in social justice. . . .

That's all.

If I were interested in social justice, and that was my chief driving passion . . . . 

And if I had no particular religious convictions about the matter. If I were a humanist, a Liberal, a Progressive, even an atheist . . . .

If I in fact secretly considered myself superior to these religious people, especially the Christians in their fine homes and comfortable lifestyles, preaching at others about sin and morality, while doing little more than creating some window-dressing as evidence of my charity . . . . 

But if the thing more important to me than anything, was that people live in freedom, with all their needs supplied, with all their ills cured, with all their hopes fulfilled . . . . 

Then I would swallow my pride and take biblical verses like the ones referenced above (from the Psalms), and create common ground with the millions and millions of Christians on earth - - - a mass of people that want more than anything to be told they reminded others of Christ.

I would cheerfully quote these verses, and with a glad spirit invite my Christian brethren to join with me in bringing to pass these beautiful words from the Bible.

I would put away all of my predispositions regarding lifestyle, orientation, politics, pop culture, morality, for these are all minor considerations compared to the dire needs of the dreadfully sick and starving throughout the world.

I wouldn't let the Christians know that in my mind I felt I was using them. For the needs of those in poverty far outweigh my need to be thought of as intelligent and relevant.

If I really cared about the sick, the poor, those in prison, the homeless, the immigrant, the widow, and the orphan, this is what I would do.

I would put away my personal agenda, and join up with others whose driving passion is also to serve the needy. 

And I wouldn't care if they were religious.

I would even force myself to say "Merry Christmas," if it helped the helpless.

Reflectionary V

And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

The older we get, the more we pine for the days of our youth, or that is, for youth itself. The memories of playing on our street with good friends; of family events with lots of cousins running around; of young love; the birth of our first child, and experiencing all of his and her events and activities; our grandchildren when they visit . . . 

I pine for my Autumn Lane Neighborhood, and my good friends there, that I would see every day, that I grew up with. I long for one more overnight stay at the Turnbow Farm with my cousins; or one more Darr Christmas Party while Grandpa and Grandma were still living, except that the family members that came later would be miraculously transported to that time and place, so that they would understand what we're talking about.

The Kingdom of God is like that. It is like going back to those times. Our wonderful event of the future, will be just like going back to the best days of our lives. Therefore the redeemed of the Earth "shall return."

It's too bad "Zion" has taken on such a politically-charged meaning. It's only talking about that return - going back to glory days, to plenty, to peace and happiness. And no matter what culture you come from, this is something everybody wants.

It is something worth waiting for. If you could return to the very best of life . . . . wouldn't you think it worthwhile to become one of the "ransomed"?