wise men increase in every generation…

i was thinking this week about the wise men that we have read about over there in matthew in the CHRISTmas story. they bring many questions that aren’t answered in scripture…

• “where did they come from?” we don’t know,
• “how many were there?” we really aren’t sure.
• “how did they know to follow the star?” we’re not told.

they just seem to come mysteriously out of nowhere to pay homage to the new born KING, & then just as mysteriously they are gone.

scripture doesn’t give many details, but tradition has had a heyday! tradition says that they were 3 in number, and that they traveled on camels across the desert, silhouetted against the nighttime sky, graced with palm trees. tradition gives their names as casper, melchior, baltezar. tradition tells us where they came from, what they did, & where they went.

traditions tells us that they were baptized by thomas, and when they died that their bodies were preserved in constantinople. centuries later their bones were moved to cologne, and if you have the price of admission, you can still see their bones, even to this day. tradition has told their story in its entirety. the only problem is that all of this is just tradition. there is no proof for any of what tradition tells us.

but i am certain about one thing - the number of wise men and women increases in every generation as more and more people follow what we know about the wise men, rather than what we don’t know.

just a thought from the front porch on this CHRISTmas day…

feel like you’re home no matter where you are…

some of us at CHRISTmas time stand in front of temporary shelters that look like nativity scenes. we see loving people huddled around a baby in a wooden manger, and we wonder if maybe GOD's SON, the CHRISTmas CHILD, will be able to address the needs that our homes once met, but maybe this time HE'll address those needs in a permanent way and in a perfect way. and to those who are wondering about those kinds of things today, listen to me carefully.

the bible says that GOD knows you. HE knows your name. it's been on HIS lips 10,000 times, and it was on HIS lips again today. GOD thought about you today several times, and GOD knows your needs. HE knows that you have a deep need for a lasting sense of safety. HE knows that about you. HE also knows that earthly relationships are vulnerable and only meet that belonging need in a partial way.

and so GOD says to each of you this CHRISTmas, “I know you and you matter to ME, and through the CHRISTmas child, MY SON JESUS CHRIST, I will make a way for you to belong to ME.” through JESUS' redeeming work on the cross, GOD says, “MY SON will pave the way for repentant people like you to become members of MY family, MY eternal family, and once you're adopted into MY family, you will belong to me throughout this life and on through eternity."

many of us know what it means to belong to GOD. we know that personally, and it's a powerful feeling. many of us know what it's like to be eternally attached to the GOD of the universe in a warm father-son, father-daughter kind of way, and it sort of makes you feel like you're home no matter where you are. you feel like you're home because you know you belong.

you belong to GOD.

beyond that, GOD says to all of us this CHRISTmas: “I know you, and I know that you need a sense of safety. I know the world situation; I know the economic uncertainties. I know that right now, planet earth is a scary place to live. but fear not,” God says. HE says that 360 times or more in scripture. fear not.

just a thought from the front porch...

optimism meets reality…

i would also add that home has something to do with a sense of optimism as well. young children growing up in loving homes where they feel safe and where they feel like they belong, those young children inevitably feel hopeful about the future. life is going to get better.

there's going to be more freedom ahead, more fun in the future, lots more opportunities. what i didn't get for CHRISTmas this year, i might get next year. there's another CHRISTmas always around the corner when you're young.

optimism and hope run high in a warm, well-functioning home. so a sense of belonging and a sense of safety and a sense of optimism capture a good chunk of what it really means to be home.

but what does living in the real world do to our understanding of home over time?

when young people grow up and they leave the cocoon of home and they begin to find their own way in the real world, what happens? sooner or later, they're forced to redefine what a sense of belonging is all about, because as the years go by, relationships change – even the ones you thought were permanent.

the unthinkable happens. parents split up. you weren't banking on that. marriages break up. that wasn't the plan either. loved ones leave or die. and somewhere along life's journey, that strong sense of belonging begins to weaken and crumble, and eventually an honest person wonders if any earthly relationship is going to be capable of offering a permanent sense of belonging.

can i bring it down to the personal level? some of you thought that this CHRISTmas was just going to be just like the last five or ten CHRISTmases, but it didn't turn out that way, did it? for some, there's a husband missing this CHRISTmas; there's a mother who isn't around this year. there may be the piercing pain of a recent death.

this CHRISTmas some of us are going to think a lot about how tenuous relationships really are, how thin a thread a sense of belonging hangs on – how thin the thread is.

you'll also find that the real world does a number on that sense of safety that a true home afforded in our youth.

the real world, if you live in it long, the real world rips the word “safety” right out of our modern-day dictionaries. the homes of our youth may have given us a sense of safety, but it was short lived and it, too, we learn, hangs by a thin thread.

and as for optimism, a guy said, “show me grounds for optimism, any grounds. show me any grounds for believing that by next CHRIStmas we will have a great economy. i wonder if there will be fewer homeless people, less crime and drug use, and more love between people. come on” this guy said, “only ignorant people are optimists. smart people know that the future is bleak.” maybe you're one of those smart pessimists.

friends, the real world has a way of shattering our concept of home. it shatters it. if you live in it long enough, you see those thin threads snap, and our whole concept of home is shattered. i have a sneaking suspicion that part of the pull toward home that many of us feel at CHRISTmas time is really a yearning for that sense of belonging and safety and optimism that we once enjoyed in the homes of our youth. CHRISTmas seems to trigger memories of our childhood for some reason.

just a thought from the front porch…

a sense of belonging and safety…

think back to the CHRISTmases of your youth. what memories or what feelings can you resurrect that created a sense of home to you then? if you need a little help, i'll bet there was probably a sense of belonging accompanying the concept of home in your mind, a sense of belonging.

maybe you didn't think about it consciously in those days, but can't most of us remember feeling that we sort of fit in in our home? we knew our place with our brothers and sisters. we had a sense of attachment to our parents and our grandparents, a sense of relational warmth and connectedness.

can't most of us think back to childhood CHRISTmases and remember not being worried about whether or not our loved ones would be there for us? we just assumed that they'd be there. so for many of us, home is about belonging, belonging to people who love us.

what else comes to mind when you think of home? wouldn't a sense of safety, of confidence be right up there? a true home is a safe place. a true home is a place of comfort and protection from outside forces. a true home is a familiar place. it's a predictable environment where certain family traditions provide a sense of continuity and stability, especially around CHRISTmas. that's where all the traditions and the rituals happen, right?

do you remember some of your CHRISTmas rituals? maybe you were a real-tree family, or maybe you were fake-tree people. maybe you opened your presents on CHRISTmas eve – or you opened them on CHRISTmas morning. maybe your big CHRISTmas dinner happened on CHRISTmas eve – or on CHRISTmas day.

but those and a host of other family rituals were a whole lot more important than you realized as a child because they gave you an underlying sense of safety of confidence in your home. that's an essential ingredient in what home is about. home has something to do with a sense of belonging, and it has something to do with a sense of safety.  we feel safe.

just a thought from the front porch…

home for CHRISTmas…

i was sitting with a friend of mine at the trails’ starbucks close to where i lived in las vegas and they started playing a song there and he said, “that is the best CHRISTmas song that has ever been written”. now he had just told me the news that he had just gotten back from his home in ohio where he had buried his 85 year-old dad so home was on his mind.

my wife, margaret has told me of how her dad who was a 17-year-old navy sailor out on a ship at sea back during wwii, and they would play that song over the loud speaker and he would lean over the rail and cry, cry for home. the song is i'll be home for CHRISTmas.

it's curious when you think about it, most people plan to be any place but home on other major holidays. people go south for easter, north for the fourth of july, anywhere on labor day. but CHRISTmas is different, isn't it? people fly across the country or drive half the night through snowstorms to be home for CHRISTmas.

it's all rather ironic though when you read the account of the CHRISTmas story in the bible, because what you find when you read the story carefully is that no one was home at the first CHRISTmas. mary and joseph weren't home. their home was nazareth, and they found themselves in bethlehem.

the shepherds weren't home. they had to work that night out in the fields. the wise men from the east weren't home, they were traveling a great distance. and in a very real way, JESUS, the CHRISTmas child, was very far from home.

the bible reminds us that JESUS voluntarily left the safety and splendor of HIS home in heaven to carry out HIS mission here on earth. HE was a long way from home on that first CHRISTmas. but somehow, whenever we see a nativity scene, when we see a temporary shelter with a manger and parents huddled around it, most of us never give a passing thought to the fact that no one was home on the first CHRISTmas. we just try to make sure that we're home for CHRISTmas.

have you ever tried to define what home really means? have you ever tried to discover what the dynamics of home are all about? oh i can understand why a friend of mine who has just lost his dad would want to be home or why a lonely young sailor would be longing for home but what about us?

just a thought from the front porch…