Author: Janet Hanson

Christmas Is A Puzzle, Not A Pageant

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date December 23, 2013
7 Comments on Christmas Is A Puzzle, Not A Pageant

This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be. ~William Willimon

Christmas is a puzzle, not a pageant.

Christmas is a mystery, not a platform or position, a posture of defiance against an unbelieving world.

Christmas is a paradox, meant to leave us dumb-struck by a gift we didn’t ask for, the gift we needed most of all.

Christmas isn’t for the smug, the satisfied, the sure. So stop humming the melody and listen to the words instead. Let your certainty be rattled. Let your heart find a humbler place.

O holy Child of Bethlehem descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.

Something has to die before Jesus can be born in us. For we have remade God in our image. It’s time to let him out of the box, to empty him of our narrow assumptions. Let God be God, not a bigger version of us.

Don’t be so sure he is offended by what offends you.

Don’t be so sure he is impressed by what makes you wildly cheer.

Don’t be so sure you know how you would have responded to his coming. That you would have kneeled and not jeered. That you would have wept with joy, not crossed to the other side of the street.

Not sure is the best place to be at Christmas.

Because then we will kneel before the manger and really look. What will we see?

A Puzzle

A baby. An infant, needy and weak. God come down in tears, in hunger, in restless nights, a mother’s soft arms his only dwelling. This prince of heaven watched over by livestock. This brilliant rabbi sharing meals with the despised. This miracle-worker avoiding the applause of the crowd. This eloquent preacher refusing the perks of the popular. This most powerful of all humans allowing human arrogance to do its worst, for our sake.

Every year we forget. We slather our presents, programs and pageants on ourselves when God preferred to present to us a puzzle.

Embrace The Puzzle

Do you long to savor a moment of the true Christmas?

Sit in quiet and remember the infant you still are. Be hungry. Be needy. Be weak and helpless to be anyone important. Recognize your poverty, your limited understanding, the many ways you have yet to grow. Be small, curious, easily delighted and honest in your dismay. Turn your face to love and refuse to look away.

Is it hard? Do you feel more comfortable in the box seats of the pageant? If God stooped to become a child, he can empower you to do the same.

Merry Christmas, my treasured friends. Thank you for joining me as we question and chew on the things that really matter. May you be blessed as you have so blessed me. When life calms down here, we will return to our Alphabet Adagio. Meanwhile, may your Christmas and New Year be puzzling in the best of all ways. Love, Janet.

Tags Christmas, Paradox

Faith Life

Why Am I Such A Misfit?

We’re all a little weird. ~Dr. Seuss

Why am I such a misfit, I am not just a nitwit….why don’t I fit in?

Of all the soaring music of the season, this song keeps looping through my brain and I’m not sure why.

In a recent holiday gathering, surrounded by merry-makers, it hit me again. Why do I so often feel out-of-place? A modest Charley Brown pine amidst flashy aluminum glamour. A reindeer born with a peculiar gift. An elf with strange career goals. A misfit toy, banished for my quirks.

To be different is to wear the dreaded cone of shame, and even made-up characters know it. Ask a teenager who dares to wear last year’s fashion, or takes the less-worn path–bullies circle at the first sign of original thought. But most of us are our own bully, pecking like angry hens at our misfitness.

We assume everyone else fits in just fine.

Misfit Embrace

Good news! Tis the season for those who misfit. God has sent his beloved Son, but not to the popular crowd. Born of dubious parentage, in a backwater village, his admirers, smelly, socially awkward shepherds. The important people partied in palaces, while the Who’s Who-less knelt by a manger, warmed by the breath of watchful beasts in a homely barn. Perhaps an angel or two hummed a doxology, hovering just out of sight.

This baby, so special and wise, would gather the misfits to him, an insult to the fabulous and famous. Jesus never taught people to conform, to acquire a team spirit, to try to be like anyone else…except Him. And somehow, in fitting with Him, they become even more radiantly different than before.

In the end we will all look like Jesus, but none of us will look like each other. Why not practice what will be someday, now?

Christmas is about a misfit community you are invited to join. Come as you are, not as you aren’t–it’s the only way to get in.

Tags Christmas

Faith Life

Advent Angst

My Angst

I’m in a panic, it’s the season of guilt; all the “should’s” and the “ought-to’s,” even Martha must wilt!

It seems I am clueless, I admit with chagrin–what’s most important? What matters to Him?

His Answer

My child,

I watch you scowl as you check off your list, as you hustle and hurry, get your brain in a twist, thinking more makes it better and much makes you right—this long sprint of madness toward Christmas Eve night.

I don’t really notice the height of your spruce, how cozy your candles, how tasty your goose, whether yours took the prize at the cookie exchange, the silver you’ve polished, the hors d’oeuvres you arrange,

what traditions you follow–I won’t find it shocking to see carrots for reindeer or coal in your stocking. I won’t be counting the plays you attend, which presents you purchase or how much you spend.

Serve a roast, or just pizza, I really don’t mind! If you escape to Hawaii or stay here resigned to the hustle, the bustle, the crowds and the noise, and come through it frazzled, or with Hallmark-like poise.

Either way, it won’t matter from my, point of view. There’s something quite different that I ask of you.

Stop for a moment, just put it on pause, that letter you’re writing to dear Santa Claus.

The Gift

What gift could you give me to fill me with joy, better than any decoration or elaborate toy? Even more than my pleasure at each generous act of kindness to grinches, or unselfish tact?

Yes, I will notice the weak you are strong for, but before everything else, one thing I long for. There’s one special package under your tree, the first you must open—the present of ME.

Will you believe me, my desire is for you? My best gift this Christmas, the one that rings true? Just the pleasure of seeing your childlike grin when it finally hits you—you’re already in!

You’re locked in my heart, my valuable prize, forgiven and treasured, delight of my eyes. That you’d accept without argument the gift of my grace means more than all riches or works you embrace.

What means more than the caroling, the cider, the snow, is a heart that responds, your love that will grow as MY preparations are given free rein—then my coming, then Christmas, will not be in vain.

My Response

Jesus, forgive me, for I see it is true I’ve got it all backwards, I’ve tried to BE you, to make Christmas happen, (in me I will trust), as the best of intentions all crumble to dust.

So, YOUR gift I will open, each day, a new start—unwrap your goodness, and gaze at your heart, delight in fresh wonders, still warm from your touch, and believe the inscription,

“Child, I love you so much.”

By Janet Hanson, 2005

It’s not great poetry. I wrote it on a sugar cookie high, in the throes of teeth-gritting, jingle bell jarring angst.

The rhyme records a moment when it finally hit me. And every year I have to let it hit me again–I’m already loved.

And so are you, much more than you can imagine.

“And our eyes at last shall see him,
Through his own redeeming love;
For that child so dear and gentle
Is our Lord in heaven above, and he leads his children on. to the place where he is gone.”

~Cecil Frances Alexander

Photograph of Christmas lights by Melanie Hunt

Tags Advent

Faith Life

Fresh-Brewed Gratitude

“I pray for you, that all your misgivings will be melted to thanksgivings. ~Jim Elliot

Today, we offer fresh-brewed gratitude.

We won’t serve God the sentimental leftovers of olden days, when life saluted us with cheerful favor, when headlines were benign, when custom-order blessings appeared daily at our doors.

Gratitude is not reserved for moments when the sun beams on our dreams.

Especially when bad news blurs and ill-winds batter, we turn from lament for this one day. We deliberately savor the warmth of a sturdy love, of mercies delivered new every morning, even when we forget to notice.

God deserves and delights in our gratitude, for our sake, not for his.

For he knows we weary our souls with relentless complaint. He hears our self-pitiful moaning, for our state, so alone and unloved. He watches as dank dungeons of bitterness become our second home. Deaf to his whispers of hope and redemption, we sink beneath our worry, so he throws us a life-saving line, In everything give thanks, for this is my will for you.*

So, today, untether your expectations, and let God be the only definition of good.

In the end, we will realize even desperate moments were soaked with grace. The people who annoyed and distressed us will turn out to have been our best tutors. The hostile divisions, the what-ifs we dreaded, the ideas that outraged us, will scatter in the face of incomparable Love.

In one great “Aha!” we will be made new.

Someday. But today, if we are grateful, we rehearse who we will someday be.

On this day, pour some fresh-brewed gratitude, and offer it to God.

Fresh-Brewed Gratitude

Thanks for prayers that you have answered,

Thanks for what you have denied.

Thanks for storms that I have weathered,

Thanks for all you have supplied.

Thanks for pain, and thanks for pleasure,

Thanks for comfort in despair.

Thanks for grace that none can measure,

Thanks for love beyond compare.

(Adapted from the hymn, Thanks To God For My Redeemer, by August L. Storm)

*1 Thessalonians 5:18

Photograph by Melanie Hunt

Tags gratitude

Faith Life

I Is For Idols: Learning To Live For An Audience Of One

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date November 21, 2013
4 Comments on I Is For Idols: Learning To Live For An Audience Of One

The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be, help me to tear it from thy throne, and worship only thee. ~William Cowper

You will sing your song to an audience of one, or to an auditorium packed with idols.

Every day we choose between them.

Idols (your insatiable demanding self, or the slippery approval of the crowd) never pay at the door. They slip in the side door, impressively dressed, secretly impotent. They promise the world and give nothing.

Look around. Everywhere you turn heads are tilted to hear their suggestive hiss:

Unless you are (attractive, accomplished, applauded, approved of, well-off, well-married), you will not (be safe, be important, be special, be loved, be happy).

People who don’t (look like you, agree with you, vote like you, seem likable to you) aren’t worthy of (a dance, a friendship, a place in your oh-so-busy life).

Count on God to show up (for religious gatherings, major tragedies, a momentary spiritual high) but most things you will need to figure out for yourself.

It’s too easy to nod in agreement, to bow to what seems inevitable. But we can be free of those voices, to perform instead for an audience of one.

Idols Smashing: The Ten Plagues

In Exodus, chapters 7 through 15, we read the curious story of God delivering his people out of slavery. The Pharaoh is reluctantly convinced after ten plagues are unleashed by Moses’ command. Blood, frogs, lice, insects, pestilence, boils, hail, locust, darkness, death—why use up so many small disasters instead of performing one dramatic act?

I wonder if God was addressing Egyptian idols in the audience.

Osiris was worshipped as the important, life-sustaining god of the Nile. In the first plague the river water is rendered useless.
Heqt, the frog goddess, assisted women in childbirth, mandated by the Pharaoh to end in death for Hebrew sons. After the second plague the air reeks with the stench of dying frogs.
Amon-Re, the sun-god was praised as the source of warmth and light. In the ninth plague all light is snuffed out, the darkness so dense no one can move.

More is at stake than a mere battle of wills between Moses and Pharaoh. A cosmic question is being settled over the pyramids, “Who is worthy of being God?”

Idols Annihilating: The Golden Calf

A few chapters later, rescued from Pharaoh’s control, Israel still turns to any idol at hand. We humans like our homemade gods–they are tangible, understandable, and comfortably like us. We prefer a God contained, a golden calf we help shape.

Idols Impotence

To say God is angry understates his reaction. Why is a piece of gilded pottery such a threat to God’s plan? Because the almost is a smoke screen for the most, for what we truly need. Those seductive whispers I’ve listed above do point to the truth: You were wired to feel safe, wanted, special, loved, happy, protected and potent. But idols are pretenders to a throne only one King deserves.

Your best weapon against the empty seduction of idolatry is to laugh at the presumption, to throw all promises of glory, glamour and glittering refuge high, like confetti into the air.

And then sing your song with all your heart to an audience of one.

Which idols whisper loudest in your ear?

Exodus 12:12 Exodus 32:1

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail above so you won’t miss a letter. Next: J is for ~~Happiness~~ Joy.

Photograph by Melanie Hunt

Tags idols

Faith Life

You Are More Special Than You Know: H Is For Holy

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date November 14, 2013
10 Comments on You Are More Special Than You Know: H Is For Holy

All things as they move toward God are beautiful, and they are ugly as they move away from Him. ~ A.W. Tozer

Few of us long to be holy, to be an ever-burning bush in desert places.

Special, yes, noticed, yes—we feel the pressure to be remarkable and amazing, but amazing is elusive.

And the competition is fierce. When every child on the team gets a trophy it doesn’t create confidence, but a deep-rooted angst. If I am one of a kind, why am I treated like one of many? If I’m special, why should I have to suffer this indignity or discomfort?

The unintended consequence of the self-esteem movement is a petulant population, chronically offended.

We feel like failures when our abilities are average.
We grind our teeth when others cut in line.
We despair when ignored, overlooked, or unappreciated.

In moments of clarity, we suspect we are not special, which makes us, in the language of religion, “profane.” To be “holy” is not possible—we are common, ordinary, and every-day. Only the oblivious—the holier-than-thou, the self-righteous, the kind of people best avoided—would claim to be saints.

The Bible presents a different view, with the repeated command, “Be holy because I am holy.”

Be holy because I am.

Holy Moses

Moses was a privileged child, a slave adopted into palatial splendor. But forty years spent in the wild, huddled with dull-witted sheep, cured Moses of all self-importance. One day a burning bush detoured him from his duties, and the voice of God resounded with the promise, not “you’re extraordinary,” but “take off your shoes, you’re in the presence of someone who is.”

Later, the sea miraculously parted, Egyptian power thwarted, Moses led his people in a hymn to God, “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15:11)

At the foot of a mountain, the former slaves washed their clothes, bracing themselves for a fire-earthquake-lightening-thunder encounter with holiness. They changed their diet and daily habits, reordered their relationships and reoriented their priorities, built a tabernacle and a new kind of nation all because they had been embraced by, you could say, infected by, a holiness not of their own.

There is no one on earth or in heaven like God. He is “holy.” But we learn from the Bible the unexpected truth:

A holy God is not repulsed by our failure; he invites us to be healed.
A holy God does not reject, he delivers us from our darkness.
A holy God is not indifferent, but he desires only our best.

According to Lev. 19:18, the holiness God demands of us is, in its essence, love. And love will make us holy where it matters. In Luke 6:36, Jesus changes the adjective. “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

Holy, merciful, love is what others will find in us when we hold tight to our holy God. We will flame, a brightly burning detour, for lonely desert wanderers.

Do you know you are special because God is?

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail above so you won’t miss a letter. Next: I is for Idols.

Tags holy

Faith Life

G Is For Grit And Glory

Redemption makes beauty out of baseness, a brilliant God at work where we least expect him to be.

The grit and the glory come wrapped in the same story.

The grit-level view is familiar—we walk it every day.

Random conversations, petty hurts and catastrophic headlines all jumble together like puzzle pieces still in the box. We are used to it. The aches and pains of aimless effort seem normal. It is what it is, our motto.

What is there to do except stack our pieces higher or collect the prettiest ones in a pile?

Does life come to us by chance, or by grace, or by divine intention? When we turn the box cover over we understand. The tired, dusty grit of life is being fashioned into glory.

From Grit To Glory

The second half of Genesis reads like a soap opera, with Jacob and Joseph its dubious heroes. Chapter after chapter reek of revenge, rivalry, deception, manipulation, betrayal, desperation–a dysfunctional family tale. Brother tricked, brother sold, brothers afraid, brothers saved. From of the muck of sibling rivalry, God forges a nation of tribes and saves his people from famine.

But, more important, God fulfills his promise to Abraham. A shrewd and savvy puzzle master, he moves among unwilling pieces—not wasting, but waiting. Divine redemption transforms us, one stubborn heart at a time. At the close of Genesis, Joseph catches a glimpse of the puzzle box cover and sings, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good….” (Genesis 50:20).

Can you take a moment to sing along? To all that hurts or annoys me, or threatens to destroy me–you mean it to harm me but God will use it for good (repeat).

A Daily Prayer For Glory

I give you the pieces of my life, the wretched, the mundane, and the lovely.

Take my mistakes, my triumphs, and my sin.

Take the resentments I’ve hoarded, the cruelty I’ve endured, and the hurt I’ve inflicted.

Take my boredom, my worry, my contentment, my smothering, any kindness you find or gratitude uncovered, any joy or pleasure I hold to my heart.

Save what you can, deliver me where needed. Use everything to fulfill your sharp-eyed vision, squeeze every drop of meaning to reclaim me as your own.

Use it all for your glory. Use it all to bless the world. May my life look more like the puzzle box cover because I let you have your way with the pieces.

Amen. Let it be so.

Where do you long to see God bringing glory out of the grit of your world?

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail above so you won’t miss a letter. Next: H is for Holy.

Tags glory, redemption

Faith Life

F Is For Fearsome Faith

Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace. ~Martin Luther

On any hair-raising adventure of faith, fear is the backseat driver.

Abraham was a fearful, anxious man, an unlikely role model. Read Genesis 12-23. You’ll wince as the father of our faith makes the self-protective choice at almost every turn.

Twice, he throws his wife Sarah under the bus to save his own skin. When Sarah returns the cruel favor with Hagar as her target, Abraham hides behind his newspaper, and barely blinks when his first-born son is driven to the wilderness to die.

Abraham doesn’t strike me as wicked, just sadly normal. In his myopic view, other people are shadows, their needs less important than his own survival.

If Facebook had existed then, Abraham would have posted mostly pictures of himself.

Fear Is The Old Norm

I know what it’s like to walk through my day with my head down, muffled in a fog of anxiety and worry, forgetting I’m not the only one who matters. And so do you.

Fear is the normal, logical response to a world where no one is in charge, where there is no one to protect you. And your inadequacy as your own god becomes more alarming by the moment.

Faith is something else. Beautiful, demanding, an everyday slog, a breath-taking thrill. Illogical, insane, unless there really is Someone in charge.

But ever since Genesis 3, insecurity is the voice our inner GPS can hear best. So God’s solution is not to seek out the fearless few. Instead he chooses one of us–flawed but willing–and goes to work.

Faith Must Be Tested

Abraham’s biography is both pitiful and powerful, climaxing in the most unbearable test of all. God asks the long-promised son be given back, with no explanation. Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love…and offer him there as a burnt offering…” More ink, and more angst, has been spilled about this story than any other in the Old Testament, so terrible and unique is God’s command. But Abraham’s example offers bracing comfort for all who walk by faith:

God knows us well, the places where we cower, our deepest, unspoken fears.
His aim is not our comfort, but a complete and glorious cure.
The only way we can know God provides is to be emptied of all provision.
When we are willing to give everything to God, his plan is set in motion to bless the world through us.

God could make life easy. He could cater to our insecurity and pamper us with a well-paved life. But we’d never learn, as Abraham did, with God we have nothing to fear. Jehovah Jireh, God will provide.

Genesis 22 Hebrews 11:17-19

How is God leading you from fear to faith?

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail above so you won’t miss a letter. Next: G is for Grit and Glory.

Tags faith

Faith Life

E Is For Embrace

When we cease from the battle of trying to think well of ourselves and turn to God in complete nakedness, we will find nothing but acceptance. ~James Bryan Smith

The Enigma of Embrace.

At the tender, if volatile, age of three, one of my sons acquired super powers.

In the late afternoon when my wits were already fading, he’d abandon his mild-mannered cheer, don a defiant-boy cape, and demolish every parental line in the sand.

The sweet compliance every tired mommy longs for crumbled under classic preschooler tantrums in response to my every NO. Time-outs and threats accomplished little, he was clever enough to argue his way past my jaw-clenched frustration.

One day, a strange idea penetrated my fogged-in brain.

Sitting on the floor beside my son’s screaming outrage, I pulled him into my lap. Stiff, unbending he struggled to be free, but I firmly held him close, rocking. Within minutes I could feel his little body relax as he snuggled into my embrace, his tears dry, his sunny smile restored.

I sat for a while, cuddling his soft warmth and marveled at this perplexing truth:

Sometimes the last thing I want to give is the only thing the other person really needs.

God knows this better than I do. You think preschoolers pull tantrums? Read through the sickening slide show of Genesis 4-11. Murder, petty revenge–paranoid humanity boasting of evil, mocking goodness, wildly rejecting everything they’ve been given. God is horrified. Even with a restart through Noah, chapter 11 ends with a fallen tower of human hubris, our ancient relatives exposed, exiled, entangled in ego-centrism.

They were looking for love, for divine acceptance, in all the wrong places. They found alienation instead.

The Grand Embrace

Only a dozen chapters into the story, God has the choice to give up on the human project, but he does something peculiar instead. Through Abraham, God will reveal his breath-taking intention to sit on the floor and pull humanity into his embrace.

His eyes wide open to the very worst we have done, God won’t wait for us to be good. His lap is big enough for every bit of our baggage. There’s room for every cranky child.

Rest in that truth for a moment. You are not rejected, but embraced. The voice of this age claims you are not worth it–you’re dispensable, disposable, and unlovable as you are. The Bible claims the opposite. As the story unfolds, God won’t give us what we deserve. At great cost to himself, he will give us the only thing we ever really needed.

Have you accepted God’s perplexing embrace?

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail above so you won’t miss a letter. Next: F is for Faith.

Photography by Melanie Hunt

Tags acceptance, embrace

Faith Life

D Is For Deceived

Ah, why should all mankind for one man’s fault, be condemned, if guiltless? ~John Milton, Paradise Lost

Deceived, we choose door number two, and watch it slowly open. The promise of more, of better, of life without limits–we rush on the stage, to find

nothing.

Except a tuneless music box, alone on a barren floor, unwinding its last sour note.

And the picture of an apple, a serpent and the terrifying brink where we once teetered.

That one brief moment, all of heaven held its breath, and waited. And winced. What was ours, what was very good, we threw away.

But how did we fail, if we were not there? Why still the curse, when we have done nothing?

Let’s review.

Genesis 1 ends with Sabbath–all creation in harmony, with itself and with its Creator.

Genesis 2 ends with the joyous intimacy of human community, patterned after God’s own delight.

Genesis 3 ends with shattered glass and now with splinters we are born. Sabbath, replaced by sabotage–we shake our fists at God, exploit the creation we’ve been given, daily draw our battle lines between us.

Deceived, we all pick the same door, so enticing is its promise:

Open Here For Knowledge Of A Higher Kind.

The desire stirs in every human heart to experience what we’re not wired to know on our own. We want to profit from nearness to God, without dealing with God himself. We want to acquire the blessings of life while ignoring the hand of the blesser.

Would a child cry for a mother’s milk and demand she leave the room? Would mountaineers hire the most reliable guide and leave him behind at the base? We laugh at the deranged behavior of others, and then sign up for the same.

Because the serpent knows where to poke:

I am not enough, just as God made me.
What I have is not enough, as much as God has given me.
Someone has it better, so God must be withholding.
Someone else is better than me, so I will become as god.

In reaching for more, we got nothing. In over-running our boundaries, like petulant tsunamis, we brought chaos and death on ourselves. What was unthinkable in Genesis 2 has now become our norm. From self-worship to self-destruction–humanity itself in identity crisis.

Not Deceived

Later, in the wilderness, confronted by the same insinuating whispers, Jesus will resist, and stay within Father-made bounds. A way home will be made for us all. The night before he is betrayed, he will invite his disciples to “take and eat” the knowledge we’ve always desired. By his death on a tree, he will free us, for:

Evil is not a thing of its own, but an un-thing, offering un-life and un-love.
Knowledge doesn’t exist as an independent prize, but is wrapped in the person of God, who is good.

In Christ, in door number one, “lie hidden all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3).

Do you hear the un-deceived invitation in those words?

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail above so you won’t miss a letter. Next: E is for Embraced.

Tags Deceived