Holiday vs. Christmas

Please note as you read that I am in no way trying to bash or devalue the traditions we hold near and dear to our families and childhood memories or the ideas of giving, love, joy, and generosity that the Christmas season encourages in all of us.  Rather I am more commenting on what appears to be lacking and forgotten at times in our seasonal celebrations through the eyes of a Christ follower.  

I think that this post's topic has been building up inside me for a number of years.  I remember way back in High School I wrote a paper on it my junior year called "Santa-mas". So this post is long over due I believe.  With it being that time of year again, the the stores are filling their aisles with wish list items, the commercials have taken on a holiday flair & are telling us this is the best sale of the season so buy your gifts earlier, and TV channels are already promising their holiday countdown starting in mid November.  With all those things filling the media every way you turn, my feelings have just come flooding right back.  I can't quite put my finger on what my feelings are but I think it is something along the lines of annoyance, mixed with anger, mixed with frustration, mixed with exasperation. But I do know what about all this bothers me.

I see everything Santa, Snowmen, Snowflakes, Nutcrackers, presents, Reindeer, trees, & lights.  But in the midst of all that I see nothing but the occasional slightest reference to the name sake of CHRIST-mas, through the use of a Nativity scene. When I was younger I won't lie, I loved all of the stuff I listed above and never thought twice about it.  Seriously though, I still enjoy it all.  I watch the traditional Christmas movies, make Christmas cookies, decorate the tree, I mean I even have Star Wars Christmas ornaments.  Some of my favorite memories are of watching White Christmas and National Lampoons Christmas vacation with my family as we decorated the tree we went out to find.  However, over the past years I have started to think something is not entirely right and very wrong with this, or at least missing.  And I finally realized what was causing my distress over the things I used to not think twice about.  

My zeal for Christ has finally won out over the zeal for traditions and the commercialized "Holiday".  The Nativity is not supposed to be merely a piece of Christmas set under the tree but the entire reason and celebration of the season.  It is not just a day either, but the whole season of Advent; the waiting to celebrate the birth of the Savior, our Emmanuel, on Christmas.  We aren't supposed to fit Christ into our Christmas but have Christ the center of our celebration.  I have been told very often that what we spend our money and time on represents what we value.  So I begin to question, how much time during the Advent/Christmas season do I actually spend celebrating the birth of the Savior and how much time do I spend in the stores and on tradition or on presents?  Am I buying into the gift of God or the gift from Khols?  Who do I think of more, Joseph & Mary acting in faith and obedience or Santa Claus bringing me a present?  If my Christmas was represented by a pie-chart, which piece would be the largest?  It is a very convincing place to come to, but I think a good spot to be in.

So I have come to the conclusion that I don't mind them now calling things Holiday decorations and celebrations because I don't think it is reverent to associate crazy sales, mass buying & over spending, wish lists, and superficial uses of the phrase "Merry Christmas" with the birth of the Savior of the world.  I'd rather have the term Christmas used sparingly in the proper context and heart condition than in a commercialized form to encompass everything used to celebrate the time of the year that Christmas falls in.  Thoughts of Merry Christmas should first bring to mind images of a babe in the manger, not of Santa on the roof. So I myself am convicted this year to be more reflective in the way I celebrate this Christmas season, to look at the celebrations and traditions in a new light.  I need to remember that what I, as a Christian, am celebrating.  I need to celebrate more like the shepherds did those many years ago... 

^{Luke 2:8-20
8} And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. ¹⁰ And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. ¹¹ For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ¹² And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” ¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest,
    and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

¹⁵ When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” ¹⁶ And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. ¹⁷ And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. ¹⁸ And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. ²⁰ And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

What Is The Purpose of Fund Raising? ... Well...

So I've been fund raising full time since May but a little bit since January.  In all my encounters with people where I discuss my fund raising, so often I hear the comment "It is too bad you can't just be on campus..." or "What is the point of making you have to raise so much before you're on campus...".  Now during this season where I'm fund raising but not enough is coming in; where there are days I think that nothing is coming from the effort I put in; where I question God why and when; and now forced to find a part time job, I have come to realize that I am so much like Moses.  As I was doing my devotional today through "My Utmost For His Highest", this particular topic was on individual discouragement and personal enlargement (the passage is below).  The past they were looking at was back in Exodus 2 when Moses feels the need and calling to save his people but is forced into the wilderness only to be called back in 40 years.  As Oswald Chambers explains Moses circumstances he reveals something else.  Moses wasn't ready to lead and fulfill the vision he had, until he was able to say when finally called back "Who am I".  It took 40 years in the wilderness caring for sheep and learning communion with God before he was ready to fill the vision God had originally gave him.

So what does any of this have to do with fund raising you ask? EVERYTHING!  For a staff that is fund raising, that season of seeing God's vision for the campus but not being funded enough to get on campus is an equivalent to the 40 years in the wilderness for Moses.  We know we are called but God wants to teach us a few things first until our vision is no longer about me being able to do what I know I can do but about God and His plans and that He is the one sending me.  In the mean time though, even though my desire is to be working with students, God is teaching me valuable lessons about how to walk with Him.  Everyone in IV tells you that what you learn in fund raising is very applicable to what we do in ministering to student.  However, I would like to take it a step farther and say that this is a time where God is teaching me how to better spend time and walk with Him.  He is giving me this wilderness experience for my own good.  Even though it can become discouraging as an individual, it is actually to prepare me for His calling in my life. 

So what is the purpose of fund raising? Why should I be forced to do such a thing? The purpose of fund raising is to make me less and Him more, to get to that point where I can honestly say "Who am I to go and minister to these students?" "Who am I to be called to lead an InterVarsity Chapter?"  It is to put things in the right perspective and learn how to closely walk with the One by whose strength alone can I accomplish the vision He has given me.  Like any job there is some form of training, and this is my training ground, the wilderness of fund development.  So I will "tend my sheep" here until God knows I am ready and brings me to care for the students on the college campus.

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October 13th

Individual discouragement and personal enlargement

Moses went unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens. Exodus 2:11.

Moses saw the oppression of his people and felt certain that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit he started to right their wrongs. After the first strike for God and for the right, God allowed Moses to be driven into blank discouragement, He sent him into the desert to feed sheep for forty years. At the end of that time, God appeared and told Moses to go and bring forth His people, and Moses said—‘Who am I, that I should go?’ In the beginning Moses realized that he was the man to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in the individual aspect, but he was not the man for the work until he had learned communion with God.
 
We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and we start to do the thing; then comes something equivalent to the forty years in the wilderness, as if God had ignored the whole thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged God comes back and revives the call, and we get the quaver in and say—‘Oh, who am I!’ We have to learn the first great stride of God—“I AM THAT I AM hath sent thee.” We have to learn that our individual effort for God is an impertinence; our individuality is to be rendered incandescent by a personal relationship to God (see Matthew 3:11). We fix on the individual aspect of things; we have the vision—‘This is what God wants me to do’; but we have not got into God’s stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a big personal enlargement ahead.


Chambers, O. (1986). My utmost for his highest: Selections for the year. Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering.

Freefall

So the past couple of mornings I have woken up with a song stuck in my head, but only part of it.  So I pulled it up on I-Tunes and listened to what it was saying.  As I played it and looked at the lyrics I was astonished to realized that they described my situation perfectly.  The song tells the story of someone who has taken a huge leap of faith and is in between the decision to make the leap and the end result.  But in the midst of all that the uncertainty of when they will get there and how they will get there and what will happen now, they feel security because God is holding them through it all.  In the eyes of any other person the jump was a crazy move to make and any other person should be terrified; but the person knows that because they are following God, He is carrying them through it all.  After the second time through the song I couldn't believe it.  This was describing my situation and what I was feeling.  I have taken this huge leap of faith, having to trust God to provide for me, to lead me, to teach me through everything.  From the outside many people would think that this kind of lifestyle is crazy, having to fund raise, work with students, and do ministry work.  But, I can rest safe and secure in the knowledge that have nothing to fear and that I am not alone because God is holding me through it all.  Even when it feels like I am falling because of the uncertainty, I know that God is holding onto me.  So I am blessed to be in this place where I have no choice but to trust that God will bring me through and provide all I need.  Not everyone get's the chance to understand what it means to trust that God will provide everything.  It might be hard but I know that I will only grow closer to God because of it.  There is no choice but to get closer because the closer to Him I get the safer I will be.  So I can rest assured that: 

I'm not afraid
I know I'm safe
It's a chance but my choice is made
I'm not alone
You won't let go
And I know through it all
You hold me in the freefall

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Freefall by Royal Tailor

Two steps beyond the edge
I can't undo this leap of faith
Takes my breath away
So high above the ground
You've got me hanging in mid air
Between here and there
Now all I have is You

I'm not afraid
I know I'm safe
It's a chance but my choice is made
I'm not alone
You won't let go
And I know through it all
You hold me in the freefall

If I just believe my eyes
I'd see I should be terrified
But I'm so alive
I don't know how or when
But I believe that You'll come through
Lord, I'm trusting You
Can't wait to see what You will do

I'm not afraid
I know I'm safe
It's a chance but my choice is made
I'm not alone
You won't let go
And I know through it all
You hold me in the freefall

I'm falling, I'm falling, I'm falling

You got me falling from the sky with no parachute
Thinking I can fly but I know it's You
Got me up here, no fear, no tears
Mind's clear 'cause I know You're here
Can't wait to see what You will do

I'm not afraid
I know I'm safe
It's a chance but my choice is made
I'm not alone
You won't let go
And I know through it all
You hold me in the freefall

Reflection on My Utmost for His Highest: Missionary Munitions

I read this today and it is 100% true for InterVarsity Staff.  During whatever season God has us in at this moment, whether it is fund development, ministry with students, administrative work, moving to an unfamiliar place, staying in the same place we have been our entire lives, or anything else, are we displaying Christ in the most menial work we do?  Ministry does not start only once I start working with students.  It started much before that.  At home, at school, in the application process, in fund raising, in moving, in training, in my life away from direct contact with InterVarsity, these are places of the most ordinary actions but can be transformed into ministry when I act as Christ did.  When I am an example of Christ in all my surrounds and not just my "ministry job."  So if I say that I am not doing ministry until I start working with students, I am sorely mistaken and not ready to work with them.  I have the opportunity to minister to others in ALL parts of my life, INCLUDING fund development.

Below find the devotional I read.

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September 11th

Missionary munitions

Ministering as Opportunity Surrounds us. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. John 13:14.

Ministering as opportunity surrounds us does not mean selecting our surroundings, it means being very selectly God’s in any haphazard surroundings which He engineers for us. The characteristics we manifest in our immediate surroundings are indications of what we will be like in other surroundings.

The things that Jesus did were of the most menial and commonplace order, and this is an indication that it takes all God’s power in me to do the most commonplace things in His way. Can I use a towel as He did? Towels and dishes and sandals, all the ordinary sordid things of our lives, reveal more quickly than anything what we are made of. It takes God Almighty Incarnate in us to do the meanest duty as it ought to be done.
 
“I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.” Watch the kind of people God brings around you, and you will be humiliated to find that this is His way of revealing to you the kind of person you have been to Him. Now, He says, exhibit to that one exactly what I have shown to you.

‘Oh,’ you say, ‘I will do all that when I get out into the foreign field.’ To talk in this way is like trying to produce the munitions of war in the trenches—you will be killed while you are doing it.

We have to go the ‘second mile’ with God. Some of us get played out in the first ten yards, because God compels us to go where we cannot see the way, and we say—‘I will wait till I get nearer the big crisis.’ If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis.


Chambers, O. (1986). My utmost for his highest: Selections for the year. Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering.