New Years Resolution or Restitution?

In Winnie the Pooh’s “A Very Merry New Year,” the friends all enjoy the holiday festivities together. Pooh eats his weight in honey, Kanga tells stories of past Christmases, Rabbit plants a carrot for this year’s garden,Piglet worries, and Eeyore complains (maybe a little like your house this holiday season). But it is Tigger who catches my attention. When everyone starts talking about New Year’s Resolutions, Tigger all-too-typically mispronounces it as “Restitution”…he just can’t seem to get it right. It’s Resolution, Tigger, not Restitution!And yet I think Tigger may be on to something (or at least the mind behind him). Pooh explains that “a resolution is when you find something about yourself that needs changing, and then you change it.” But to no avail,Tigger continues to seek restitution this year.While, culturally, we may be a people more defined by resolutions…biblically, we are a people who are more defined by restitution.Take a poll yourself. Go up to a hundred people and ask for their New Year’s Resolution, and almost every time you will hear an answer that involves no one but him or herself. “I want to start exercising,” “I want to start anew diet,” “I want to start a new hobby…” But restitution is different,because restitution inherently involves more people than just me. If we were to ask Pooh to define restitution he may define it kind of like this,“It’s when you find something in your relationship with a friend that needs fixing, and then you fix it.”A wise man once said that God is not so much in people as in-between people.It’s there that the individual finds healing, and grace, and forgiveness,and wholeness, and peace, and, even, self-worth…My person-hood has always been connected to someone else. It began with my mother, continues in my spouse and children, parents and brothers, friends,congregation, neighbors…. The question “Who am I?” takes on all new meaning, and involves many more than simply myself! “I” is only a localform of “we.” How about this question for the New Year: What would make us better this year?It is a dangerous question. “Me” starts to include “you”, “us” starts to include “them”…when does it stop? Who is left out? …God says no one is. Restitution…this is God’s goal for the year 2009.

- Chet Bush

What Preserves Us?

Last week archaeologists unearthed a lone skull in Britain. The cranium was not attached to the rest of the skeleton, and suggests a kind of ritual burial. What made the find so unique, however, was not the absence of the body, but the presence of something else: the brain. Rachel Cubbitt was cleaning the skull when she noticed something rattle within. The small clump of tissue had contracted over time, and scientists have not yet determined how much of the brain has been preserved. What has researchers bewildered is that all the other soft tissue can be decomposed, and the brain has been preserved. The skull is dated to be over 2,000 years old! Chris Gosden of Oxford University has declared the discovery “a real freak of preservation.”
(A.P., 12-13-08, 1:25 AM, EDT.)

What preserves? In archaeology it is generally not the preserved item, itself, but its context that aids preservation. If 2,000 years is not impressive enough – scientists admit this discovery takes a back seat to the 1986 “brain find” in the peat bog of Windover Farms, FL. These brains (yes, plural – dozens were found!) are dated 8,000 years old! So, let me ask the question again: What preserves? Are these just particularly rare and hearty brains? Or, more likely, did the soil create an insulator against decay and decomposition? I agree – it’s got to be the immediate environment of the preserved tissue.

What things are you preserving? A car, antique furniture, Grandma’s dishes?
Pictures, an old letter, the family bible? Or what about intangible things…stories, traditions, memories…? This question comes at a time of the year we most practice tradition. While many of us have a healthy appreciation for antiques and rebuilds, the season definitely leads us to ponder those things that are worth being around years from now. The traditions and stories of this holiday season create an enduring environment. This will last.

But then, again, it’s not like we are preserving God by practicing our traditions and stories. Jesus was one who liked to turn tables. He suggested things like: (paraphrase) “Those things you have you don’t really have, but they have you,” and “Where a person’s treasure is, there is the heart also.” Maybe he would do the same in archaeological terms. Maybe we shouldn't marvel at the brain that has been preserved so much as the soil that has preserved it.

“The grass withers, the flower fades; but the Word of our God will stand forever.” (Isaiah 40.8) Don’t miss the story of Jesus this Christmas. Be intentional about the practices of your home this holiday. Participate in the public worship of God’s people. Be immersed in the 2,000-year tradition.
The beauty of God’s presence in Christmas is not that we have somehow preserved God, but that He is preserving us.
- Chet Bush

Moral Capitalism

Check out this well-written editorial at CT on-line about the financial crisis and our responsibility as Christians:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/december/17.22.html

What do you know about Christmas?

This is a pretty entertaining quiz on the history of our Christmas celebration at CT. What did CS Lewis say about Christmas? Who was St. Nick? (and some other interesting facts). You can take the quiz by following the link below:


http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/quiz/?id=RUQWP

The Language of Christmas

Certain words catch one’s attention. During a brief online surf of U.S.
news I found a rare word expressed in two separate articles. The first article chronicled a juvenile correction center in Florida that violently punished young boys back in the 60’s. The second article came from the opposite corner of the nation, Washington, where a woman has been sent to jail for smuggling a monkey on a flight from Thailand to Los Angeles. She sedated the primate, hid him under her shirt, and posed as an expectant mother. These are two very different scenarios, but contain a common word:
egregious.

I don’t believe I have ever used the word “egregious.” I know I have heard it, for the pronunciation is as familiar as the word is rare: egg-ree-juss.
Prior to my present reading I could not have defined the word for anyone.
The context, however, helps us know its function. Based on these two articles I would surmise this word connotes a kind of naive misconduct, an arrogant carelessness, and a foolish flippancy. Egregious must mean one demonstrates disrespect toward others and expresses it in self-condemning behavior. Perhaps one may, also, find the word in an article on Illinois’s Governor.

Now, I’ll check the dictionary…(jeopardy music playing)

(Two minutes later) Okay, so maybe I was a little too specific…Webster’s Dictionary simply defines as “outstandingly bad.” However, Webster’s Thesaurus does support much of my impression: “conspicuous, enormous, extraordinary, flagrant, great, gross, huge, monstrous, outrageous, prodigious, remarkable, tremendous.”

The point of all this is: We learn what words mean by the contexts in which they are used. Hear a word one time and you can kind of make it out. Hear it a second time and it becomes a little clearer. With every new situation in which the word is spoken its meaning becomes more distinct, because the appearances of the term allow for intersections among stories. And intersections give definition. You may even start using the word…as in – “King Herod was an egregious old man, who protected his throne by killing powerless infants!”

We learn what words mean by the contexts in which they are used.
Therefore…be outrageously generous with your Advent language. Connect the Christmas story with the rest of your discipleship life, and learn to articulate it. There are many who hear of Christ every year at Christmas, but have no other intersections. No other stories give definition for understanding why this baby arrived. For the church, it’s obvious…the story is enriched with hope for a redeemed humanity, goodwill toward all men, community gatherings of worship and adoration, finding needs in others then sacrificially giving in love. We even do such audacious things (like last
Sunday) as share Communion during Advent – so necessary for understanding God-with-us in our world.

But what about those who do not yet know the rest of Christ’s story? And what about our kids? Do we want them to forever think Christmas is about circling everything one fancies in a toy catalog? We want to teach them to give, yes, but we, also, want them to learn to receive rightly. All these nuances of Christmas – they are filled full as they are held in tension with the rest of Jesus’ life, and the mighty acts of God in Scripture.

The Word has come but for some remains ambiguous. Be generous with your Advent language. Allow it to intersect with your daily discipleship that does not end when we throw the wrapping paper away Dec 26th. Just think…those curled up little baby fingers will one day straighten the legs of a cripple. Those eyes that fail to focus on his own mother will one day pierce the heart of a rich, young ruler. Allow the story of this powerless baby to intersect with what He has done in your life. Then tell it. It is a great thing to be called by His name, and we discover the richness by which we have been defined as our lives intersect at the manger.

- Chet Bush

Celebrate Christmas by Giving Generously

This is a fantastic NOOMA by Rob Bell that should put our lifestyle in perspective. Keep this in mind as you decide what to do with your resources over this advent season...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZFFxDcSfeA

A Great Story Teller

Excellent article on one of my favorite musicians at Christianity Today... Bill Mallonee was named by Paste Magazine as one of the top 100 songwriters of all time...

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/october/39.78.html