Christmas is my favorite holiday. Hands down.
I am crazy about the snow, the ridiculous Christmas traditions, and pretending there is still a real Santa out there. I can’t get enough of Christmas music and movies, drinking hot chocolate in front of the fire, ugly sweater parties, and hanging up Christmas lights. Most people think simple things like this are insignificant… and they’re right. They are. But I still enjoy those stupid little insignificant details… as meaningless as they may be.
Even though I like these little dispensable holiday staples, by no means would I define Christmas with or without them.
Christmas is beyond gingerbread houses and candy canes… it’s about LOVE.
I’m sure most people have seen the movie Love Actually. It just so happens to be one of my favorite movies… go figure, right? (Christmas, Hugh Grant, AND love? Triple Whammy!) Well, I think the writers were really catching on to significant holiday meaning when they were forming that script. “Love really is all around…” Saying Christmas is about love is probably one of the most cliché things a person may ever hear… but it’s true.
Christmas is about spending time with and remembering loved ones. It’s about family and friends. For me, my family and friends mean more than I can put into words. My parents, my two older sisters, and my two brothers-in-law are some of the most important people in my life. Sure, we’re a normal family and we bicker and argue, but I don’t think any dispute could ever truly come between us…and for that, I am BLESSED. They have supported me my entire life… even when I make stupid decisions like deciding to go to Creighton to get my art major. They are goofy, make stupid jokes, and sometimes really get on my nerves… but no one can EVER take their place. As for friends, they are all families to me as well. My Creighton family, My Gamma Phi Beta family, my Curtis Family (a special shout out to my “wife” and three daughters), my Encounter Family, my Education Department family, my D-Group family, my Stonebridge family, my NCC family (even though I don’t even GO to that school), my Coram Deo family, my Lake Forest/Lake Bluff family, my Christ Church family, and my LFHS family. I am seriously one of the luckiest girls in the world to have SO many people who care for me and support me. You… reading this… right now… KNOW that you play an IRREPLACEABLE role in my life. Whether we talked today or haven’t talked in years… I love you. You are important and I am sorry I don’t show or tell you that enough. I’m sorry it takes tragedies or holidays for people, especially me, to tell you that, but you are SO loved. Thank you for being in my life and reading my blog. It means more than I can verbally express… **CYBER HUG!**
Okay, as much as I want to just rave on about how great my family and friends are, Christmas is about more than you and I and the love between us… but it’s about Love.
Love in the truest sense of the word. Love beyond simple signs of affection. Love that stretches past the holiday season. Love in true giving. Love that is radiated from the One who IS Love.
Love in absolute, pure sacrifice.
God the Father, Jesus our Savior = Love.
Love saw when man disobeyed Him, and He was saddened. Love saw Sin, and was Just so that His reign would triumph. Love wants a relationship with us, so He sent His Son to earth on that Christmas Day. He was fully aware that His Son, perfect in all ways, would have to die for our Sin, but was willing for this to happen so we could have life. Love wants us to experience what love really means, so He set the table for us. It’s about HIM. It’s about the greatest gift on could EVER be given. By this Christmas gift and the sacrifice that came with it, Love wanted us to learn how unimportant and insignificant our glory is. Love wanted us to Love Him and have a relationship with Him. Love loves love and loves us. (Okay, now I feel like I am just getting confusing).
Like I said… Christmas is all about Love. NOT us.
Many people may love (with a lower case ‘l’) a lot of things… but it is Love (with a capital ‘L’) that has transformed me. It is Love that has forever changed the world… and changes my heart every day. It is Love that LOVES me for exactly who I am. It is Love that makes my heart desire something greater. It is Love that calls for justice, goodness, grace, and mercy all over the world. It is Love that calls us back… to learn and live in Love (agape). It is Love that will one day transform this world that is so absent of love. It is Love that helps me understand what it TRULY means to love… it is where my heart lies.
Am I placing my heart in all these Christmas traditions and the things that may sometimes I feel “define” Christmas or love? Or, am I freely and openly giving my heart to Love because I know the truth about the ultimate Christmas gift and the LOVE that was behind it all along? I hope the latter.
But, not gonna lie, I really hope there is snow and hot chocolate in Heaven…
Exciting news, everyone! So, awhile ago, I think around late summer or early fall, I posted about how my missional community leader, Tyler Zach, wanted to start an all Greek Bible study on Creighton’s campus. WELLLLLLL, we started one. YEP. We did! Tyler, Anna Peterson, Gordon Kor, Carolyn Wanberg, and I started planning together and we had our first meeting before Thanksgiving and last week, we had our second. We have sent out emails to all the different chapters on campus and a few of us went and spoke at a couple as well just so we could familiarize Greeks with the actual existence of this Bible Study/Spiritual Discussion. There hasn’t been an incredible show up either of the times, but we are hoping that next semester will improve… especially with TONS of prayer and a little more PR J
For these past two sessions, we showed a Tim Keller video called, “The Prodigal God”. Next semester, we’ll be having a 6-week discussion series on certain clips of the video.
If you ever have the chance to watch this, PLEASE DO. It really makes you re-think the entire parable of the lost son. Keller has so many amazing insights into this story…
It’s a look at two sons/brothers, a younger and an older.
The younger son essentially wanted nothing to do with his father except for receiving his inheritance. After asking for his inheritance early, of which he did receive, he left his home and spent all of it on prostitutes and in sin. Inheritance back then was a HUGE deal. It was essentially the life of the father and not something that was given away before his death. However, the father gave it to the younger son freely and openly. It was more than just a giving of money and wealth, but it was the father giving the younger son his life. The younger son wanted nothing to do with the father, but wanted everything to do with the father’s things. To get control of his things, the younger son left and was disobedient. However, after spending all of his inheritance, the son came back to the home. The home was a relationship, not just a place. It was coming back to his family, his father. The younger son came back wanting to make up for his disobedience and repay his father. You’d think that the father would have made the younger son feel guilty about his poor decisions, but no, the father ran to his son and embraced him. He called for a robe, a ring, and a feast of the fattened calf for his son. The son who left and disobeyed. The father didn’t asked for the son to repay his debt, but he accepted him with full grace and full forgiveness.
The older son, however, never left and was never disobedient. He stayed with the father, aware that since his brother had left with his share of the inheritance, everything was now his. But, when the younger brother returned, and the father ran to him and offered him riches and a feast of the fattened calf, a feast only meant for the GREATEST of occasions and celebrations since eating meat was only a delicacy, the elder brother was mad and refused to go into the party. He was mad because the father was essentially giving the younger son the older brother’s inheritance by offering the riches that he still had. The younger brother left and squandered all his inheritance… so why should the older brother suffer for it? With this, the older son was trying to gain control over the father’s things by staying and obeying. Even after the father asked, the elder brother refused to go into the party, and the parable ends.
Most of us have heard this SO many times. We learn to look at both the younger and the elder son as important parts of the story. We learn to see the father’s forgiveness. God wants us to identify with one of the sons… but there are some interesting points Keller brought up that I hadn’t thought about before…
We should and can identify with one or both of the brothers/sons. The younger, which delved in sin, and the elder, in righteousness. God’s making a point though… that no matter GOOD (elder) or BAD (younger), both the sons were lost.
For the younger brother, he was trying to gain control of the father’s things (representation of God the Father) through leaving and disobeying. This describes so many of us at some point in life. We feel like we need to escape, to leave, and find our own path away from God. We think we know what’s best and we really just stick around and go to church until we hit a point and say to ourselves, “This isn’t working out, I have a better plan for self-discovery.” These types of individuals are also commonly compared to the tax collectors of the day. The sinners. This is also a mentality I see in most college students today. They want to do what they want. Essentially, by doing this, they are squandering what God gave them. Drinking, sex, drugs, greediness, envy, and so on so forth. It is a destructive path. They take the Fathers’ things and live the life they thought would be greater than the life they had at home, a close an intimate relationship with the Father.
For the elder brother, he was trying to gain control of the father’s things and the father by being good, obeying, and staying. However, he wasn’t doing this to get closer to the father, but rather to get the good things the father offered. His mentality was that of moral conformity… doing good, complying, and trying hard. Some might be wondering, “What’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t we be obedient and doing good?” Well, yes, but we also have to look into WHY we are doing any good at all. Is it to KNOW the FATHER or just to get the good things that come out of knowing the Father? Morality often times becomes simply a means of getting what people want… health, comfort, safety, etc… Jesus becomes a good model and great boss, but to those that have the mentality of the older brother, Jesus is not a Savior. I mean, even looking at Jesus, he didn’t hang out with the righteous people… he hung out with the sinners, the broken people… so why would he want us to be filled with the righteousness like this elder son? Jesus wants new people, not good people.
Tim Keller tells us to repent of both sin and the reasons why we do any good at all. Both goodness and badness separate us and alienate us from God, THE FATHER. It is looking at ourselves in the place of the older and younger sons. Which category do we personally tend to go toward? Wanting to do what we want and straying from God’s path, or living in righteousness so we can receive all of God’s blessings without truly living FOR the Lord DESPITE ourselves.
The parable isn’t just about forgiveness or sin, but it is also a call home. It is a call to recognize that there is actually another son involved in this story.
God, the Father, is calling us home; whether we are the disobedient son that eventually comes home after squandering his wealth and wanting to repay the father for his debt, or whether we are the righteous older son who refuses to come home because he just wants his gifts from the father and to be recognized for his goodness.
God wants us to recognize that the good and the bad are both lost. He wants us to have hope and recognize something is missing in our lives if we have those mentalities. The FATHER initiated love to both of the sons, He wanted them to repent of sin AND righteousness. He also wanted us to recognize the TRUE SON. The REAL older brother.
Back then, if a younger brother left the home or was lost, it was the responsibility of the elder brother to look for him. To put his needs and wants aside to bring the lost son back home. But, in this story, no one searched for the lost son. The older brother didn’t go after him. A TRUE older brother would have went out to find him no matter WHAT it cost him. Coming home was costly… especially to the older brother since that meant it he would be giving up part of his inheritance to welcome him back to the family.
Who is this true elder brother/son? JESUS. This wasn’t a parable to just recognize the two other sons, but so that we could see that there is actually a third son, the most IMPORTANT son. A SON sent by His Father away from home (Heaven). He was sent to bring the younger son (US) back to the Father, back to our TRUE home. But to do this was costly… Jesus, perfect in every way, left the comfort of Heaven, to come to imperfect Earth even though he knew it was going to cost him his LIFE. Jesus, like an older brother, deserved everything the Father gave him, but he was stripped… and did it ALL for US. There was a bad older brother in this story so we could see a GOOD one.
If we follow the true older brother, the real son, we, the lost, will finally be able to go home. God is calling us home… that’s one reason the parable doesn’t end… we are in the midst of this story and are called to be the people he created us to be, while recognizing the FORGIVENESS of the Father, our need to REPENT of both goodness and sin, and the LOVE and COSTLINESS of our older brother’s sacrifice to bring us home.
