Now that we’re in the middle of December, most of us are running around with long lists and busy plans and random dots of glitter speckling our cheeks which came from the many sparkly cards and ornaments lying around the house. It’s my favorite time of year, but with all the glittery rigamarole of the season, I have to remind myself of why I’m actually counting down the days until Christmas.   When I was growing up, my mother would hang up our Christmas stockings on December 1st. Ahead of time, she would fill each one with twenty-four items taped to twenty-four ribbons. Each ribbon was numbered 1-24, representing the days of December leading up to Christmas Day. We didn’t use the language of Advent, but that was kind of what we were doing. On December 1st, we would pull out the string with the number “one” on it. At the other end of the string, we would find a stick of gum, a tiny candy cane, a holiday pencil, a sticker, or a tube of chapstick. Even though the things we would pull out were fairly commonplace, we understood the effort and love behind the preparation. I knew exactly where she kept the sugar-free gum—in the basket by the microwave—and I could have chewed a piece whenever I wanted but knowing that my mom stayed up late November 30th to tape and cut and stuff made the whole experience special.   Now that I’m older, I understand more about this tradition of Advent, and how it goes deeper than just anticipating presents on Christmas morning. It’s about living a life of hopeful expectation. The word advent comes from Latin word meaning “coming” or “arrival.” We see a version of the word pop up in the New Testament and not just about the birth of Jesus, as glorious as that was. The Apostle Stephen talked about this predicted coming before he was stoned for his testimony. Jesus spoke about his own return and how he would arrive “as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west.” And Paul directed the believers to this promise of Christ’s arrival to encourage them in the dark days of their persecution.   Traditionally, the Advent season is divided into four weeks where we emphasize the themes of hope, peace, joy, and love—four gifts we can never give or get too much of. Living in a time between Christ’s comings—what some call the “Already and Not Yet”—it’s a time of waiting for something good, but it’s not supposed to be only a passive time. Though we have to live in a broken version of the creation God made for us, we aren’t meant to wallow in sorrow and despair. We’re given opportunities to joyfully help others, to show them love, to act as peacemakers, and to tell them our reason for hope, a hope which the prophet Isaiah described in this way: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”

I’m just not very creative. This is the phrase I often hear from friends. They see some amazing drawing or watch a skit at church and they make comparisons to their own lacking skills. Since they’re not particularly gifted musically or artistically, they feel like they don’t have much to offer in the creativity area. But God, the authority when it comes to creativity (crediting Him as the Creator of the Northern Lights and the Giant Sequoias and the duck-billed platypus), made each of us with something to offer. He made us in His image so that we could be creative, too. So our job is to find those possibly dormant abilities, give them a little room to breathe, and see what can be done for His glory. Consider the natural phenomenon of frost flowers. My friend Annie works at a nature center and she explained them this way: “Crystallofolia is a more scientific name. They occur when woody stemmed forbs, like milkweed, have thin layers of water in the stem that freeze and break through. The patterns are just due to the natural crystalline structure water produces in its mineral stage (or ice).” This commonplace undergrowth is perfectly positioned in wooded areas where no one—except for maybe a few bees and butterflies—pays much attention to it. Then the temperature drops. The specialized milkshake inside freezes and bursts out, creating magnificent, cascading beauty for those fortunate enough to find it. These frost flowers are what I picture when I think of those who say they aren’t creative. They don’t appreciate the value and substance of what lies within. For instance, I have a friend who admires my daughter’s ability to do fancy lettering and calligraphy. She wishes to be creative, but she already is. My friend can take loads of confusing information and lay it out on a spreadsheet where it will flow and make sense. She can organize a group of people so that they all understand what’s expected of them and give them support. She creates unity and organization. I have another friend who looks at my crochet projects and bemoans her lack of creativity. But, in reality, she creates something—though intangible—infinitely more important than a crocheted scarf or hat. This friend is an architect of connections. She checks on you when you mention you have a head cold. She asks about sick and struggling relatives. She remembers. Her creations come directly from her heart. Galatians 6:4-5 ( The Message ) – Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life. Photo Credit: Annie Holt #creativity #talents

There are a lot of great things about the holidays (aka, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years). It’s a season designed for time-honored traditions, contemplative reflection and showing generosity, and it all begins with an emphasis on thankfulness.   If you do a Google search for “thankful people in the Bible,” you get a few well-known names, such as the Apostle Paul and King David, men who professed their gratitude even in the midst of tragic circumstances. Another name in that list is the “Thankful Leper” in Luke 17.   In the story, Jesus was heading to Jerusalem when he encountered ten men who had leprosy. Before we get much further, let’s talk about leprosy in the Bible. You may still be finishing off those Thanksgiving leftovers, so I don’t want to get graphic, but what we think of as leprosy in the modern sense (now called Hansen’s Disease) may not be what they were experiencing at this time.   The term leprosy may refer to a lot of things and not all of them were physically contagious. In Leviticus—the book that describes the rules the Israelites needed to follow to be set apart as God’s people—the term leprosy is more of a “scaly skin disease.” It could refer to psoriasis, for instance, which isn’t contagious. Leviticus 13 and 14 talk about the rules and restrictions for someone with one of these defiling skin conditions. Those chapters go into a lot of detail, but to sum it up—you find a spot, you go to the priest, you’re pronounced unclean, then you take the steps to get clean before going back to the priest. The main urgency was to protect the people from ritual impurity, to keep their state of holiness intact so they would be worthy to worship.   Okay, back to the story…The ten men with leprosy stood at an appropriate distance from Jesus and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” When Jesus saw them, he was moved with compassion and said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And while they were going, they were cleansed. One of the men noticed his new state of cleanness and came back, “praising God in a loud voice.” The man fell down at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And here’s where we get a new detail…the thankful man was a Samaritan.   Jesus wondered aloud where the other nine men were, then he told the man, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” So for those of you keeping score at home, of the ten, the one man who came back to say “thank you” was actually a double outcast. He had a skin disease that made it socially unacceptable for him to be near people who didn’t share this same affliction. And he was also a Samaritan—the group of near-relatives and enemies of the Jews who were considered pagans. These ten lepers may have been a ragtag group made up of Jews and Samaritans. Hitting rock bottom can sometimes remove social barriers.   Jesus loves to make people rethink social norms. Just like when Jesus highlights the faith of other non-Jews during his ministry, He commends this healed and thankful man by saying, “Your faith has made you well.”   There are so many times when Jesus reaches out to the outcasts who are hurting, and when He offers them healing and salvation, their responses are often so joyful and so genuine. Going from the isolation that comes from sin and walking into the freedom of salvation is like stepping into sunshine from a dark and gloomy jail cell. How could you be anything but thankful?

A friend recently told me about taking a group of Texas teens to Nashville for a mission trip. As they sat outside at an evening devotional, the group became fascinated when one by one fireflies emerged from the grass and shrubbery to soar around the darkening sky. The majority of the mission team had never seen fireflies before. My friend showed them how to catch the insects without harming them and how to capture them in empty water bottles (from which they eventually released them). She told me that one of the girls in the group began to cry. The beauty of these tiny insects overwhelmed the Texas teen who’d never witnessed their brilliant dancing in her hot, dry hometown. As someone who has spent each and every summer in places where fireflies are common, I was amazed at their reaction. For me, it is a case of the extraordinary becoming ordinary through repetition and the assumption that it will always be there. Later that day, after I had told my family about my Texas friend’s story, my daughter was standing outside with a group of friends. Prompted by my friend’s experience, my daughter asked a guy who had just come to Middle Tennessee from another country if he had ever seen fireflies before. They were outside, so she pointed to the flying dots of light. “No,” he said. “I’ve never seen them before.” “Aren’t they awesome?” she asked. He shrugged, unimpressed. His reaction surprised me. Is he so accustomed to seeing strange insects that this particular species failed to astonish him? Is he so well-read about the cold light of bioluminescence that seeing this energy produced right in front of him left him unmoved? Whatever may be the reason for his indifference, it’s a cautionary tale for me. I don’t want to be a person who loses the wonder. I don’t want awesome to turn into boredom . And if you’re thinking that it can’t happen to you, beware. The Israelites had seen amazing things in the land of Egypt: the Nile turned to blood, three days of total darkness, a river that was split for them to march through just in the nick of time. And yet, they complained that the manna—their food which fell from the sky—just wasn’t tasty enough. “We don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything, but this bread that we’ve been gathering every day just isn’t cutting it anymore. We know that all we have to do is pick it up from the ground and eat it, and don’t get us wrong—it was great…at first—but we could really go for a hamburger. Actually, a cheeseburger would be even better.” How could they have lost the wonder so quickly? Who has the nerve to complain to a God who had produced these miracles? I wish I could say that I’m always in the “Awe Zone,” but it isn’t true. I forget to be grateful, forget to see how far He’s carried me, forget how I didn’t get here on my own, just forget. So when I look at those fireflies, at least for this summer, I’ll remember the wonder.

When your first baby is actually a set of twins, you figure out pretty quickly that it’s going to be difficult to create one-on-one time with them. At least that was the case for us. We had our twin daughters first, followed by our older son three years later. Then our youngest son came to us nearly 11 years after big brother was born. I was able to have those moments with my boys—grocery shopping trips, bike rides, ordinary weekdays—while their older siblings were in school, but it was different with my daughters. Early on, my husband carved out little outings with them so that they could have solo time with dad. Sometimes he would take them to get ice cream or to look at puppies at the pet store, just an hour basking in his undivided attention. Now that they are all older, and our schedules are color-coded and overlapping and busy, it’s a lot harder. And since our daughters are fully into their senior year of high school, time feels extra precious. That’s part of what made this last weekend so great. My husband and I took one of our daughters on a college visit out of state. It was only a 48-hour trip with about 12 of those hours spent on the road, but it was just the three of us so that made it special. (For those of you who are keeping score and wanting to call us out on preferential treatment of one twin over another, we made a similar trip with our other daughter last year, only it wasn’t as far away so we didn’t have to make overnight accommodations. Sometimes it’s impossible to be fair in all things, but we try. When my kids ask me which of them is my favorite, I always say it’s the one who is emptying the dishwasher.) We took a tour of the campus and filled out paperwork. Even though we didn’t attend this particular university, my husband and I were prompted by familiar sights and sounds to impart some wisdom from the other side of the college experience. We advised our daughter on things like dorm life, class loads, post-high school dating and cafeteria meals. We told her stories from our college days so many years ago and yet still mostly relevant. It took a lot of coordinating with our other kids and help from a friend to get away from all of the commitments back at home, but it was what we needed to do for this daughter at this time, and it filled up this mom’s tank with some good memories to shore me up for next year when she’ll be six hours away. Whether you have kids or not, there is no replacement for good quality time with those precious souls who are most important to you. If you’ve been wavering on going away on a trip with your people—be it best girlfriends or out-of-town cousins or your spouse—let this be your wake-up call. Jump in the car and go, then generously spend your most valuable currency: your time.

Ezra, age 5, already 6 baby teeth gone! Our youngest son lost his last tooth today. There was little fanfare, just him showing me a giant-looking molar resting at the bottom of a plastic sandwich bag. It’s been loose for a few weeks, and he’s been asking everyone to stick their fingers in his mouth and test its wiggliness—a great idea in the middle of cold and flu season. When he joined our family at age 5, he had already lost six teeth, so the Tooth Fairy wasn’t really a big deal for him. We were told by a friend also from the Democratic Republic of the Congo that it is customary to throw a baby tooth out in an open field and make a wish. We tried that a few years ago for Tooth #7, but it was raining that day and he wanted to stay inside while he tossed the little baby incisor. I have no doubt that tooth is still somewhere in our garage. Call it Truthful Parenting or Downright Laziness, but we’ve never done much with baby teeth magic, even for our older three kids. For our oldest twin daughters, I tried a couple of times to conjure up a tradition. We placed a Mason jar full of water by their beds and instructed them to drop their little tooth inside, watching it drift to the bottom. Then in the morning, the water was full of purple food coloring and light blue glitter and a coin sporting a baby-toting Sacajawea (aka “Golden Dollar”). But it wasn’t too long before I ran out of golden dollars or I forgot to remove the offered baby tooth, and the Tooth Fairy retired. There’s something bittersweet about these “last time” moments. The first tooth is cute and tiny, and the last one looks like something an archeologist would dig up and place in an exhibit about Early Man. It’s the same with the first day of kindergarten. They will let you dress them in apple-themed dresses or shirts with a big, yellow school bus emblazoned across the front. Then the last first day of high school comes and you can’t even remember what they were wearing. You just prayed that they drove safely and remembered to slow down in the school zones. As we put him to bed tonight, our youngest son smiled impishly as he told us he would put his tooth under his pillow and get some money. Now that he’s a street smart 9-year old, he’s just looking for a quick buck. He knows the score about the Tooth Fairy, but he’s not opposed to getting in line when his parents are handing out free money. Of course, we’ll do it. We’ll play the game, because seeing him do the “Uh-huh…oh yeah…I got money” celebratory dance in the morning will be well worth the price. And parenting is so much about doing our best to start off great, realizing that we often miss the mark and then, hopefully, taking a second to notice when a last time is passing by in front of us.

Around 15 years ago, my sisters and I took a cooking class together. All three of us are relatively good cooks but we decided on a basic knife skills class to improve our cutting proficiency. (My older sister’s then ten-year old son was disappointed that “knife skills” didn’t mean that we’d enrolled in a self-defense class. I think he was hoping we’d return as full-fledged ninjas.)   There were just six students in the class. The other three were older than us—a couple and another woman. My sisters and I were surprised to see that these AARP card-carrying adults had almost no idea how to cut peppers and onions. We assumed that they had recently let their personal chefs go, forcing them to finally learn to cook. To protect their identities, I will call them Betty and Bob (the couple) and Sylvia.   Before we officially started the class, we sat down at a table and ate a little Danish for a snack. Bob took one bite and pronounced it “too sweet.” I finished mine in three bites. Later in the class, we were told to salt the salsa we were making. All three of our classmates declared their aversion to salt in unison. “You’ve got to watch that high blood pressure,” they all said. No sweets and low salt?  I can’t wait to turn sixty!   Our instructor (Let’s call her Theresa—not so much to protect her identity but because I can’t remember her name. She was the only one not wearing a nametag) was full of not-so-helpful sayings: “A clean apron equals a good cook” and “Sharing means caring.” Her favorite thing to say was “Follow through, Betty.” Poor Betty was the least capable student in our class. She seemed woefully unsure of herself in the kitchen. She kept her purse on her shoulder during most of the lesson. I think it was so that she could get to her tissues during the teary, onion-chopping part. Theresa was by her side most of the class, critiquing her techniques and reminding her how to place the vegetable on the board correctly.   Theresa didn’t make it over to our side of the counter very often. When she did and I felt her watchful gaze over my shoulder, I found myself chopping more precisely. Nevertheless, she would pass by me and my older sister Becky and then on to our younger sister—the left-handed artist. Theresa couldn’t spout out enough praise for Carrie. “Perfect,” she would say with barely contained admiration. Sure, Carrie can do some great chopping, but where was my “perfect”? My one consolation was that Becky didn’t get much love either.   I was surprised to realize that a class of six adults wasn’t much different than an elementary class of twenty-five. You have your lower-achievers who require the majority of the teacher’s attention, higher-achievers who are inwardly motivated to perfection, and average students who do what’s needed to get by but who wouldn’t mind a little praise or at least a Skittle from the candy jar. Come on, Theresa!   Teachers are some of my very favorite people in the world. To be able to look at a classroom of humans, take in their varying levels of strengths and weaknesses, factoring in who might be hungry or sad or worried, then start the hard but rewarding work of instructing them, is a miracle which deserves a paycheck comparable to what a NBA All-Star makes.   But you don’t have to be a teacher to understand that we all lie somewhere within a wide spectrum of abilities. Some are natural students who won’t struggle with school and some will hit roadblock after roadblock both as kids and as adults. Instead of resigning these kids to a life of failure, these teacher superstars regard those school years as a time of promise and possibility. Let’s face it, all of us could use some improvement in one part of our lives or another. Just look at Betty. With the personalized help she received on that Sunday afternoon, she’s probably been chopping like a pro ever since.

With Halloween around the corner, this seems like the perfect time to talk about fear. (Typing the above words, I just realized that sentence could’ve ended multiple ways. “Halloween is the perfect time to talk about…wearing masks or gluttony or showing hospitality to people who turn up at your door.” So many directions to take!)   Though I’m not a fan of the scary side of Halloween, such as horror movies and haunted houses, I know that fear is definitely tied up with this holiday, but experiencing feelings of fear isn’t something we only do on October 31. Fear rears its ugly head in so many circumstances and our response to fear can vary, too. We may tremble or cry. We might lash out with anger or simmer with jealousy. Just about any outburst, whether it’s an in-person confrontation or an online rant, can be traced back to some deep-seated fear.   Fortunately, Scripture gives us plenty of words to follow when we’re feeling afraid. Take Isaiah 41:10, for example. “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” This is one of my favorite verses. It gives us a peek into who God is—our strong protector. He tells us there’s nothing to fear for one singular reason—not because of our own strength or intelligence or power—but because He is our God.   It’s like you’re playing a game of basketball in your driveway with your neighbors and as you’re picking teams, you realize that you have LeBron James on your team. So yeah, you’re going to win that game!   But why is God willing to be our MVP for us? Well, the answer to this question comes a few verses before Isaiah 41:10: “But as for you, Israel my servant, Jacob my chosen one, descended from Abraham my friend, I have called you back from the ends of the earth, saying, ‘You are my servant. For I have chosen you and will not throw you away.” Since we’re grafted into His family, God also chose us. He called us from faraway places, and He won’t throw us away. We matter to Him.   So if we have God on our side to strengthen us and help us and uphold us with his righteous right hand, why do we sometimes walk around like we’re already defeated? Heads hung low, scared of the world, ready to give up? Sometimes, for whatever reason—maybe due to the devil’s schemes or our own ignorance or forgetfulness or the pull towards this earthly existence—we are still afraid. We may even search out things to be afraid of, creating scenarios or putting ourselves in situations that strain our faith.   But just like when Jesus came to the Disciples in that locked room where they were hiding after the events of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, terrified about what would happen next, our Lord is willing to meet us where we are in our fear. Just like He did with His scared friends, He’s coming to us and saying “ Peace be with you!”   Knowing that those very real and very human feelings are going to come, we can prepare our minds for the inevitability of fear. Then we can praise God for the opportunity to place our trust in Him, an exercise to grow our faith and strengthen our resolve for the next scary thing coming around the corner.

When my husband and I traveled to Savannah, GA last summer, we took a trolley tour of the beautiful, historic city. A frequently highlighted feature of the homes in the wards and squares of Savannah is the presence of red doors on some of these incredible houses. We were told that there is a very strict rule about choosing this particular paint color: the only homes allowed to have a red door are ones that have been fully paid off with no outstanding mortgage.   I’ve been reading a book about the Israelite Exodus, and as I learned more about the symbolism of the Passover, I was reminded of those red doors in Savannah. In case you don’t remember that story, let’s review: The Israelites had spent 430 years in the land of Egypt. Their time there began as a rescue mission by a benevolent and grateful pharaoh to save the people from a famine, but when new leaders looked around at the growing nation, they got nervous. By the time of Moses, the Israelites were enslaved by their once gracious hosts. Life was difficult, but the worst part was that they weren’t allowed to worship the One True God. Instead, they were surrounded by paganism. It was time to get God’s people out of Egypt.   God chose Moses to speak to Pharaoh, and He performed amazing wonders, like turning the water to blood and creating swarms of frogs to pop up in the most inconvenient places. At first, Pharaoh’s magicians could replicate these miracles, but they were eventually stumped. By the time a plague of gnats hit the place, even the magicians were crediting the “finger of God” with what they saw. Six more plagues devastated the land of Egypt, but still Pharaoh refused to give Moses what he asked, to let the people go.   Then came the final plague, and this one was going to be different than the rest. For the nine plagues that came before this one, the Israelites were automatically exempt from the chaos and damage. When the Egyptian livestock started dropping, not one animal belonging to the Israelites died. Amazingly, when complete darkness hit the land of Egypt, Scripture says, “No one (in Egypt) could see anyone else or move about for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.” It was the same for the boils and the locust and the frogs. The Israelites were spared without doing anything.   Then came Plague #10. Exodus 12 tells us God’s directions for Moses and the people. Part of these detailed instructions involved marking their doors so that the angel of death would pass over their houses and their first born sons would be saved. It says, “Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs…The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.”   As a Christ-follower, this Old Testament story has so many layers of meaning. I am humbled to my core at the thought of blood from a perfect, spotless lamb being the source of my salvation. But as much as I am struck by the grace I’ve been shown, there’s always a “this-is-too-good-to-be-true” part of me that still thinks I need to pay for this. I have moments where I think that I need to do the saving, but it’s just not true. When I took on Christ, I got a red door that says I can live debt-free with a fully paid mortgage. As the Apostle Paul said it, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Here recently, I’ve really enjoyed a podcast about the Titanic . Over the 13 episodes, it goes in depth into the giant ship’s design and construction. It discusses details about the passengers and crew. And it eventually covers the disastrous collision with the iceberg. As I listened to the final installments, I kept hoping it would end differently with everyone surviving. Of course, that’s not what happened.   One of the experts they interviewed for the podcast mentioned an anecdote stating that the designers spent two hours discussing carpet selection for one of the grand rooms but only 15 minutes deciding on the lifeboats. Many have disputed this as a myth, but if it’s true it’s a real shame. (The ocean liner had twenty lifeboats which could accommodate about half of the 2,000+ people on board. This was insufficient, but it met the maritime regulations of the time.)   Whether this story is truth or fiction, it highlights a prevailing human characteristic—all too often we concentrate on the wrong thing.   It reminds me of a different boat-related tale, but this one is about the prophet Jonah in the Old Testament. Many of us know the story: God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach against their wickedness. He doesn’t want to go so he hops on a boat going in the opposite direction. God stirs up a storm, and the sailors dump Jonah into the water. Instead of drowning, God sends a big fish to swallow Jonah whole. He stays in the fish three days and nights, until he’s vomited onto the land. Then God gives Jonah another opportunity to obey, and this time he goes to Nineveh. The people repent and fast, and God relents from the destruction he had threatened.   It seems like a happy ending, then we come to chapter 4. Jonah is angry about God’s kindness when directed to people he finds undeserving. Jonah said, “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”   It’s a pretty jerky move. When Jonah was diving deeper and deeper into what he thought was going to be his watery grave, he was all about God’s mercy, but the Ninevites getting saved from annihilation? No way!   So Jonah went outside of the city to have a pity party. He made a shelter and sat down to watch what would happen to Nineveh. God sent a leafy plant to grow over his perch to give him shade. Verse 6 says, “Jonah was very happy about the plant.” But God sent a worm to eat up the plant so that it withered. As the sun beat down on him, Jonah grew hot, and he repeated his disgust with living when faced with such injustice. Then God countered by saying, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left?”   Jonah cared too much about the wrong things and too little about the things that mattered. I want to be a person who counts the lifeboats. I want to avoid the biases and selfishness that keep me distracted from pursuing God’s perfect will. Lord, help me care about what matters most to You.

When our son Ezra joined our family after living his first five years in Africa, he became exposed to a lot of food he’d never eaten before. Like most parents, we had already dealt with picky eaters to a certain extent, so this wasn’t especially troubling. To move things along, we often enlisted our older son Knox to help us convince Ezra to take a “no, thank you” bite, the very minimum of trying a new and unwanted food.   I remember one evening when we introduced him to corn. He suspiciously regarded the pile of bright yellow nubs with complete disinterest, so Knox stepped in to offer his personal endorsement, scooping up a big fork-full of corn. Once he had chewed and swallowed his food, he remarked with exaggerated enthusiasm, “I loooove corn!” This incident happened about ten years ago, so I can’t recall if it was effective, but it has become a mantra we repeat most every time I serve corn.   Funnily enough, I was thinking about that memory when I read from the prophetic book of Zechariah last week. Amongst a lot of wild and often confusing visions, Zechariah is full of words of hope and restoration for those Jewish exiles who had returned to their homeland. The people were discouraged and often chose the wrong path, so God through Zechariah was reminding them of His promises and giving them clues about the Messiah to come. (I know what you’re thinking, “What does that have to do with corn?” Stick with me here, I’m getting to my point.)   When I came to Zechariah 8:23, this is what I read the Lord Almighty saying, “In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.’” The Lord was telling them that in the midst of their struggles and division and uncertainty, their godly lifestyles would be a shining example for the people around them. The “ten people from all languages and nations” refers to a complete group. The idea is that people from every walk of life would see God’s people and be drawn to them for His sake.   It brings to mind the image of someone on her knees, as low as she could be, and then Jesus walks by. She stretches out a tired hand to grab the edge of his robe, grasping as tightly as she can so she can get going in the right direction. It’s like the woman whose story is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. She had been suffering for 12 years with a bleeding disease. It was ruining her life, so she went to Jesus, a man she’d heard was a miracle-worker. He walked by and she reached out.   Now comparing corn to Jesus is completely ludicrous, and I know that. But Knox was willing to overact his love of the yellow vegetable, hamming it up for comedy as much as to get his little brother to finish supper. But to make Jesus appealing, just like Mr. Rogers said to “try your best to make goodness attractive,” doesn’t mean we have to fake anything. We don’t have to spray paint the gospel gold or hot glue rhinestones all over it. We’re called to be godly not gaudy. Scripture doesn’t say, “They will know you are Christians by your political affiliations.” It doesn’t preach wealth and prosperity for believers, but instead calls for humility and dying to ourselves. John 13:35 says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” God’s Word tells us to love our enemies and strive to make peace.   When those of us who claim to follow Christ bemoan the news about churches closing their doors and the down-trending of Christianity in the U.S., we should stop and wonder what we’ve done with the true, core message of the gospel. Is it something the lost see as propaganda, pushing a certain worldly agenda or have we portrayed it for what it is—a lifeline to a miracle-worker?

One of my favorite verses is 1 Thessalonians 5:11: “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” The words build up make me think of the children’s song about the Wise Man and the Foolish Man. The wise man builds up his house on the rock and the foolish man builds his on the sand. The rains come and the house on the rock stands, but the house on the sand goes splat . We use that song in Bible class and Sunday school to teach our children that the foundation you build upon is equally as important as building up the house. They love to sing that one and the fun hand motions that go with it.   In 1 Thessalonians 5:11, Paul wasn’t speaking about building an actual house, but building up each other . Paul wrote these words in response to information he had received through Timothy about the faithfulness of the church in Thessalonica.  Paul was familiar with the Thessalonians from a previous missionary journey to the region in which severe persecution and opposition forced him to leave abruptly. His personal experience with persecution there and information from Timothy prompted Paul to grow concerned about this group of believers.
   Fortunately, Paul learns through Timothy that while the church in Thessalonica was indeed experiencing persecution, the church overall was doing well. So Paul was writing this letter in part to encourage them to continue in the faith in spite of the real threat of death and horrific oppression they were enduring. It’s interesting that in the midst of suffering and loss, Paul’s advice is to continue encouraging one another and building each other up. He doesn’t tell them to take up arms or slander those who are giving them such a hard time. Instead, he reminds them where their strength comes from and urges them create unity, not division.   In the previous few verses, Paul tells them to hold on to the hope of eternity with God through Jesus and now in verse 11 he’s urging them to encourage and support each other on earth in their daily struggles. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and his own experiences, he knew that they needed both.   Like all the key truths of Scripture, this advice from Paul to Timothy is still true for all of us today. As we navigate a world that is constantly trying to pull us away from Jesus, we need to be encouragers. Sometimes it’s obvious who is in need of encouragement, but there are plenty of interactions with others which don’t reveal the anxiety, fear, and overwhelming feelings which lie hidden beneath the surface. That’s when we need to finetune our Holy Spirit antennae to be aware of the hurt happening all around us and then step into it as light-bringers.   It doesn’t always have to be anything extravagant. It can be as simple as telling someone they’re doing a great job and to keep at it. Reminding others of the hope we have in Jesus may seem inconsequential to the person speaking it, but it can be a life preserver to the one who feels like he’s drowning in worry and defeat. Be an encouragement to someone today!