The Star of Christmas

Starlight, star bright 

First star I see tonight

Staring at the glare of dazzling paparazzi lights,

Starstruck at some Hollywood darling

A starlet on whom we start

casting our sights 

Our hearts marveling at larger than life czars of the arts.

But the part I want to get to

is the matter's heart

Please tell me - 

Where for heavens sake did all that really start? 

It's odd we give such a nod to these modern goddesses and gods 

who seem impressive from afar

Starring in roles, applauded and lauded 

making bank for the plays' parts they play in

that in order to take in - 

we payin' - Netflix and Pathé 

But we're being played cause that's not who they really are

Go closer, look deeper and farther. 

You'll see they're far from being on par 

with the real Superstar  -

the original birthday boy of Decem-bar 

The One who's called the Bright and Morning Star

He's the one whose raw star power 

should really draws the oohs and ahhs

'Cause His star hung 'round that little town of prophetic renown

Long after what we now know

went down in Bethlehem 

among the sheep and the cows

Astounding astrologers, star gazers 

and sages all around,

their heads crowned, 

wearing fancy threads and royal gowns.

They bounded headlong with their bounty  over countless valleys 

and surrounding mountains 

Counting it nothing if somehow

they could bow low and bestow honor to the real Star

Because everyone knows that Christmas, y'all, this is His show

Its not really about Father Christmas, snow or Santa

You can recall why we get the 25th off, can't ya?

Is it just sipping hot wine outside from from a plastic decanter?

Cause then after, you gotta go gulp down some Mylanta

Yeah we big on amassing 

vast amounts of classy foie gras 

afta midnight mass 

where we break our fast 

and gorge on a massive repast

But we wonder, alas, 

why the sweet rich taste don't really last.

Yo, it's not about mistletoe 

and where you gonna go 

plant ya lips 

for that kiss 

from your special miss or mister

It's more than exploring Sephora, shopping Dior, or 

buying a Michael Kors  

getting poorer as you splurge 

at store after store

Over- pending more and more 

until we ask ourselves,

"Whats it all really for?"

Don't misinterpret or be missin' 

on the real history lesson

you're messin' with God's big mission 

If you write Xmas 

it's such a big omission

Cause it's certainly not about Rudolph, Donner or Blitzen

But Christ is front and center 

of this big holiday tradition.

Far better than that guy named Clause

He's the greatest gift giver 

that there ever was

It should give us pause

makin' our jaws 

drop open in full-on awe at his cause

Which was 

That as pure Love,

He descended to spend his life  

better than any man ever did,

bending under the penalty 

of our unending self-centered binging,

surrendering to suffering unrelenting 

While defending us 

against the pretender  

upending the dominion over us 

by our our enemy and all his minions

This incredible life, in my opinion, 

ended in winnin'

And that, ladies and gentle-men

Is the no-frills noble story of Noel 

we need to be spinning

To the end  all the way from the beginning.

Well, my friends, 

we've come is this ditty's end, 

sent to your heart 

from my pen. 

Amen. 

Hold That Call

Walk down a major historic downtown street in Grenoble and you will likely notice an open concave brick and mortar structure about 7 feet tall and 3 feet wide. It’s pointy top and finished concrete at first invite an curious glance from the unaware tourist. I wonder what this could be?

One could imagine it a steam-punk style, sci-fi portal to another part of the city.  Or Its relatively ornate design might cause you to mistake it for a very old telephone booth. While you might not be too far off by associating it with a type of “call”, its very prominent public location belies its rather private purpose.  

This puzzling piece of green grating is called a pissoir (prounounced “peese-wahr”) and now I am sure you can guess what it is. Especially if you stared at it long enough to observe some male pedestrian on the sidewalk duck in and immediately strike a recognizable pose of relieving himself.

The fact that it would be a man is obvious due to the structure’s empty interior design that is large enough to accommodate one standing person. Which begs the question - no, not  “Is there anything on the wall to read?” but rather, “Does the city think that only men have the need to respond to the call of nature?” The public roadside pissoir’s minimally hidden privacy designed for dudes who have had a few too many drinks after work is so representative of what is still alive and well in modern France - the vestiges of archaic male privilege and preference.

What is obvious by their design covered by green corrosion is that the  pissoirs of Grenoble are quite old. In fact, they were first introduced to France in 1830. They often are used as a convenient place for the plastering of posters and handbills. At certain moments in the day, however, you may not want to take a second look at that advertisement that initially caught your eye. What does get my attention, though is that here in the 21st century, an unhygienic distasteful relic such as this endures. I guess to the urgent modern male of 2018 that may still be a great relief.

All of this is just another example that modern society is not the place where anyone is going to learn self-control, whether it is in the public excessive displays of road rage and racism, or debauchery and immodesty. But I am thankful that the place I learned self-control was in church.

My pastor-father was determined to teach his boys that a house of worship is a place of honoring God. He emphasized with words (and worse) that we were to learn to control our need to laugh, talk, run or even to smack our gum in the church meeting so that we would never detract attention of those around us from being focused exclusively on God. This included all trips to the restroom once the service started, no matter how urgent the need. In our little Pentecostal church, my shaking and rocking was a lot more desperation than inspiration. Speaking in tongues was a necessity because I needed all the supernatural power I could get to not wet my pants before the last amen. Let’s just say the fear of the rod and reproach after the meeting was greater than the urgency to go to the men’s room.

Church is still the place where we can learn self-control. Through the instruction of God’s word, the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the example and encouragement of the community of faith around us, we can find the secrets of how God helps sate our hungers, damper our drives, and gives the rest and relief found in His power rather than in obeying our every impulse or in search for immediate satisfaction of our urgent needs.

I can say today that I gained at least one thing from my upbringing beside a bladder infection. I have learned that I can endure longer than my selfish desires tell me I can. I suppose this is why I am utterly amazed and more than a little annoyed at observing some indiscreet man on the side of the highway or turned toward a public wall who just cannot seem to wait another minute.  I have learned through experience, that you can endure longer than you think, and that if you stop telling yourself you can’t, you’ll find that you can. Yes, sir, you really can hold it. A little self-control makes it easier on everyone, instead of subjecting civilized eyes to rather uncivilized behavior.

I have no need for the pissoirs of Grenoble. But I still need the lessons first learned as a boy in God’s house.There are some things far more important than my immediate convenience. Whatever I feel I just have to say, just have to do or just have to possess, the truth in a #MeToo society is that we need more men of modesty and self control who have learned to just hold it.

Whirlwind - A Slam

A wind blows, tries to bowl me over
Billowing over me, around me, surrounds me.
A scorching east wind sent towards us to strip us and torch us.
It’s a swirling storm of lists to do whose doing I missed
That never quits.
Pressures, not pleasures, that distress me,
because success is so hard to measure,
Stealing away life’s true treasures.
Like a smile on my daughter’s face, my mate’s embrace,
And time in the quiet place
Have all been replaced by what I’ve made first place.
It’s such a sad state and a waste to always have a full-plate and yet be left with an empty taste.

I’ve been chasing after the wind
And what I’ve sown has made me so winded that
I’ve reaped the whirlwind
Whirled and warped by the world – its words of wisdom
And ways of warranting worth
Are worlds away from the truth and not the last word
Because THE Word, breathed by the Spirit
Whispers to me and bathes me in a breath of life
Calling me to a life-style.
A pleasant pleasurable stroll that restores the soul
from a rat race with a relentless pace
I’m phat with all that peace, and now walk, slower, more whole.

There’s something like a rushing wind, a mighty sound from heaven,
Waves gushing over me.
I catch my breath as the Ruach that abounds and bounds over every barrier
Comes to carry my weary soul.
It doesn’t spin me or spend me but descends on me
like Elijah’s whirlwind.
It turns and sends me closer, returned to Sender.
And I catch this wave of God’s glory instead of the same old same old
Story of wind at my back, working me over, and over-working to the point of heart attack,
chasing after dreams with a false sheen that are deemed elusive
and never ever what they seem.
Carry and lift me, whirlwind of God.
Fill my sails and take me above all that assails me, these sad pursuits that always seem to fail me
Are now so far below me cause this God-wind just blows me away,
chasing all that was insignificant, elusive, and actually abusive,
Erasing the gaping hole that existed between my existence and God’s intended goals.
And it’s in this holy whirlwind that I am carefully carried by this caring Creator
Who fully pursues me, renews me and infuses new life in me.

(Gen. 41:27; Eccl. 2:11; Nah. 1:3; Hos. 8:7; 2 Ki. 3:11; Acts 2:1-2)

Hope Killers

1 Cor 13:13 - Three things will last forever - faith, hope, and love

After twelve years of marriage and seven years of trying to have children Dalene and I had given up. We had lost hope.

Hope had died somewhere in between the uninterrupted regularity of Dalene’s monthly cycle, and the whispered “what-ifs” we kept hearing in our heads.  What if I’m flawed? What if God doesn’t want this? What if we are being punished? What if it’s our fault?

But just as we had all but abandoned hope, we were met with a promise. It came in the form of an unexpected word over our lives from a pastor friend who asked if he could pray for us. He then declared with assurance that Dalene would be pregnant within a year. That was in February 1999. By the next January, a pregnancy test we had bought with not much expectation had turned positive and set us dancing on top of years of pain.

I am reminded this season of how Herod tried to kill the hope and promise wrapped up in the birth of the Messiah. It took a word from God through an angel to keep the promise alive.  

Who is a hope-killer in your life,  personally assigned to discourage dreams and give everyone an overdue dose of reality?  It could be a teacher, coach or spouse who felt they were doing us a favor by saving us from disappointment if we just set our sights a little lower. It could even be us as we convince ourselves it is safer to not hope than to hope and be disappointed.

In our world there is always someone or something in the spirit of Herod that would attempt to snuff out the hopes of the world just as soon as they are born in our hearts.

But a hope that can’t be killed is a hope conceived in a promise.  Jesus was promised to the world in the form of prophecies communicated a couple of hundred times in scripture.  The odds of even ten of those predictions from different individuals at different moments in history coming true in one person has been estimated by mathematicians to be 1 in 10 followed by 17 zeros.

Retelling the Christmas story again and again every year reassures us that the hope sown in our hearts by a promise from God is a hope that we can hold on to even when hope killers want to tell us to turn our backs on the impossible.

When I was a young boy, I had hoped to be a famous musician or a professional baseball player.  These hopes were killed, not just by a dose of reality when I saw there were so many other more talented shortstops or guitar players than me. The problem was that my hope was not conceived through a direct promise from God.

However, when God spoke to me His plan that I would be a missionary to Bangladesh, hope never died that we would end up going or even staying there - even when faced with the seeming impossibilities of securing visas, raising budgets, or weathering secret police investigations.

Sadly, a hope conceived by a promise can be aborted before it is birthed. The way to carry our hopes to “full-term” then, is to understand where our hope really lies. It’s not in figuring out the what, when and how of the promise’s fulfilment, but rather the Who. The promise of a messiah culminated in the birth of a real person - Jesus.  For us, the seed of hope becomes a reality nothing can kill when we realize it  is wrapped up in a living person who will never die.  

If we are lacking hope, then what we really need is a direct promise from God. It can came through Scripture, a word given by someone else or the direct whisper of the Holy Spirit to our hearts.

If we are losing hope in a promise we used to believe, we can can find our hope restored by changing our focus from the specifics to the Savior. He is the one who can direct us where, when and how. Hope is restored through the discovery that I need Him more than I need any promise I am hoping for.  

All our future promises are truly wrapped up in Him. He truly is the only hope for the world and for our lives.

A Questionable City

“You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.” ― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Cities are an interesting phenomenon in that human characteristics, like personality, character and reputation can be attributed to them. Paris could be described as at once charming, snobby, magical and gritty. The city where I live, Grenoble, has a reputation of being polluted, crime-ridden, beautiful and liberal.  Sometimes what we think we know about a city is replaced by what we experience after having lived there for a while. I know a number of people who traded the easier pace and natural beauty of this alpine capital for the seduction and stereotypical allure of “living the dream” in Paris. However, the true character of the city, according to their now informed opinion, didn’t live up to the reputation.

Don’t get me wrong. Paris is indeed a wonderful city - to visit. But residing there is another thing altogether. High cost of living and astronomical rent turn many infatuated and aspiring Paris residents into disillusioned suburb dwellers. They went to the City of Lights thinking it would be a life of quaint coffee shops and quiet strolls in the Luxembourg gardens. Instead, reality turned out to be hours upon hours spent among silent, sober and crowded metro cars each day, commuting from one of the affordable, immigrant-filled outlying suburbs to a job of some sorts in a very gray and often cold metropolis. Paris gets on average only 1662 hours of sunshine per year. That means it is sunny only 40% of sunlight hours.

So you never know what you might get out of living in a city until you start living there long enough to allow the veneer to wear off. When it came to France’s presidential elections last week, no one was really sure  what the results would reveal lying in the underbelly of the world’s number one tourist destination. What we thought we knew about Grenoble’s  character would be proven by a very crucial and divisive political vote. Many people I think, held their breath, as the possibility of a misjudgment would only be revealed by that evening’s vote tally, and depending on the result, possibly exposed as well by the illuminating glow of hundreds of cars being set on fire in angry protest throughout many of the city’s troubled neighborhoods.

As it turns out, Grenoble’s longstanding reputation for solidarity with immigrants and foreigners once again shone through. A whopping 83 percent of Grenoble’s residents voted yes for Emmanuel Macron and a resounding no to the xenophobic and fascist National Front party echoed from the surrounding  verdant hills and craggy mountains.

Grenoble’s reputation remained intact. A city that has in its history been progressive, tolerant and welcoming to Protestants, Jews, and a host of other immigrants, once again rose to the occasion and defeated hatred and fear.  We thought we knew what we were getting when we moved here and entered into this relationship with Grenoble. And she didn’t let us down. She is at her core a place of refuge and reconciliation. And that is what we as His people, are all about in this crucial hour of suspicion, hate-mongering and tribalism that is polluting our world.  

Thanks for not letting us down, Grenoble. I talk to you as if you have a personality. And as it turns out, you do. And a pretty dependable one at that.