Christmas, in case you have not heard, is tomorrow so I will be taking the day off and the regular Monday blog is coming out this Christmas Eve Morning.

Christmas and Unexpected Obedience

We do not know what Joseph expected or wanted from life.  Very likely it would be to live a quiet life in a small town with the small hopes of a happy family and the greater hopes that things would get better.  Nazareth being an out of the way community with a significant, Gentile population would perhaps be less likely to face Roman hostility.  He would marry the girl he loved, do his work, and raise his kids before passing on to his ancestors.  He had no expectation for what was to come.  Without wanting or planning it, Joseph was thrown into the midst of the greatest drama in universal history. 

Rather than the quiet life of a blue-collar laborer he is visited by angels in dreams, becomes a stepfather to the Messiah, helps deliver a baby in a barn, welcomes shepherds to see this child, hears some pretty, outlandish prophecies from two, old people and has mysterious Mystics show up at his home with valuable gifts.   These last visitors are hardly out the door before he is part of a murderous manhunt, or baby hunt, by a raving, petty king.  A few months or even years in Egypt likely living in or near a expatriate Jewish community, only to have the dreams return calling him back to his quiet little town where it all started.

Quite the detour.  A very long way from what was expected to what actually happened.  Perhaps the best commentary is what was said about Joseph near the beginning of his part of the story.  “And Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him…” _{Mt 1.24} He was living his life, trying to do the right thing and when confronted with an unexpected moment he did what the Lord wanted done.  We really don’t know much about Joseph, but what we do know is pretty great; he was obedient. 

Final thought as we celebrate Christmas this year.  We do not know what the coming year will bring.  We may have our plans, but so did Joseph.  But come what will, may this year find us obedient to the unexpected call of God on our lives. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

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John the Baptist, a BiC pen and my wife

This week my pen died.  I love pens and pencils.  I have pens that are used for calligraphy.  I have rather nice Cross pens and more promotional pens than I care to mention.  But this week my favorite pen died.  I would like to be like that pen.  Let me explain why.  The pen is a BiC Cristal and one of the most popular pens in the world.  BiC has produced 100 of Billions of these pens since its introduction in the 1950s.  This pen, often called “The BiC Pen”, put ballpoint pens on the map.  It revolutionized writing with ink.  Marcel Bich purchased the patent for the ballpoint pen and then developed ink with a viscosity that would neither run around nor clog the 1 mm ball.  Instead it went from pen to paper with amazing consistency.  The design was a work of practical genius.  Hard working, consistent, faithful, useful, low maintenance, inexpensive and giving itself completely to its task.  As you can see in the picture this pen gave its all in my service.    There is no ink saved back for its self.  It has put everything it had on the paper.

Well Done Good and Faithful Pen

I hate pens that write sporadically.  If I have a pen and I have to scribble on the margins to get the ink to flow I break the pen in half and toss it out.   Pens that leak ink I also hate.  There should be a law that if a manufacturer’s pen leaks on to my dress shirt they ought to be liable.  If I use a promotional pen and it gives me trouble I make a note to not do business with that company if I can avoid it.  I love my Sharpies and I have a Cross pen on my desk right now.  But in the morning when I write in my journal I will grab my next BiC Cristal, and I am hoping for Christmas to get a pack of these in the stocking.  Société BiC are you listening?

I want to be like this pen.  When my days on earth are done I hope that my Master will find me as faithful as this simple pen.  I hope that the Lord of the entire Universe will look on the spent life that was mine and say, “Well done good and faithful servant.”  This week as we prepare for Christmas, Christians have traditionally looked at those who have been messengers of the good news.  From the prophets of old to John the Baptist to the Apostles we take a moment to thank God for their faithful witness of the light of the world.  Can I be a faithful witness?  Can I look forward to that day as one who has consistently shared good news as faithfully as my pen shared its ink?  Is my motive simply to serve my Lord with my whole being, holding nothing back, and reserving no part of my life or my being?  John’s head on a platter, Peter crucified upside down, Paul put to death by sword, a simple ink pen with nothing left to give, I want to hold nothing back.

As Paul said in I Corinthians 4:5 The Message:

When he comes, he will bring out in the open and place in evidence all kinds of things we never even dreamed of—inner motives and purposes and prayers. Only then will any one of us get to hear the “Well done!” of God.

Speaking of faithful, loving and loyal service I must offer a word of praise to my beloved wife.  Lorie and I are celebrating 34 years of marriage.  Next to the grace of the Cross, Lorie is the greatest gift God ever gave me.  May I be a good steward of the grace of a precious daughter of the high King. 

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Morning devotions that I wanted to share.

Matthew 11:11 Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist! Yet the one who is ^[a]least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

In contrast to the great people in the history of the world John was the greatest.  He was greater than Augustus or Julius, Alexander the Great or Cyrus the Great, Isaiah or Jeremiah, David or Solomon, Elijah or Elisha.  John the Baptist, this one lonely prophet in the wilderness, was the greatest of all born of women.  That is standing on a pretty tall apex.

But the most insignificant member of the Kingdom of God is a place beyond John, an inner circle into which John is not admitted.  This is not about who is greatest in the Kingdom.  This is about the supreme value of being a Kingdom worker.  Sometimes in our role in a small ministry context we can feel utterly insignificant, those feelings are completely misguided. 

By an act of grace, so there is no room for pride, we are called to be workers, even co-workers with the Lord, in the cause of Christ.  In the economy of Heaven the faithful servant in the smallest role, in the least church in the most remote corner of a backwater community has a place beyond Kings and Emperors.  It would be better to be an evangelist with no congregation and only one Bible study a week with only one potential disciple than the sit in the White House, or own and run a multinational conglomerate.  Our struggle, or at least my struggle, is that we loose sight of the economy of Heaven.  

When the shoes and the car are worn out and need replacing, and the bills slightly exceed the pay, when the apparently fruitlessness of our efforts and the well-healed life of the secular is all around us, it is hard to say, “this matters”.  WE want to say, “What matters is this up coming doctor’s bill”.  When there are few that come to Bible study or services, but plenty for everything else it is easy to say “I am going fishing” John 21:3 I write this from my heart not to you.

In an act of faith, almost as profound as our original faith, we say, “I believe what Jesus said”.  We choose to believe that being in the Kingdom is greater than anything on earth.  We choose to love God more than mammon.  We, by an act of the will, say I will value what will matter in 10,000 years.  Who knows what eternity will hold.  Perhaps 10,000 years from now someone will come up to you and say, “Honored sir, may I please have the honor of standing with you for a moment, on earth you were a minister of the Gospel, an I merely ruled and empire.”