In the past six months, my refugee friends have taught me more about feasting than I learned in all my decades prior.

I have sat in the middle of an unfurnished, one-bedroom apartment and enjoyed a meal and company better than a Michelin-star-restaurant could offer. We may eat off of mismatched plates gathered from gracious friends, but every dish is garnished with a heaping dose of gratitude and love.

My Afghani friends have completely uprooted my American views of abundance. They have helped to better align me with what the Scriptures teach.

“Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it Proverbs 15:16-17).“

Jesus feasted continually wherever he was because he always enjoyed the Father’s smile and obeyed him fully. Yet, he drank down the dregs of God’s wrath and ate the corrupted meal of the curse we deserved (Isaiah 51:22; Jeremiah 25:15).

As such, we are invited to feast no matter where we find ourselves. We can feast with him even in the PICU or in the midst of cancer treatments. We can picnic with him. even in the midst of deeply painful experiences. For even a feast of herbs garnished by his grace is better than a five-course meal enjoyed in his absence.

A Simple Feast

Better a dinner of herbs where love is
Than a feast garnished with strife. 
Better than a lavish life of luxury 
Ranks a simple, righteous life. 

The fare furnished by simple faith 
May not be flashy but it feeds. 
The promises and presence of God 
Meet the believer’s daily needs. 

This wisdom sounds so simple,
However, none of this is free. 
Sincere love and righteousness
He purchased for us on the tree. 

He ate the bitter herbs we earned
So that we can feast on His love. 
No matter the present circumstance,
We’ve unseen abundance from above. 

Feast, my friends, for even crumbs,
With His presence, satisfy and sate. 
The ever-loving Lord is your portion;
He abundantly fills an empty plate. 

Having Him, we have all; 
Without Him, all is nothing. 

She said yes.

My husband officiated the wedding of two dear friends last night. And what a wedding it was! We are officially at the age and stage when we no longer fit as groomsmen or  bridesmaid or even matrons. And I am so thankful.  Our new roles as officiant and prayer-gatherer, errand-runner, perspective-offerer are far more suited to us (and far less make-up is involved, at least for me).

When a woman-in-Christ says yes to marriage, she steps out in bravery into multiplied brokenness and beauty to be exposed both within herself and without. She says yes to leaving all she has known (the good, the bad, and the ugly cloaked in the comfortable garb of the familiar). She says yes to cleaving to an imperfect man cleaving imperfectly to a perfect Savior. She says yes to an unknown future of employment and unemployment, to struggles and sicknesses that they ca not yet see or imagine in their ripped and ravishing counterparts.

She says yes to quiet nights bearing heavy struggles. She says yes to conflicts that she could never contemplate. She says yes to meeting needs she doesn’t have. She says yes to championing and complementing her husband, even when he and/or the world think there is not much to champion.

That’s a lot of quiet, hidden yeses hidden behind the initial yes.

But she does all of that in the power and on the promises and in the presence of the Christ who says yes, let it be so.

For all the promises of God find their yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 2 Corinthians 1:20. 

Before time was wound, when the Father set Him apart, to simultaneously be the sheep to be slain and the shepherd to lay down His life for the flock, He said, “Yes, let it be so.

When the time came to step into time and be born as a crying newborn, He cried,  “Yes, let it be so.”

In the garden, after wrestling with the looming shadows of death, He wrested a, “Yes, let it be so.”

After three days in darkness, the Father called him forth from the grave, as he had recently done with Lazarus,  and he shouted, “Yes,  let it be so.”

As I was thinking about all these yeses, Sarai-soon-to-become-Sarah, the brave matriarch came to mind.

Sarai Said Yes

Yes to the unknown. Yes to leaving her home.
Yes to follow her husband to an unknown land.
Yes to the God who refused to fail her when foolish Abram did. Twice.
Yes to her husband’s God becoming her own.
An impatient yes to her nagging fear that birthed an Ishmael.
A dubious laugh betraying unbelief that God could do what could not be done.
Yes in the formed of shocked laughter as she held her promised child in her wrinkling arms.
A horrified no when Abraham took their beloved son on a death-doomed errand.
An exultant yes to the God who said no just in time because a greater Yes was to come.
A tearful, triumphant yes to her aged partner as he held her hand on her deathbed, asking, “My sweet Sarah, would you do it all again?”

Watching friends and church members say yes always points me to the One whose Yes enabled my own yes.

Despite the decorations and the upbeat tunes, my heart struggled to conjure festive feelings this Christmas. There were thoughtful gifts and sweet hours playing games with each other, and I count those moments as gifts. However, I could not help but see Christmas through the eyes of my dear mother-in-law. And, through her eyes, the Lord gave me the gift of seeing Christmas through the eyes of caregivers.

Decorations don’t change diseases; they barely scratch the surface. And when the cookies stop coming, the need for constant care does not. As strange as it sounds, visiting my in-laws gave me the best gift for Christmas: the Christmas season stripped of its frivolity and bathed in deep faith.

To watch a spouse spend herself to care for her husband who has been hounded by fifteen years by an unrelenting disease is to watch a thing of terrible beauty. To see the fierce resolve of exhausted parents advocate for their child with cancer is to get a glimpse of the kind of love that initiated what we know as Christmas.

The wonderful monotony of sustained love puts sentimental surges of love to shame. For a burst of love as compared with committed love is like a firework as compared to the constancy of the sun. Love that keeps showing up and cleaning the sheets. Love that keeps providing for an adult child with special needs during years that are more associated with traveling around the world than traveling to doctor’s appointments. Love that learns to laugh and roll with the punches of Alzheimer’s and dementia. This love which remains resolute is a common grace that points to an uncommon Savior.

She Smiles

She smiles as he sips
His imaginary tea. 
This isn’t what she thought
The end of years would be. 

Though she dreams of travel,
Just to help him down the hall,
Traveling from bed to bath
Everyday requires all. 

There’s little time for plans;
His care takes centerstage. 
Neither disease nor decline
Such love will assuage. 

For love stays at its station,
Even when sorrows close in. 
When energy is threadbare,
Commitment doesn’t thin. 

She smiles as he sips
His imaginary tea. 
He will know he’s loved
No matter what will be.  

Such solid and sacrificial love shows the thinness of sentimental love. And I’ve a feeling that the tired feet of caregivers hitting the ground in the middle of the night more closely approximate the Christmas spirit than the feet of rushed shoppers in the mall.

Wreathed Doors and Wrecked Dreams

Delicious cookies and debilitating disease;
Decorated trees and displaced refugees.
Only Christ can reconcile all of these.

Wreathed doors and wrecked dreams.
Sweetly-sung carols and silent screams.
Only Christ can contain such extremes.

True hope does not ride on holiday cheer.
Real joy is not procured just once a year.
Security is anchored in God-come-near.

This Christmas, I found myself exhaling the deep relief of caregivers who fall exhausted upon an inexhaustible Rock of Ages. This Christmas, I found myself with front row seats to the reality that new mercies every morning really means every morning. Even for thousands of days of caregiving and months of appointments.

The Christmas gift that caregivers most need is the truth that Christ keeps the keepers and cares for the caregivers (Psalm 121; Isaiah 27:1-6). As they carry heavy burdens, caregivers need to know that the God of the universe carries them (Isaiah 46:3). As they comb and wash graying hairs, they need to know that even to their gray hairs, God will keep them (Isaiah 46:4). As they keep vigil by hospital bedsides, listening to what could be last words, they need to constantly reopen the gift of Jesus’s last words to us in the Scriptures: “Surely, I am coming soon” (Revelation 22:20).

There aren’t many Christmas carols sung from the perspective of caregivers, but there should be. For they, more than most, know the need for the One born to die that death might die. Thank you, caregivers, for the glimpse you have given me this Christmas into our Christ. It was the gift I didn’t know I needed.

All our lives are hidden in the life of an infant born in a nowhere town. Our salvation was swaddled up with a baby and laid in a feeding trough. Our fear of death was neatly folded and discarded with his grave clothes. Our hope rose with Him as he returned home to father. Our future will be secured with his second coming. 

When Glory Became Granular

Incarnation:
When glory became granular
And omnipresence particular;
When the unapproachable
Bent to be perpendicular.

Crucifixion:
When perfection was pierced
And Holiness Himself hounded;
When right reward was traded,
For a curse long-compounded.

Resurrection:
When death was decimated
And sinners’ salvation secured.
When life itself was liberated
Through His righteous reward.

Ascension:
When Holiness came home
And the Heir took the throne.
When the fecund Father
Welcomed back His Own.

Return:
When the Victor revisits
And the children renamed.
The kingdom consummated
And the garden reclaimed.

The holiday season is upon us. This means scrumptious food, seasonal decorations, and a whole smattering of unspoken, though deeply felt shoulds.

While many people disagree on when you should buy your tree or how long you should brine your turkey, our culture loudly agrees that we should be glib during the holidays and that the festivities and food should drown our the pain we feel in the depths of our hearts.

But, the Scriptures say believers should be glad, not glib. While glibness implies a giddiness which is often insincere and/or shallow, the Scriptures call for gladness which is rooted in the unchanging character of God and the deep works for God rather than changing circumstances.

“It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night…For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy” (Psalm 92:1-2; 4)

“I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord! Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!'” (Psalm 122:1).

In the Old Testament, gladness is often correlated with oil which represents the Holy Spirit. The first time Jesus opened the Scriptures during his public ministry, he quoted from the prophet Isaiah who mentioned the oil of gladness which would replace mourning in time.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion- to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;” (Isaiah 61:1-3).

The gladness the Scriptures speak of is cultivated through worship as a discipline and accompanies the presence of the Holy Spirit. In Psalm 92, which I quoted above, the writer connects gladness to the works of God. However, this statement was not spoken cheaply or lightly. In the Psalm, we hear an honest outcry that the wicked seem to be flourishing (Psalm 92:6). However, time spent in the presence of God and a fresh anointing with oil (Psalm 92:11; 13), the psalmist is given new eyes to see the same things differently. The situation has not changed; the psalmist’s perspective on the situation has. Thus, his ability to be glad in the works of God and the nature of God in whom “there is no unrighteousness” (Psalm 92:15).

Don’t let the subtle shoulds of the season demand a surface glibness. Rather, hear the should of Scripture which invites you to gladness that can coexist with honest disillusionment, deep grief, and trying circumstances.

The poem “Christmas Eve” by Christina Rossetti captures the depths of gladness the Incarnation brings.

“Christmas Eve” by Christina Rossetti

“Christmas hath a darkness
Brighter than the blazing moon.
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show;
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.”

Suffering and grief make our brains feel fuzzy and forgetful. They make us fatigued and sleepy, body, mind, and soul. But they sharpen our sight, if not in the moment, in the longterm.

I remember reading a book written by a Vietnam veteran who wrote honestly not only about the horrors he saw in Vietnam, but also about his experiences of color and beauty in Vietnam. It wasn’t that the colors changed or were brighter there; it was more that living on the thin edge between life and death made him see more clearly both the beauty and brokenness of earth.

Corrie ten Boom, while living in the nightmare that was a concentration camp, talks about moments of being utterly stunned by the beauty of a bird or a small flower or blade of grass.

Suffering trains our eyes not only to see sharply but also to see through. Suffering cuts through the gauze of this earth and removes its shiny veneer. It exposes much of the laughter of earth as hollow and many of its pleasures as transitory.

In her poem “Thy Friend and thy Father’s Friend forget not.” Christina Rossetti poetically captures the sight that suffering offers.

“Friends, I commend to you the narrow way;
Not because I, please God, will walk therein,
But rather for the Love Feast of that day,
The exceeding prize which whoso will may win.
Earth is half spent and rotting at the core,
Here hollow death’s heads mock us with a grin,
Here heartiest laughter leaves us tired and sore.
Men heap up pleasures and enlarge desire,
Outlive desire, and famished evermore
Consume themselves within the undying fire.
Yet not for this God made us: not for this
Christ sought us far and near to draw us nigher,
Sought and found and paid our penalties.
If one could answer, ‘Nay’ to God’s command,
Who shall say ‘Nay’ when Christ pleads all He is
For us, and holds us with a wounded Hand?”

Suffering can help us to see earth as “half spent and rotten to the core.” Suffering can aid in focusing our longing and hope on the lasting land of the New Heavens and the New Earth. Pain unsettles us and points our hearts back to lasting promises, so that we can say with Peter, “But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).

In our suffering, we have the opportunity to see the Suffering Savior as he is. In our suffering, we have the invitation to be held by the Wounded Healer.

For the believer in Christ, suffering is punctuated and purposeful. It will come to an end in the presence of Christ. There, we will see him as he is and all things as they should be (1 John 3:2).

May our suffering, be it minute or monumental, commend to us the narrow way which leads us to the broadest places of His presence.