Christmas Eve Chaos

I really set myself up this time.

Our 11:00pm Christmas Eve service will be a traditional warm wonderful old-fashioned Christmas Eve, with lots of Christmas carols to sing and everyone lighting a candle as we sing “Silent Night.”

I’ve done that kind of service before and I know it will be great. It’s the 7:00 children’s service that I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into.

The plan – and it’s too late to back out because we’ve already advertised it – is to put on an impromptu, unrehearsed Christmas pageant involving every child in the building who wants to take part. Instead of a sermon, I’ll call all the kids up front. I’ll read sections of the Christmas story from a children’s Bible, then we’ll stop and assign parts and hand out costumes (I hope we’ll have enough) and tell the kids what to say and walk them through it. Then I’ll read the next section and we’ll do it again.

It may be total chaos, but I don’t think so. I think it will be a lot of fun, for the kids and everybody watching.

And of course we’ll sing Christmas carols and the children’s choir will sing and we’ll have a birthday cake for Jesus and the usual things.

I think there are lots of parents out there who would like their children to have the chance to participate in a Christmas pageant, but they haven’t gotten them into rehearsals and so on. I hope those folks will hear about this and bring their kids and it will be an easy, fun way for the whole family to be involved in a part of Christmas that is not about shopping and Santa Claus.

Speaking of events that don’t involve shopping and Santa Claus, our Night in Bethlehem this past Sunday evening was incredible. The auditorium was transformed into Bethlehem Main Street. There were about eight decorated shops where kids could put on costumes and make toys and rope and bread and sandals and jewelry and eat figs and dates and olives and such. Shopkeepers and townsfolk and a tax collector and a Roman soldier in costume interacted with visitors. We even had a before-and-after Mary and Joseph: for the first two hours one of our pregnant couples played the part, then they went out and one of our just-had-a-baby couples replaced them. We had about 115 people register for the “census” as they came in. The men did a great job building the shops. People are already planning for how to do it even better next year.

So that’s over and it went great. I have no worries about the traditional candlelight Christmas Eve service at 11:00pm. But at 7:00, inviting all the kids up and getting them to put on the service, that’s a new one. But I think it will be fun. At least it will be memorable!

Refill Your Candles

I was just checking the candles in our Advent Wreath in preparation for our Christmas Eve services. I had noticed Sunday that they didn’t seem to be burning, even though they had been lit.

These particular candles are “oil candles,” actually oil-burning lamps made to look like candles. When Wanda Lee and I checked the candles, we found that there is oil in them. But when I lit them, they smoldered, but didn’t really burn brightly enough for anyone to see.

On further investigation I found that while the bottom of the wick was wet, the top was dry. There was oil in them, but not enough to make a visible flame.

I wonder how many Christians are like that? We’ve been lit, but to look at us, we sure don’t seem to be burning.

In the Bible, oil is often used as a symbol of the Holy Spirit of God. Just as the oil candles need to be kept filled with oil, we need to stay filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).

How do we do that? Spend time in prayer, Bible reading, and just sitting quietly focused on God. We who know the Lord need to allow God to fill us in our personal devotional times, so when we come together in worship we can burn brightly for God and provide light for others.

The Spirit of Christmas

Yesterday morning, at our church's weekly prayer meeting for our military, one of the men, who probably wouldn't want me to use his name, told a wonderful story.

(This guy is pretty wonderful himself. He was a Marine in World War II, part of the invasion of Iwo Jima 62 years ago,and still going strong.)

Here's the story. I think it's a great picture of the Christmas spirit, the spirit Jesus came to bring us.

Some years ago a church was putting on a Sunday School Christmas pageant. Everybody got a part: a girl would play Mary, a boy would play Joseph, others would be shepherds and angels and wise men. One little boy - we'll call him Johnny - had what we nowadays would call a learning disability. But he wanted to have a part in the pageant, and everybody wanted him to have a part.

They decided the easiest role for Johnny to play was the innkeeper. All he had to say was one line: "There's no room in the inn." Five words. They figured Johnny could handle that.

The night of the pageant came and Johnny was there, resplendent in his costume and his excitement. The director and the teachers and even the other kids kept going over Johnny's line with him, just to be sure he knew it. "There's no room in the inn. There's no room in the inn."

Finally the pageant began. Gabriel appeared to Mary. Another angel appeared to Joseph. A Roman soldier announced the census. Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem.

It was time for Johnny.

The boy playing Joseph knocked on the door. Johnny said his line perfectly: "There's no room in the inn." Joseph and Mary turned away, giving a convincing portrayal of sadness and desperation. That's when Johnny called out: "Wait, don't go! You can have my room!"

Back from Iraq for Thanksgiving

Paula and I had a great and unexpected blessing this Thanksgiving: our son Jed and his entire 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division returned early from their deployment in Baghdad. Originally scheduled for a fifteen-month stint ending this coming February, this early return was wonderful news.

Trinity Church hosted a community Thanksgiving Eve service this year with three other churches, but I left it in the capable hands of Sheila Dunn (minister of visitation) as we drove to Ft. Campbell, KY to welcome Jed's plane.

It was an amazing experience. At 9:30am, Sunday, Nov. 23, a chartered airliner landed at the base airfield to the cheers of several hundred sign-waving family and friends. (Anyone who knows Paula will not be surprised that our sign was the biggest.) A brass band played. A general gave a wisely short speech. The joy in the air was electric.

Jed had been gone ten months, serving as a 2nd Lieutenant Cavalry Scout, leading patrols in what we later learned was the most active sector in all Iraq in terms of IED attacks. Paula and I had driven down to see him off, and on the drive back home we felt God showed us how we should pray for him. Among other things, we felt we were supposed to envision Jed walking off the plane on his return, healthy, whole, sound and strong. That mental image served as a focus for our prayers and our faith.

Sure enough, that's what we saw on that wonderful sunny Sunday morning. Jed was limping a little, from an ankle sprained while throwing a football around (it had been seriously weakened during a combat mission some weeks before), but he wasn't injured. Furthermore, none of his men were wounded. Praise the Lord for answered prayer!

We had thought we might have to cook Thanksgiving dinner in a hotel room, but the troops were given a four-day pass. So Wednesday around noon, after finishing part of his mandatory re-integration training, Jed piled into the car with us and we drove straight through twelve hours to Annapolis, where we had a wonderful weekend of family and food before Jed had to catch an early airplane back on Sunday morning.

Many people question the war in Iraq, and I'm not going to get into that argument. What I want to focus on is the pride in seeing Jed do what he felt he had to do, and the joy in seeing him return safe and sound. God is faithful and God is good!

It was surely a Thanksgiving to remember, and I pray everyone who reads this has an equally blessed holiday season.