Manger Seen?

My trip to Israel this year was really eye opening.  So many of the things that I had imagined about the land of the Bible were not at all like the reality.  Another pastor friend on the trip put it this way, "All these years I have pictured this place too flat."  That is a good description.  There are some flat places (like here in Texas) but, for example, in Bethlehem, there isn't a flat place to be found.  When people talk of Judah's hills, they do mean hills.

It is also a lot more rocky than I ever imagined.  Rock is everywhere.  That got me to thinking.  Now where I am going with this is not something I am saying you have to agree with, but it is something I wonder about.  Was the manger  that Jesus was placed in at his birth made of wood or was it made of stone?

Let me tell you why I wonder that.  Every where we went, my farm boy eyes were looking at the agricultural sights as well as the archaeological.  Many times they were both.  Everything I saw that had to do with agriculture of biblical times was made of stone.  Some of you may be saying, "Well of course all that remains from that time period would be stone, wood articles would not survive."  That of course is true but it is also part of my pondering too.  You want things that will last.

Our mangers here in the United States are largely made of wood, so naturally we would think mangers there and then would be too.  But I saw several  feeding troughs for animals made of stone.  I have included a picture that is something like a stone trough or manger below.  Stone lasts much longer than wood.  Stone there in Israel in general and Bethlehem in particular, is in great abundance; wood is much harder to come by.  A stone trough or manger would be much harder to turn over and when animals are feeding - things do get moved around in larger animal's eagerness and competitiveness for food.  So I wonder, was it wood or was it stone?  If I were there in that day feeding animals, I would have at least given stone a try.  We know for sure that Solomon's horses where fed in stone troughs, archaeologists have found them.  Could that have worked in Bethlehem too?

Of course it does not make one bit of difference whether it was stone or wood.  The fact is that Jesus was born and Mary and Joseph placed him in a manger. That was the sign the angels told the shepherds to look for and they found him.  If it was made of stone, then think of this,the first thing Jesus' body was laid in at birth was stone.  We know the last thing Jesus' body was laid in after this death was stone - a tomb.  From each, he rose in glory and in victory as it was  purposed by God for that time in his life  He may have started his life at rock bottom.  It surely appeared that his life ended at rock bottom, but there was more to the story.  There always is when it comes to Jesus.

May you and your family have a Blessed and Merry Christmas.

For the journey...

Tim

12-21-2012

If you are reading this, then the world did not end - not yet at least.  Yes, this is the day the Mayan caledar pointed to as the possible end of time, but obviously we go on.  Experts on all this tell us that the Mayans, who began counting time on August 11, 3,114 B.C., divided time up into 144,000 day periods.  Today is the end of the 13th such period and there was a stone tablet discovered in the 1960's that predicted that one of the Mayan gods, Quetzalcoatl, would come to earth and time would be no more.  He appears to have missed his appointment.

Do you remember all the fears about Y2K and the year 2000?  I can still recall vividly that I had some people set up a meeting with me to question why we were not making preparations as a church - such as storing food and fuel.  Y2K was a big let down too to those who were expecting the end.  It seems we, Mayans or Baptists, are not good at predicting the end.  Jesus said we would not be.

This week, the odometer on my truck hit 111,111.1 miles.  I watched for that moment, it came and went and  nothing happened.  It seemed significant to me but no one on the road I was driving seemed to notice.  We mark time like my odometer, we can count how far we have come but we do not know how long we have left.  We know that time, like my truck, will some day come to an end, but we can never be sure when.  The only thing we can know is who will bring it to an end.

Which brings me back to the Mayans.  Why did they start counting time on August 11, 3114 B. C?  We started counting our time when Jesus was born.  We can count how far we have come since Jesus was born but not how long until he returns.  We can also recount many of the acts of his love but we cannot count how much more love he will show us. We can know that he will keep loving us.  His love can transform how we look at time.  We know that he came to earth out of love and we can know that he will return to earth for those he loves, living and dead.  When we begin to see the unmeasureable scope of his love, it makes this day and any day, even the day he comes back again, less scary.  What is 12-21-2012?  It is another day to measure how far we have come by his love.

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."  Ephesians 3:17-19

For the journey...

Tim

Unspeakable Joy

...though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:  1 Peter 1:8 KJV

I saw that "unspeakable," unexplainable joy just after Christmas in 1981.  I was on a mission trip with a group of fellow college students in Matamoros, Mexico.  We were helping to build a church - spiritually and physically.  All of us had a part of the day that we worked on constructing a church building in a poor colonia on the edge of Matamoros; then we spent another part of the day surveying the spiritual interest in that colonia with a few Spanish phrases we were taught.

My team of three came up to a house and greeted the woman outside, she warmly welcomed us into her little home where  we met her grown daughter and her very sick grandchild.  She wanted us to pray for her grandchild but first the daughter told us her story.  I could gleam a word or two to get the gist of what she was saying and she would help  us out with an English phrase or two that she knew.

They were all Christians.  The child was given very little hope of living much longer.  The child and his mother had just moved there because the husband could not handle his child's illness and had left them.  It was a very sad story but all the time this young mother told us this, there was this incredible expression of joy on her  face, even through her tears.  She kept looking up as she spoke, her large brown eyes seemed to point to a higher place that that little, poor home.   I will never forget it.  We choked out a few prayers between us over the sick child, each of us taking turns as someone who had been praying got choked up.  We said our goodbyes and left information about the new church and took their names and the address for the colonia pastor.

We got out in the street, dried our eyes and talked about what we had just experienced - joy, in the middle of one of the saddest things I had ever seen.  Everyone on that team remarked about how we had just seen something we had never seen before.  There was such an expression of joy on her face even through her tears and even in her circumstances.

That evening our team tried to share what we had experienced during our mission team share time.  None of us could get through it without crying.  I am sure no one else really understood what we had seen but it did not change the fact that we had seen it.  It really was an "inexpressible" joy.

All of us would like to have that kind of joy.  None of us want the kind of circumstances that family was going through.  But perhaps that is where joy -this kind of joy that Peter was talking about - can best be seen and known, in places where it would not seem possible.

Sunday, we will look at the joy that is possible where ever we are, no matter what we are going through because it comes from Jesus.  Pray for me as we seek to understand this unspeakable joy.

For the journey...

Tim

Plumber's Peace

Note:  To more fully appreciate this post you may want to read the post from 7/28/2011 "I am Not a Plumber"

We had more plumbing adventures at our house last week, our kitchen sink faucet pretty much came undone.  Some important looking piece of gasket fell out of it and it would not shut off.  I was able to get it somewhat back together so that I could turn the water off but the whole thing left me feeling pretty uncomfortable.  The faucet had the look and I got the feeling, this could fall apart again at any time. 

Adding to my anxiety, it was Friday and after some phone calls I found there was no help available until the next week.  So I gave my family faucet first aid instructions of how to handle the handle very carefully and how to go under the sink to the cut offs in case we had a complete faucet failure. 

We made it through the weekend and decided we needed to replace our chipped and dented sink if we were going to replace the faucet so we got our new supplies and waited for the plumbers.  They came right on time and spent a couple of hours replacing faucet and sink.

I watched them work for a while and I was amazed.  There were no bent or leaking pipes, no skinned knuckles, no hopeless looks of frustration - all of the things that usually accompany my plumbing efforts.  There was just skilled work by a couple of guys who have done this before.

In an odd way, it was peaceful.  They fixed my faucet and sink quietly and efficiently and then left.  Everything was back in working order, even better than it had been before and all my anxiety was gone.  It can be funny how the experience of peace comes to us.  I was in over my head, called and waited on someone who could help.  They came and did their job and it brought me peace.

That is not unlike how peace comes from Jesus.  When we are in over our heads and we call on him, he comes and brings peace with his presence - for even bigger things than broken faucets.  He works peace into our lives by being able to fix broken things.  We are going to look at his peace this Sunday in Advent.  Do you have any "faucet fears" in your life?  I know someone you can call.

For the journey...

Tim