Having to buy tires the other day, I decided to get my car aligned.  Getting your car aligned is an invisible (please do not confuse with “transparent”) service done to the car.  Unless the car pulls to the right or left, you can’t tell, after paying the bill, whether they did anything to it or not.  You can’t look at it like you do with new tires, or clean oil, or new cabin filters, it’s just something where they wave a magic wand over your wheels and say they’re done.

And furthermore, they made up a whole vocabulary test to impress you with the value you’re getting for the waving of the wand.  They claim to adjust the camber, and the toe, and the caster, and my favorite, thrust.  You cannot divine any of these measurements from their names – knowledge of the English language offers no advantage in this part of the shop.  They tell you one is the measurement of whether the wheel is aimed too much to the right or left, and whether the top of the tire leans to inside or the outside, but even after learning that, the terms don’t help much.  Kind of like port and starboard on a boat.

Then, at the end, they give you a computer-generated report, with red highlights where the alignment was off, and theoretically the corrected alignment highlighted in green.  The problem was, for me this time, that the whole report looked like a Christmas tree, green and red highlights appearing both in the “before” and “after” report. 

I’m not sure I would go back there. But it did get me to thinking about alignment, and how that needs to be true in my life.  Am I aligned?  With, or in reference to, what?  Well… with what I claim as important.  How does my life track with the values that I espouse?

I’m not going to get into camber, toe and caster.  I’m not smart enough to make spiritual correlations with those.  But I do like thrust.  Have you ever seen a truck going down the road and it looks like it’s crabbing?  The truck will be travelling straight in the lane,  but the whole body of the truck looks like it’s going off to the right, or to the left.  You know it’s been in a serious wreck when it’s that visible.  Its thrust alignment is way off.

That can happen spiritually.  We can get out of alignment with the values that we hold.  We can claim to be Christians, going in the Way of Christ (Christians were first known as people of “the Way”), but when people look at us, we look (sound?) like we’re trying to go off to the right or left.

I’m no mechanic.  I’m no expert on car alignments.  But it seems to me that the thrust of the car is right when the frame is straight, and all the other adjustments are aligned within spec.  I think to align ourselves with Jesus means that we make adjustments in various places.  That we align with Christ as people who speak the truth.  That we love others in visible ways.  That we strive to become like Jesus in all that we think, and say, and do.  I don’t know which one of these is toe or camber or caster.  It doesn’t matter.  But I can see, in my own life, and sometimes in the lives of others, how I am not tracking straight with the Way the Lord would have me go.  I can “get sideways” sometimes in The Way.

Christmas offers an alignment check.  We measure ourselves back to the original, the first, message of salvation.  Do we still believe and claim the gift of the Savior?  How are we doing with that?  I suppose Easter is the same way.  And, well, every Sunday when we come to church.  And, for that matter, anytime we decide to spend a little time with the Lord.  All of these experiences check our spiritual toe and camber and caster, so that our thrust in this spiritual journey is straight ahead.

Letting go of the wheel,

Craig

But if anyone obeys His word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in Him:
Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did.  1 John 2:5,6

Is it just me, or are things simply more complicated nowadays?  As you know, I like cars, I like looking at cars, I like working on cars, well, with things getting more complicated, I tackle less and less in the garage.

This morning, the sun shone in my car just the right way, revealing a hundred little (very little) wiggly strands of metal running from top to bottom in my windshield.  I have a heated windshield.  The windshield has radar attached to it that needs to be adjusted when the glass gets changed (I’ve gone through two of them so far).  The windshield has designs in it for a camera and for rain sensors.  Some have antennas in them.  The first cars didn’t even have windshields, but for many, many years were simply a piece of glass.

Then I looked in the rear-view mirror.  That used to be a little piece of glass, mounted on the dash or the ceiling that let you look backwards.  Now, a mirror changes color to cut glare, it displays the temperature or your direction in an LED readout.  It has reading lights, and some even a whole satellite communications system.  And yes, rain control sensors and cameras.

Oh, and the side mirrors, the ones attached to the door.  That used to be a little piece of reflectorized glass, attached to the door with some kind of indecorous handle.  Maybe, in a fancy car with a pivot so you could adjust it.  Now?  Now they have thermometers in them.  The mirrors have grown substantially bigger.  A motor folds it against the car.  Another motor moves it around instead of that old pivot.  All this necessitates a big plastic casing to fit around those motors and a hundred wires.  They have directional signal lights, courtesy lights, cameras, and lest all those electronics get uncomfortable, heating.  If your mirror broke back in the day, you went to K-mart and $2.00 later you screwed it back on.  Today?  Five hundred dollars for the mirror, two hundred for painting and a week later you treat the mirror like it was made of gold.  And you certainly didn’t go to K-Mart.

And don’t get me started on steering wheels…. They’re so complicated that you have to coordinate them to your VIN number.

Like Christmas.  You used to go to the woods, chop a tree, and put some homemade decorations on it.  Maybe rip some mistletoe off a tree for good measure.  Now?  Decorations not only go up inside, but have to go up outside.  They have to blow up, light up, change colors, blink, blink to music, and come in any form or character known to man except Jesus in the manger.  In our neighborhood we have Grinches and Blueys and Calvins and Sponge Bobs, and even a display of a giant Donald Trump next to a baby Donald Trump next to an eagle.  Christmas has become complicated.  You used to pile in the car and go to Grandma’s house. Now you have to fly somewhere, take off your shoes and belts and jackets and… you have to practically undress in front of strangers to get on a plane you hope is not delayed. Then you pray that your flight back doesn’t get cancelled lest you miss work the next day.  It’s just more complicated.

I want my car to be complicated.  I like buttons and features.  But I want Christmas to be simple.  Give me a Christmas Tree (I know, it really doesn’t have any Christian background to it, but it warms up the room) and some garland, and let the music decorate the season.  Let me hear about Hope and Peace and Joy and Love highlighted by an Advent Wreath and a sermon to match (that one’s dicey, I know).  And let me hear the words of John 3:16 because really, that’s all it’s about.  Christmas really isn’t complicated (or need be).  It simply is a joyous celebration that indeed God did love the world enough to come and visit us, coming in the form of a baby to grow into the Messiah and Savior for everyone who would accept Him.

That’s what the joy is about.

Humming Joy to the World,

Craig

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  John 3:16 

Jesus’ birth caused controversy and discussion in the year 1, and it still does today. The Three Wise Men and King Herod disagreed on who laid in that manger.  The shepherds came with little or no understanding of who cooed there in front of them (The Chosen interpretation notwithstanding).

Today, in Christmas markets across Europe and in any given Christmas store here, people prefer to sip the cider and gaze at snow globes than to ponder the chance manger scene they might encounter.

The Catholic church in Belgium managed to change that this year. They put a large nativity scene out every year, trying to steal a moment away from the people’s wine sipping and ornament buying. This year they selected an artist by the name of Victoria-Maria Geyer. She produced a life-size nativity scene where the holy family, Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus, did not have eyes, noses or mouths.

Many people freaked out when they saw this.  I probably would have too.  Social media in Belgium lit up like a Home Alone 2 decorated house.  People complained that the holy family looked like zombies.  It caused quite a stir that culminated in somebody stealing the baby Jesus.

Now, stealing the baby Jesus happens a lot.  I remember quite a consternation happening at the large steeple church I served in Coral Gables, FL.  “How could somebody do that?” innumerable people would ask.  Stealing the baby out of the manger scene is not new.  Not in Belgium either.  Curiously, they immediately had a replacement.  But this heist made the news, largely because of the controversy surrounding the whole nativity scene. 

It turns out that Victoria-Maria Geyer is a devout Catholic.  She believes in the Jesus that she represented in her nativity scene.  And she wanted to have people see not her image of Jesus and His earthly parents, but to project their own images on them. She actually wanted people to project themselves, their own faces, on the characters.

This is a lot more noble of a thought than, say, zombies. I haven’t been to Belgium this Christmas season to have seen this crèche (OK…I’ve never been to Belgium, period).  I can’t opine from personal experience what it looked like.  My guess is that I would have been taken aback a little, and not found it pleasant.  That’s just because I’m a traditional kind of guy, I guess.

But it does beg the question “what do we see in the faces of the members of the holy family?”  Do we see ourselves in any of them?  Can we?  Do we dare project our own image on Jesus’ face?  Who are these people?

If I were to sculpt Joseph, he would have a look of consternation.  Mary’s face would be an exhausted one.  And Jesus?  Just a peaceful baby sleeping, not worried about a thing.  Kind of like any couple having just delivered a baby, I guess.  The only difference being that God Himself lay there, dressed in swaddling cloths, lying in what very likely was a stone-carved feeding trough.

What do you see?

Getting ready for Christmas,

Craig

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.  Luke 2:7

Thanksgiving and Christmas are upon us.  I can’t say they have snuck up on me, since I’ve known they are coming from the beginning of the year.  We should pace ourselves for these Holy-days, but, of course, life gets in the way. Personally, a Centennial for our church loomed over me all year – the remodeling foreshadowed the Centennial.  Lining up speakers for the service and the videos, the food, the music, have all been long in the making. Thanksgiving and Christmas, well, they could wait.

And here they are!  I am looking forward to them.  We have much to thank the Lord for, and Jesus’ birthday carries the weight of eternal salvation, not just a bunch of to-dos before midnight on Christmas Eve.

A concern I have this year, maybe because of the Centennial, is that I am going to do the same things I have done year after year.  Not that traditions are bad, not that traditions should change, but that I am going to do them in a perfunctory way, a series of things I have to do just because, well, I did it that way last year (or the last 100 years, or whatever).  I have put this all in the first person so as not to drag you into this. If I say “we are going to do them in a perfunctory way,” it sounds like I’m talking about the church, or you and me, but I am simply thinking about my own approach to Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I imagine you can relate.

There is a difference between rituals and superstition.  For a bride to wear “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” is a superstition.  Lighting a unity candle at the wedding is a ritual.  Carrying a rabbit’s foot is superstition. Starting your day with devotions is a ritual.  An elf on the shelf is superstition. Lighting an Advent wreath is a ritual.  You may think of personal examples.  A Christmas tree, uhm… ritual or superstition?

I don’t have an answer for that last one.  On the one hand, why do we fell a tree and bring it inside and add
electrical lights to it? (They used to add lighted candles!)  On the other hand, decorating it as a family is some kind of ritual for us. But I want to make this year more intentional about rituals. Not just traditions, and not just superstitions, but rituals. A ritual points beyond itself (think the meaning of the five candles of the Advent wreath).  A superstition says that the action or object itself has magical powers (think wearing dirty socks wins the game for the athlete).  A ritual is about somebody else.  Superstition is about self.

I hope we will all find meaning in the rituals of these days. I pray that we will actively seek the rituals—rituals of old—so that they might point us to the Lord.  And I pray that the Holy Spirit permeates our Holy-days and blesses them that we might celebrate the goodness of God in these eventful days.

Running to Publix,

Craig

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.  1 Chronicles 16:34