A Forgotten Christmas Eve Message

Posted on December 24, 2019 by Foxworld

I posted this five years ago in Facebook. Today it popped up as a Facebook memory. I read it and thought, “I needed that.” Maybe you do too. In these times, which “seriously troubled” barely describes, it reminds me where my faith, my heart, and my loyalty lie: with a King and a kingdom that stand above the ragings and posturings of world governments and clashing worldviews, and with a gospel that can heal and redirect human hearts as nothing else can.

Thank you, Jesus, for coming to us as our Savior and giving us eternal life in you. Thank you that you are the One supreme ruler who deserves to have all power and our undiluted fealty, for you alone see clearly and are trustworthy in both love and judgment. Come again soon as King of Kings. Maranatha, Lord Jesus.

Christmas Eve, 2014

A most blessed Christmas to all my friends who love Jesus.

To the rest of the world, or more specifically to those who take offense at the word “Christmas,” I feel like saying, “Merry Politically Correct Occasion,” or perhaps “Merry Grow a Skin Day.” But I’ll keep that sarcastic impulse to myself and between you and me. It does not originate from the heart of the Word made flesh, but from my own fleshy, pissy attitude. This is not a day for me to feed into the irresolvable arguments that characterize this season in postmillennial America, and to do so is to miss the very point of Christmas. Jesus was born into a world alienated from God not so that he could establish a holiday but in order to bring salvation, and that remains true today. He came precisely because this world was at odds with God.

“He who made the world came into the world, and the world did not recognize him. He came to the people he had chosen for a special relationship, and they rejected him. BUT…to as many as did receive him, he gave the privilege of being children of God–to those who stake their lives on his name” (John 1:10-12, my rendering).

The world that takes offense at calling this holiday Christmas is the same world God loved so deeply that he sent his Son on its behalf. Jesus didn’t expect gratitude in return–he expected a cross. And while I think he loves that we celebrate his incarnation with warm traditions, I also think that what he cares about, more than a holiday that his early followers never even observed, is that we prioritize what he prioritizes: loving, as best we know how, a world that needs us to embody his heart toward it, not our own indignation over today’s thin-skinned political correctness.

Let a pagan world celebrate what it wants as it chooses. To me, any such celebration is utterly hollow apart from him–for “in him was life, and the life was the light of men.” I am grateful to Jesus. What I wrote to one friend earlier today, I share with you all: that Christmas is about eternity gestated for nine months in a teenage girl’s womb; holiness born in an animal shed; omnipotence camouflaged in helplessness; and Life of an entirely different quality come to actively seek us out in the midst of the world’s darkness.

Thanks to our Lord, Jesus Christ, the living Word to whom all good words are due and whom no words can fully encompass.

Merry Christmas, my friends, brothers, and sisters.

Bob

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Ruthie Comes to Stay

Posted on November 9, 2019 by Foxworld

For several months since she first appeared, splayed out on my bedroom window screen one night last May, the neighbor girl’s tiger tabby has been a constant visitor. A tiny thing she was when she first arrived–just a kitten, or so I thought, and since she lacked a collar and tags and appeared to wander freely, I concluded she was a recent addition to the local ferals. After a few days, I decided to give her a home. I bought cat food, a litter box, kitty treats. And I gave her a name, Ruthie. It means “Little Friend,” for it seemed the Lord had given me an affectionate companion in my life as a mature single man.

Then the gal next door came knocking, asking whether I’d seen her cat. It turned out Ruthie already had a name, Honey. And that wee bag of skin and bones, barely more than a tuft of fur with ears and a tail, was due to deliver a litter in a week or two.

Bye, little sweetie.

But really, not so. Honey continued to show up at my porch door daily, and my neighbor didn’t mind. I always turned Honey out in the evening so she could return to her home. But that home was a young family with two active boys, and I have an idea that little Honey preferred the quiet environment of my apartment. She certainly liked the plenteous kittie treats and the gentle attention that got showered on her. A couple months ago, her owner mentioned that she seemed to be “moving in your direction.”

For quite a while, because of Honey’s almost skeletal leanness, I was concerned that she might have a tapeworm, and it eased my mind to see her finally begin to fill out. But last week, the advent of cold and snow raised another concern. Glad though I was to see Honey, every visit had to end, and I no longer felt comfortable putting her back outside, trusting that she could simply streak forty feet to my neighbor’s porch door and be instantly taken in. What if she wasn’t? Would she spend the night outside in miserable, potentially lethal conditions?

So I knocked on the young woman’s door and learned that she had already been planning to talk with me. The rigors of being a mom, her husband’s new puppy, and a third baby due in February . . . it was just too much. Would I be interested in taking the cat?

Of course I would. It wasn’t the response I had expected–I had just hoped to work out an arrangement to ensure my little friend’s safety and comfort while also respecting her owner. Now I could see that my neighbor was struggling with a sad decision. Think about it and pray about it, I said.

A couple days later, the woman told me that she and her husband had decided it would be best, for Honey’s sake and their own, if I took her. I reassured my neighbor that she would always be welcome to see Honey and even “borrow” her if she wanted to spend time with her.

And so it is that, at the tender age of sixty-three, I have finally become a pet owner. It has happened suddenly, and I have yet to secure a certificate for owning an emotional support animal. I hope to do so this coming week, and also to have the cat spayed and given any shots she hasn’t already received.

Meanwhile, Honey is once again Ruthie. Welcome home, Little Friend.

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Sanctuary Seats: What the Pastor Won’t Tell You

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Foxworld

I was vacuuming the sanctuary at First Presbyterian Church yesterday afternoon, including the cloth seats of the chairs, when suddenly it hit me: every one of those chairs has had someone fart in it at least once.

How could it be otherwise? Probably multiple farts for most of the chairs, maybe dozens and dozens for some.

You know what that means: every chair has fart particulate embedded in its fabric. Flatus molecules, and they’re bound to be from those particularly noxious silent types, because nobody is going to let rip with a bull roarer in the middle of a sermon. I mean, there’s Pastor Dan, preaching his heart out, when suddenly from the midst of the congregation of the righteous comes a thunderous toot, and you know it’s not Gabriel blowing his horn.

Nope, that ain’t gonna happen. There won’t be any sound, just visual clues. Look for the guy sitting there with a satisfied smirk on his face while his wife shoots him a disgusted look. He’s the one who’s just marinaded his seat with a stealth stinker.

Once this subject enters your mind, it’s hard to get rid of. I spent an hour and a half thinking about it as I made my way with the vacuum through all those chairs. Now it’s your turn. I’ve got it off my chest and am a free man.

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