Topicify

I enjoyed writing for advent.  I found it stretching and energizing.  So I am thinking about topicifying for another 25 days.

Here are some ideas:

Disney Disillusions:  There must be at least 25 Disney Movies I can culturally strip down and find daily significance in.

Another Book of the Bible: Maybe not, maybe I should wait for this till Lent.

From My Home To Yours:  A Daily Dose of Reality from my home just to make you feel better about yours.

Gospel Primer Poetry: Taking a look at the poetry in the Gospel Primer (my new favorite book)

Planning Preschool in your Home for One Month:  I love planning my preschool days.  Granted we don't do five a week but I could drag up past ideas and inundate you with them.
 
Creating Community: I think maybe I could come up with 25 things about community.

If you have a favorite write me.

Down with Winter

I am not down with winter.

Here are my Top Ten Things Not to Do in Winter:

1.  Do not go bare feet.  Even to take out your garbage, or run to get the post, or to go to the bathroom if you have tiles.

2.  Do not decide what to wear by just looking out of and touching the window.  This does not account for wind chill.

3.  Do not keep trying your key in your car if it seems it is frozen shut.  First check and ensure you have the right car it is easy in winter storms to lose your car and believe that someone else's car is actually yours. 

4.  Do not go to events without checking the internet, your phone and with a friend.  This is imperative.  Things get cancelled unexpectedly.

5.  Do not travel without your phone.  And if you are like me, make sure it is charged.

6.  Do not leave your doors open.  Mice will come in.

7.  Do not wash the outside of your windows no matter how dirty they are and how easy it is to step out and wipe them off.  They will freeze over.

8.  Do not if you can help it, cough in public.  Definitely do not sneeze.

9.  Do not talk to, look at, or touch someone who coughs or sneezes in public.

10.  Do not leave home without your sense of humor but I would suggest leaving home or you might go crazy.

Oh and do not buy a coat that is not down!!  Gotta have down for winter to be down with it!

Mary Poppins Syndrome

I have a disease called "Mary Poppins Syndrome."  Sadly it does not mean I break out into glorious song with robins perched on the window sill.  It also means I cannot fly.  I also do not walk in the park with puffy sleeves.  No this syndrome means I have grandiose delusions that I am a House Keeping Goddess.

I think that I can get ten things done, like Marvelous Mary with a snap of my fingers.  I believe that I can accomplish numerous household tasks in a limited amount of time.  This syndrome impacts my marriage.  Particularly when I think my hubby should be able to accomplish a task with finger snapping speed.  Also it impacts my parenting, when my tasks dwaddle pathetically I steal kiddo time and dump it into house tasks. 

I see this problem and am trying to fight it.  Firstly I am fighting it by breaking into song when I see birds.  Secondly I am fighting by vigorously flapping my arms as I run around the kitchen taking small jumps periodically to see if I have suddenly learned to fly.  And lastly I am seriously thinking about buying a Victorian gown to wear around and about.  Perhaps these healthy doses reminding me I am not Mary Poppins will help me step into the reality that things don't happen with a snap of my fingers.

With that said.....the last two chapters of Matthew are brilliant.  Read them.  They made me weep.  There are no entries about these chapters due to internet and time restrictions.  Again I am no Mary Poppins.  Cheerio for now.

Ta-Ta-Ta

December Twenty Second........Luke 22

Christmas comes.  And Luke draws to a close.  The climax in only two days.  If you are still with me reading these blogs I applaud you.  I feel blessed by my own journey through this book as I journeyed through Christmas season in America. (well the December part of the season)

Chapter 22.

"Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house, and Peter was following at a distance.  And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together......."

We just came from a delight downtown light experience complete with free cookies, hot chocolate, popcorn and candy.  Over five miles of lights.  It was immensely beautiful and bright.  My Indian friends would have loved it.  But there were fire pits everywhere in the cold.  I do not think about the crucifixion as being during a time of cold.  By the time Easter hits South Asia it is HOT.  Summer really.  What if this timely death of Jesus was in the winter.  The winter of our souls.  The death of green.  Blood spilled on snow.

Jesus coming to earth.  Jesus leaving His throne, his throne where angels cried out holy, his heaven where he was the KING the one with POWER the great I AM!  To be mocked, drug as a criminal before religious men in the dark cold of the night and hit instead of worshiped.  Blindfolded and struck instead of eyes of the worshipers closed in the awe of His radiant light.  Jesus became flesh and suffered.  He traded the glory of his home for the gory of earthly beatings and ultimately, as we will see tomorrow, death.

This chapter makes me think about the intimate quarters of this household to which Jesus was drug and kept all night being bullied, beaten and broken.  It makes me think of darkness of night when electricity goes out in large cities and evil breaks out.  Darkness does not hold romantic twinkles but shadows of death.  All night Jesus faced their ridicule and scorn, a secret hid from the people till morning light and Jesus' statement that He was God.

Jesus IS God and He came to earth.  May you be full of worship to your King today.

Merry Christmas early.  I can barely contain my joy that my King came to live and die and raise again.  Praise Be to Him who Left His Kingly Throne not for a manger but for a cross and tomb!  Praise Him!

December Twenty-First...........Luke 21

Christmas rolls upon us like a storm.  Rain clouds like wild horses rush across the sky and snow falls gently in the quiet. 

We are currently in one of the most beautiful places in the world where they have learned to love snow.  They are kind of like Elsa and want it to always snow.  They do winter well.

It makes me miss my second home keenly.  I feel like my internal thermometer's equilibration had been found for heat.   Heat to even endure weddings.

Hubster and I were at a wedding and after enjoying the ceremony we waited in line to give a gift.  We walked up with our little tea set and money in an envelope.   A large crowd watched as we handed over the gift.  Then the lady asked us how much was in the envelope.  Everyone ahead of us had given about 30 cents and we were giving 20 dollars.  She shouted it out just like all the other figures.  The lady writing down the numbers shouted it back and then a third lady checked.  We learned our cultural lesson and did not give money at that type of wedding again!

We know the back story of this widow.  We know that they used to put coins in large vessels that made noise like the coin machines in banks and that some people tithing even had a trumpet blown when they tithed.  Can you imagine a more wealthy family trumpeting their giving at your next worship service?  Not really.  Not many of us have lived the reality of this woman. 

Again the mayhem of many people gathered.  Noise,  Staring, animals, craziness.  People sitting and watching people tithe.  Can you imagine if you walked behind the people taking the offering and stared at what people gave?  Really the core of this story remains foreign to us.  The picture very foreign.  But the message very real.  In this season full of hidden costs are we giving what little we do have to our King?  Am I giving with generosity, joy and out of areas in my life that I feel poverty?

May I have a heart like the widow Jesus!

December Twentieth.......Luke 20

"The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone."

Buildings go up with huge machinery and men in special vests and hats.  They rise above the earth and reach those lofty heights at dizzying speeds.  We don't stand around watching men mix cement with their hands, level out a wall and pick stones for each little step up.  Unless we live still in South Asia.  The idea of a stone, rejected becoming a cornerstone, holds little significance to me in my everyday life here in the West but in Asia rocks are important.  Rocks are one of the most important culinary tools for mixing spices, one of the most important self defense tools against rampaging monkeys and roaming dog packs,  rocks are crucial during a side of the road breakdown, critical for fixing bike tires, essential for making chai, the list goes on and on and on.   Rocks are used in many everyday aspects of life, even popular children games.  They just seem more important in Asia. 

Who is you rock?  Where do you run to when you need help?  How is Jesus your Cornerstone?

"Rock of Ages cleft for me let me hide myself in Thee."

December Nineteenth.....Luke Nineteen

Well folks this is where the rubber meets the road.  After a nine hour day on the actual highway we arrived in time to unpack, strip a bed, make three beds, and organize our advent calender before a late dinner.  I am currently sitting in the dark midst a Zana meltdown.  Dinner at a different time complete with total adult conversation and devotions with no known carols can be a little devastating for a three year old.  She quivers with the excitement of coming for Christmas but vegetable harvest soup instead of her cousins did not meet her little, tiny hopes and dreams.  She clung to me like a limpet and asked to go home.  Perhaps tomorrow I will whip up a tiny dinner a little more gluten full for my little baby girl.

So from that very domestic update lets talk mobs.  When is the last one you saw one?  When is the last time you were in one?  I am not talking a football game but a football game out of control?  We just do not have the masses of people that many South Asians live amongst.  Farming communities do exist but they are exactly that, communities.  People live on top of each other.  Think of everyone in America moving to Wisconsin.  Out of control!

Two pictures permeate my mind in this chapter.  The reality that as these people gathered in mass to celebrate Jesus they were a mob.  Also they shouted about peace.    There are two things about this picture that would be better understood by a South Asian.  The masses of people jostling and shouting.  Masses.  One year we acted out the Passion Week in our small school.  The boy who played Jesus rode a bike in lieu of a donkey.  It sounds hookey but as the week progressed something beautiful happened with that group of children and in the teachers.  But back to the Triumphal Entry.  The boy playing Jesus started sedately riding his bike but then something happened.  He took off like a bat out of hell and there we were running like mad after Jesus on his bike.  We were sprinting, waving and shouting and sweaty and hot.   To tell the truth I was a little irritated.  The holy moment was down right chaotic.  I think that chaos must have been true of the masses around Jesus.  Masses of sweaty folks, middle schoolers and such, in waves around you.  Wild.

Secondly the word peace.  I think we have this idea of peace being between family members, peace with our three year old, just a little peace and quiet.  But South Asians may understand this better.  Like the people shouting they feel the iron fist of injustice perhaps more directly than any of us have.  Many of them feel fear in sending their children to school.  Fear of their boys being executed.  Fear of attack.  Fear of violence.  Fear of unrest.  Fear instead of peace.  In the very same chapter is a story about a tax collector.  A real reminder of the horror and injustice the people of Israel were facing.  This story of Jesus coming into Jerusalem needs to be seen not in the light of children waving palm branches through the church cutely till they stop and there is a little peace and quiet.  No!  This is to be seen as a scene rife with uncomfortable mob mentality and a deep need for peace.  A desperate need for peace.

May we like Jesus weep over the need for peace, the need for Jesus, in the many unreached peoples of South Asia.  May we pray and cry over them as Jesus did over Jerusalem.  May our nights of earthly peace cause us to give massive cries of delight in our heavenly peace!  May we have a bit of a mobbish crazy worship time too.  A little more chaos!