What are you praying for?

>> Pray for your neighbor, for the stranger for your friends.

I need to share with you three quotes I heard this week:

“The most important part of love is forgiveness”

“The church of the future will be more about experience than teaching.”

“Faith is more like falling in love than it is like finding the answer to a complicated question. … we are rarely changed by learning new information, but we are acquiring new loves.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmas. Like duh, right?

Giving tours and coming up the nativity

Everything about that moment is bad isn’t it?

The idea of it being a silent night is so added on

Luke 2:4–7 CSB

4 Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David, 5 to be registered along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was pregnant. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 Then she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him tightly in cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

You might notice that it doesn’t say inn, and some scholars currently say that perhaps the idea that a manger would have been at every home, and perhaps what is being said here is that Mary didn’t have a great place to give birth.

Traditionally, Luke’s account is accepted as that Mary told Luke her memories for Luke to write it down. It’s funny because I have so many similar stories from women of a part of the birth of their child that they didn’t think would go correctly.

In Islam there is a lot more added to make it way more dramatic. Even in Catholicism there is extra.

But if you just read the Bible, remove the idea that the labor wasn’t intense, and ideas about special animals just take it at its word. It’s a pretty bad night for Mary and Joseph. The only verse that describes the birth of Jesus in the entire Bible.

Luke 2:7 CSB

7 Then she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him tightly in cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

So it got me thinking about what we pray for. I hear people often pray for an end to hardship. An end to a difficult relationship. An end to financial problems. An end to difficulties.

Yet, on the one time when God decides to be born, he chose to be born to a woman whose birth was so unceremonious no one would give her a room to give birth or be with her baby in.

Of course you know they were forced to Bethlehem by the government so Joseph could register for the census.

This is the kind of place, God, the creator of the universe, chooses to be born. In the middle of difficulty and hardship.

Psalm 34:18 CSB

18 The Lord is near the brokenhearted; he saves those crushed in spirit.

One of the most natural things for a child to do is to ask about when they were born or they were a baby. When Jesus heard these stories he heard about hardship.

For many of us hardship in our childhood becomes trauma where we spend years upon years looking for a relief. Some even play unconcious games of my trauma is worse than your trauma. Jesus if stuck in the game could say, my parents were poor, I was born by a woman who was abandoned by everyone but a man who was not the baby daddy. She took the place where the cattle were eating away and placed me in it because they were so poor they didn’t even have a cradle. Then the king wanted to murder me so we had to take off to Egypt where my parents had no one but the Jewish community.

Yet Jesus didn’t become hardened instead he called the humble blessed, the pure in heart blessed, the peacemakers blessed.

Matthew 5:3 CSB

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

Matthew 5:5 CSB

5 Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.

Matthew 5:9 CSB

9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

I wondered how when I heard a podcast between a musician talking with a former pastor. The pastor asked, if it is right to say he loves the musicians music. The musician was very nice and said yes and no the English language is limited and I appreciate the admiration but we don’t have anything to work through. It is said that the most important thing to have a life long marriage is communication. I disagree. The most important thing to any act of love is forgiveness. The willingness to go through something bad, forgive, work through it to something new.

Forgiveness is beautiful like that.

I’ve been finding myself filled with anger. That feeling when you just want to hurt someone, give up, or destroy. I realize that we all have different words for things so sometimes people will say they aren’t angry because they haven’t insulted someone, actually threw a punch, or refused to see someone. I think that is a possible end to a long feeling of anger. I would call it rage.

Forgiveness short circuits the anger process. Sometimes it allows the beautiful thing of working through a failure. It allows for something called reconciliation. A big word for a genuine, “we’re cool, after a long fight, an actual forgiveness, a new relationship, a new willingness to be together.”

2 Corinthians 5:18–19 CSB

18 Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. 19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

Jesus life is a life of love through forgiveness through new relationship. From the trauma of birth, the “way the world did him” you might say became another aspect of His forgiveness.

This week I found myself both grieving past trauma and getting new things that make me furious. But I know, in the weirdest way, the only way through, the only way to real change, the only way to make things better is forgiveness. But it is so easy to say I forgive you and then bring those feelings right back up in my mind the next time I see you. It would be great if like sending money is for what you really value, or baptism is for showing what you are really committed to if there was a physical way to remind myself that I forgive.

A lightbulb went off - we have that. We have an actual physical action that should remind us everytime of the need to forgive and our need to ask for forgiveness. To live always in a state of patience and forgiveness.

The Lord’s Supper.

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 CSB

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

What does this have to do with forgiveness? It is his death as the perfect sacrifice for sin, the one time sacrifice, that punishment we could not pay that He took for us that forgives of our sins. It also is the reason he can tell us to forgive others.

It is the action of forgiving our parents. Forgiving our bullies. Forgiving our brothers and sisters. Forgiving.

The second quote was

“The church of the future will be more about experience than teaching.”

It was a quote from a facebook feed for preachers. There are common things at this time of year of what trends are coming. The statement is that because of artificial intelligence there will be less of a need for a bunch of classes to tell people what they can easily learn by typing in a question into ChatGPT or say into their phones using one of the other AI apps.

It’s a trend people have been saying for years. In fact, its why many churches have concert like worship services, with big stages, great lighting and more. It’s all cool and I’m not critizing.

I was just thinking about that baby in a manger. Now that was an experience.

A young woman, most likely a teenager, who never had sex before, giving birth and then in the most unusual ways for her time not having any proper place to give birth. Not surrounded by her mom, sisters, a mid-wife.

I heard a story recently of a mom who gave birth in another country on New Years Eve. The country had big parties with fireworks, similar to us but bigger. Her doctor kept running out of the room to celebrate so she ended up giving birth to her baby by herself. The doctor came back surprised her son had come.

That story is both a little funny, a lot tragic, and a lot of anger there.

Mary, gave birth to a baby she was told would be the Son of God. She conceived in the weirdest way ever. She even got to be encouraged by her cousin Elizabeth. But here she was doing the hard work of having a child and God didn’t even bother to give her a big room to give birth.

For those who think that faith is so we can cope with life, point them to this moment in the story. Nothing about the birth of our savior is easy.

I think this will be the kind of experiences we followers of Jesus can expect in the years to come. The experiences of generosity, forgiveness, peace-making, and loving. Our prayers will be prayers of desiring to connect with God because He is the most forgiving, most generous, most peaceful and most loving. He will be the one that gives us the strength to love more than we are capable. To forgive when we don’t know how. To give because he keeps giving to us.

Even this little tiny church, in this little tiny place starts to resemble that nativity when you realize God is the Savior of the world, he just lets us tag along, and do a little part. That’s the kind of experiences we can expect.

But you know, that night of the birth wasn’t all tragic. Jesus likely slept soundly as most newborns do. Mary felt the hormonal rush that new moms do. Joseph likely felt the immense powerlessness that all new fathers do, especially step-dads. But then these shepherds showed up and started talking about angels.

Luke 2:15–20 CSB

15 When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 They hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in the manger. 17 After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had seen and heard, which were just as they had been told.

“Faith is more like falling in love than it is like finding the answer to a complicated question. … we are rarely changed by learning new information, but we are acquiring new loves.”