On the Friday after Thanksgiving, sometimes called Black Friday because of the trauma of holiday greed, my car radio rudely switched songs in the middle of my easy listening music. An up-tempo Andy Williams launched into It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.  I was not feeling it. At the least they should have waited until December to start holiday music. But the message was received loudly and clearly, get in the Christmas shopping mood now, or all the good stuff will be gone or cost even more. What has happened to Christmas gift giving?  

It starts when we are young. What do you want for Christmas, boys and girls? Later it becomes, What did you get for Christmas? Selfishness is built in. The “present” becomes the point of Christmas time. There is a healthier guide to gift-giving for parents and grandparents. It goes like this, limit up to 4 gifts: something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read. If giving to another adult, you can substitute with something to eat, like fruit or nuts, or a restaurant card. Ask yourself, who am I trying to impress? 

When the Church began to celebrate the birth of Christ, some 300 years after the fact, the image of the Magi bearing tribute offerings to the newborn King of the Jews was emphasized. The gifts were for Jesus. Going forward a century, Christians used the day to worship and give gifts to the poorest people in the area; think of the Saint Nicolas story. In time Christmas Day came wrapped in all kinds of local traditions, blending secular religious practices and fundraising. Martin Luther is credited with the indoor, candle-lit evergreen tree. Christmas became fantasized and commercialized in the 1800’s. Today, getting in the Christmas spirit is demanded by advertising and social pressures. 

My model and mentor for being a pastor was Dr. James G. Harris, Senior Minister of University Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. Dr. Harris would repeat occasionally before the ushers received the Sunday morning offering, “Anyone can give without loving, but no one can love without giving.”  

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Love gives the best. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I took our four teenaged grandchildren into Osage Reservation country to visit Woolaroc, the museum and wildlife preserve of Frank Phillips, a founder of Phillips Petroleum. He was one of the good guys one hundred years ago. We encountered the rich history of the Osage nation, the cowboy, and oil. Even taking the back roads, it’s only an hour from Tulsa. The Killers of the Flower Moon movie was filmed just northwest of Tulsa in the actual locations of much of the true story, between Fairfax and Pawhuska. Along the way we saw many pump jacks still pulling oil out of the ground.

In the film, Robert De Niro portrays William Hale, “just call me King.”  This community benefactor consoles the tribal people with words of God as their family members are dying mysteriously, praying in fluent Osage at the funerals. Most villains see themselves as justified in their ways, even to the point of killing people, for they assume they are righting a perceived grievance.  In the story, covetous white people wanted the oil money of the Osage. De Niro’s character symbolizes all that the prophet Micah condemned: Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! … They defraud a man of his home, a fellowman of his inheritance.  (read Micah 2:1-13)

Micah was addressing God’s people living in Judea and Samaria. Those who cloak their evil ways in robes of righteous acts are truly wicked. Micah issues a call of judgment from on high for those who richly promise what the wicked want to hear. Disaster is at hand for God’s people who succumb to the seductions of greed and pride. 

What about today? Are we wrapping our desires, politics, and pride in righteous garb to manipulate others? Are we listening only to what we want to hear?  Are we secure enough to humble ourselves before the Lord in these matters? Micah proclaims a promise of a remnant of the faithful. A faithful people will see protection, justice, and salvation for the true King is coming to lead the way. 

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today.  The King is coming. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

In the summer of 1992 Dorothy and I attended the inaugural CBF General Assembly in Atlanta. It is always an amazing experience to gather with thousands of Baptists for two or three days of worship, workshops and conversations. It is like going to a giant family reunion, only without relatives. It was good to see so many of our friends in ministry from our seminary days and to hear the reports of the mission efforts at home and globally. At one point former President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter brought greetings to the assembly, for the Carter Center is in Atlanta. His famous smile lit up the convention center. It was announced that later President Carter would be signing copies of his newest book. Dorothy and I decided to purchase his book and get in line to meet him. 

The book is called, Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age. It tells the beginnings of how the peanut farmer got into local politics, which led to the governor’s mansion and then the White House.  The line we were in seemed to move easily and suddenly we were there. He looked up and smiled at us, we introduced ourselves and said a few words of gratitude, and were quickly ushered away. We wandered back to the exhibit halls and went into the large ballroom that had been converted into a Christian bookstore and gift shop. There were very few people in the bookstore. I went to the books, Dorothy to the gift area. At one point I looked up and realized Rosalynn Carter and another lady, probably secret service, were coming into the area.  I was still holding the newly-signed book, and I hesitantly approached her, asking if I might have her autograph also. She shook my hand and in her soft-spoken and gracious voice she said, of course. I quickly found Dorothy and showed her my treasure and took her to see where Mrs. Carter was looking over the books. 

With the passing of Rosalynn Carter this past weekend, I reflected on that memory and pulled out the book signed by both a president and his first lady. He was a Baptist Sunday School teacher, and she was the quiet helper behind the scenes. She advocated for mental health services and was ever faithful to the end. 

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today.  Live out your faith. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

Like everyone from my generation, I remember where I was sixty years ago next week. This year it comes the day before Thanksgiving. As a charter member of the Baby Boomers, I was sitting in the school auditorium with a hundred or so classmates in our history class. Televisions were placed throughout the auditorium for a class with a public educational broadcast. As the TV host was talking about the violent nature of mankind, the camera focused on a model of a caveman with a club. Then the narrator stopped mid-sentence. The camera did not move. After a long pause he announced that a bulletin had just reported that the President had been shot. Immediately one of our teachers turned the channel to hear the report. We sat in disbelief. Finally the class bell rang and I went to last period, Latin. We talked about what was unfolding and waited together. Later the principal’s voice announced that President John F. Kennedy had died in an assassination in Dallas. Class ended and we all went home to a very surreal weekend. We wept through the night.

Like the generation before me who knew where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor, or the generation after me of students watching with great expectancy the launch of the space shuttle Challenger carrying a school teacher into space, or this generation’s horror we call 9.11, we can close our eyes and still see the events unfold as if they were yesterday. This week I have been rummaging around in my memories of November 22, 1963. I have been reflecting on the unanswered questions of that day and the “what if’s” of shattered lives. Walter Cronkite, wiping his eyes with the telling of the news, mirrors our own grief in the retelling of these kind of events.

Now Thanksgiving Day is before us. The holiday season is already in full swing. For too many there is another empty chair at the table where once there was a loved one. We remember our own turning points of shattered dreams and anniversaries of pain that time really has not taken away. Dying is a part of living, but our stories do not stop with the tears. Living is hard on us, yet we are a people of hope and faith. We are loved with an everlasting love. No matter what has come, or what may come, God sees us through it!

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today.  Joy comes in the morning. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

America’s Princess charmed the world and alarmed her more famous father. She was so popular the press could not write enough stories. She was Teddy Roosevelt’s firstborn and 17 years old when he became president. “Princess Alice” led the largest diplomatic congressional delegation ever to southeast Asia in 1905. It was estimated more than a thousand people tried to get a glimpse of her on her wedding day in 1906. She married a much older congressman who became Speaker of the House a few years later. She dined with the kings and queens of Europe as if she was the head of the United States.  She was beautiful, scandalous, and bitter. She rose to the top of Washington D.C.’s high society, where she spent the rest of her life hosting dinner parties and wielding her power.  Alice Roosevelt Longworth famously said, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.” Gossip was her weapon of choice and she used it with fierceness. She delighted and decimated the most powerful until her death in 1980.

Gossip is still the weapon of choice for many. The old days of the newspaper Gossip Columnists have been replaced by the relentless quest on every form of media to find the dirt, the unfortunate phrase, and the hypocritical dealings of anyone, anywhere. Gossip is rooted in bitterness and anger. (I am treading lightly here, not wanting to over psychoanalyze.) Princess Alice lost her mother at 2-days-old. She was sent away to be raised by relatives. She returned “home” to a stepmother and the birth of other children. A brother was killed in WWI, her father died shortly after her brother. And the sadness of her life goes on and on. All of us have a bitter root of sin and pain lurking within us. Gossip is a way of rejoicing in others’ miseries. Gossip is a way to make other people pay for our own sins and disappointments. A bitter life, even with the trappings of success and influence, can lead to a habit of gossip, or other destructive addictions, to distract us from ourselves. There is a better way to live.

The bitter, or poisonous, root that is within us is the pain of unforgiven sin. The author of Hebrews 12:15 admonishes us to accept the grace of God’s merciful forgiveness; to confess our anger and pain to God for not fixing our life like we wanted it; and embrace the love of Jesus who has already paid for our sins with His death on the Cross. 

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Beware the bitter root. And let’s continue to experience the love and power of God together.