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Christmas in March

3/20/2014

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I remember when it all began.

Mindy had set up the Christmas tree during the Thanksgiving weekend. Then a week or so later someone from our extended family mailed us the first wrapped Christmas present of 2008. It was for Reese. The gift went under the tree. Reese was not quite two and a half years old.

About two minutes after the present was laid at the foot of the tree, Reese asked, “Oooh. What’s that?”

“It’s a Christmas present,” I said.

“For who?”

“For you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Ooh.”

“Yes, ooh.”

“I want to open this,” she said.

“Of course you can open it…on Christmas morning. Maybe even on Christmas Eve night. In a little while. A few weeks.”

“I want to open this now.”

“No,” I said.

“You no say, ‘No,’ daddy,” she said.

“No,” I said.

And so it began. For the first time Reese was chomping at the bit to get to the “opening phase” of the holiday gift giving experience. The year before Reese had been a happy participant in the seasonal festivities. However, she had not yet become a power hungry director of the “whats” and “whens” of our family holiday traditions, especially those having to do with gifts.

But now she was more than ready to assume that role, even if it meant pushing aside those who currently held it, namely her parents.

Reese wanted to open the gift now. And that makes sense, even if – in this case, at least – it wasn’t going to happen. Gifts are meant to be opened, to be grasped, experienced, played with, and shared. Basketballs are meant to be bounced, clothes worn, and dolls hugged.

It would be flat out nuts if on Christmas morning we gave a wrapped present to Reese and said, “Oh no, don’t unwrap it. Just put it on the shelf as it is, look at it from time to time, and think, ‘Isn’t it nice someone who cares about me gave me a present.’” I mean, what would the family member who sent the present to Reese think of that use of his gift?

When I was a little older than Reese much of my life was caught up in playing with Star Wars figures and collecting football cards. I still feel odd when today as an adult I see an unopened box of football cards from the 1980s or a 30 year-old R2D2 figure still encased in the plastic tomb of its box.

What’s that about? I’m told it keeps the value up for “collectors”. Yuck and not for me. I guess I’m the type who would rather damage the long-term value of a hamburger by actually eating it, a toy by playing with it, and a gift by using it as intended by the giver.

Christians talk about spiritual gifts from time to time. There are lists of these in various places in the New Testament. Put simply, I’d say that spiritual gifts are capacities that God grants us to carry on the work and the presence of Jesus through our own lives.

These are gifts given to frail people like you and me so that we can do what Jesus did and say what Jesus said and so spread God’s love on earth even as it is in heaven.

And God doesn’t want the gifts he’s given to each of us to stay in their boxes. He wants us to open them now.

One of these gifts is the hospitality to make someone feel welcome and honored like she was the Lord himself. Another is the prophetic power to speak God’s challenging word, even to the rich and the powerful. Another is the discernment to notice where God is present and where spiritual danger may be lurking.

Another gift is the generosity to give the very best of who you are to someone without the need to get something in return. Another is the creativity to represent God’s beauty with words or music or wood or fabric or whatever. Another is the desire to work for someone else’s care and healing through your compassionate prayer and action.

The list goes on and on. There are lots of gifts. God is generous.

If you happen to be reading this and you are someone seeking to follow Jesus, then I know you have such gifts. I don’t necessarily know specifically what they are, but I know they are there. It is always exciting to see someone find out what they are.

What do you feel your spiritual gifts might be?

But it is even more exciting to see someone – me, you, anyone – start unwrapping those gifts and putting them to use. So do it. Don’t pretend circumstances will be better next week. Rip open the wrapping paper around your heart and open the box.

Thankfully, the time came for me to take the Star Wars figure out of the box and enjoy it. The time came for Reese to unwrap the mystery present under the tree and play with it.

And more awesome still, the time comes for each of us to step up, trust God, and say, “I want to follow Jesus, and so I trust God’s given me a gift to share with the world God loves. Here it is. I’m unwrapping it and starting to play with it. Let’s see what happens. And may it all be to God’s glory and my joy.”

Don’t wait until Christmas. Start opening the present now.



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Ear Wax & the Trinity

3/18/2014

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I can say with near certainty that before Reese was born I didn’t feel a hole in my life that a baby needed to fill. I think I would have been fine without a child. And, in certain way, sometimes having Reese feels like it's all about less down time and more stress for me as a person/parent.

(Now I doubt I’ll get an audible “Amen!” from anyone for saying that, but I know I’m getting more than a couple silent ones from person/parents who know what I mean.) :v)

That being said, I surprise no one (including myself) by saying that I am overjoyed that Reese is here and apparently sticking around for the long-term. For one thing, with Reese around things happen – moments occur – that wouldn’t otherwise. She spices life.

For instance, I remember a time when Reese was very, very young. 


Reese, Mindy, and I were sitting together on a couch watching a truly odd movie. It was a live action musical based upon the story of the puppet Pinnochio’s toymaker/father Geppetto. It starred Drew Carry (with hair!) and Julia Louis Dreyfuss (with an English accent!).

Toward the end of the movie Reese was fiddling around with her ear. Before I knew what was happening, with much fanfare she pulled out a glob of earwax. She called the glob her earring. Without giving me time to react, she wiped it on my hand and said to me in a tone of serious command, “No eat that.” She had nothing to worry about. I obeyed without question.

Instead, I was both repelled and curious. I asked Reese if she had tried to eat one of “her earrings” in the past. She indicated that she had.

The spice of life.

It goes without saying that such moments would never have occurred without the advent of Reese. It also goes without saying that if one day she gave me the single-finger-salute and left my life forever, or if she were snatched away by crime or tragedy, I would be ripped in two. It would feel as if all my bones had been crushed into powder. And I would be desperate to move all creation to set things right.

Perhaps this is a way God tricks me into feeling a little like God.

Christians have a habit of talking about God as a Trinity. In essence, if we are to envision the God of the Bible, we don’t imagine “The Lord of Heaven and Earth” as a lonely, solitary God. Instead we are told God is love. 



In other words, God is at the core a relationship, a fellowship of mutual honor, sacrifice, and care between the three the Bible names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the God that mysteriously existed before the fuse of the Big Bang was lit.

For me there are two implications of this Trinity thing that are essential.

For one thing, before we came into existence God did not suffer from loneliness, from a hole God needed human beings to fill. 



God was already a perfect fellowship of love. We were not created to fill a need. We were created out of an overflow of love. We were not created to do something for God. Our creation was an invitation to share in the community of love that is God. 

Nonetheless, once the world was created, God decided he would rather die than lose it and lose us. 


This calls to mind the story of Jesus as the embodiment of God’s love for us, for creation. In other words, even though we may have given God the single-finger-salute and gone our own way, it is awe-inspiring how much God wanted to welcome us back into his open arms, even if those arms were opened by nails on a Cross.

To sum up: we weren’t needed, but, goodness, we are very much wanted. That is good news that keeps us from thinking too much and too little of ourselves. 


And, it is news that makes a certain sense to me when as a parent I consider not only the wonders of God, but also the wonders of my daughter.


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I Got a Baby in There

3/6/2014

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When she was a lot younger, one particular Sunday Reese really messed with my mind.

After worship we were hanging around the church campus talking to some people. Reese was starting to show me how well she could toss a rock. I told Reese that we don’t throw rocks, but I’d be willing to get her a ball if she would like to toss one of those. She said, yes, so I got her a soft, rubbery golf ball looking thing about the size of a large softball.

Once in hand, Reese looked at the ball for a little bit. Then Reese decided she didn’t want to toss it. Instead she wanted to give birth to it.

She put the ball under the front of her dress and situated it in front of her belly. She patted the lump carefully with both her little hands.

I asked her what she had in there. Reese said, “I have baby in there.”

Then she walked around the fall pumpkin patch the congregation was hosting on campus and showed her belly to a couple of people. After that, right there among the pumpkins, gourds, and autumn finery, Reese proceeded to “give birth” to her baby. She popped the ball out from under her dress, held it carefully, and showered loving attention upon it.

Sadly, the large golf ball made an ugly, dimpled, newborn child.

Looking back, I think what was happening here is pretty obvious.

Reese was clearly (dramatically and very publicly – sigh) playing at being a mature, pregnant woman. It was cute. It was alarming. It had me wondering a little about what a Child Protective Services caseworker would think if one had been picking up a pumpkin that particular afternoon.

Even then, Reese was starting to make strong associations. She had seen pictures of her family: Mindy, me, and Reese. Reese understood those right off. She could, from early on in her life, look at such image, point, and say, “There I am!”

She had also seen pictures of Mindy and me with Mindy sporting a big belly full of Reese. At first, when looking at those pictures, Reese would always ask us where she was. We told her a few times that she was inside Mommy’s uterus. “Is that the belly?” “Yes.” Then she got the idea pretty quickly.

But Reese had also seen pictures of Mindy and I from our wedding day. To these she asked, “Me in Mommy’s belly?” and we told her, “No, not yet.”

Reese started to put all this together.

In addition to all the pictures, even then Reese was starting to sense a little of what it meant to be a girl, a woman, perhaps even a mother someday. Reese was connecting things, imagining possibilities, playing roles.

It seems to me that Reese was envisioning how the story of being a person, connects with her own life experience, her own story. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s still my theory. (But, then again, who can comprehend the toddler mind?)

Earlier during the same week in which I became grandfather to an oversized golf ball, I’d been reading the memoir of a Christian named John Dear.

As a younger man, Dear was called to interview an older Christian whose life and ministry Dear deeply cherished. In his memoir Dear said he asked the more mature man, Daniel Berrigan, a few superficial questions about his work for the interview. Then – suddenly at a loss for his next question – Dear blurted out, “So, what’s the point of all this?”

With both tenderness and earnestness the older man answered, “The point is to make our story fit into the story of Jesus, so our life makes sense in the light of the life of Jesus.” Dear said that this little sentence offered him a framework for everything he would try to do for the rest of his own life.

That little scene from the memoir was playing in my mind as I thought about how Reese was, in her own babyish way, playing with how her life fit into the story of being “a big girl” (as Reese would put it) or a mature woman (as I would put it).

I think there is a critical aspect of Christian spirituality bouncing around in here somewhere. As Christians we are in a serious, yet wonderful way engaged in this type of play-acting, this type of connection making all the time.

We read Scripture, and perhaps especially the gospels, to gain a sense of Jesus: how he acts, how he prays, how his life story reads. Then we make associations. We experiment by imagining how our lives can fit into his as we live them here and now. And then we try out the associations by doing what we believe Christ calls us to do in our present circumstances.

Sometimes the experiment ends up being a blessing. Other times it leads to a mess. Still other times a mixed “blessed mess” or a “messy blessing” is the outcome. But, we will never grow unless we dare to play, make connections between sacred stories (both Christ’s story and our own), and experiment with those connections in the living out of our daily lives.

For Reese, the story of womanhood and marriage and children was not just locked up in a picture of her mother. It had to do with her real life here and now.

For Reese and for the rest of us, the story of Jesus is not just locked up in an honored, ancient book. It has to do with our real lives here and now.

Let’s never forget how to play it out.



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    Author

    Robert here.



    This is something called a Reese Piece. Reese is a nickname for Karyssa, my daughter. 



    Each Reese Piece is a brief exploration of some way I sense God has spoken to me through her.

    God reaches us through the experiences and relationships of daily life. This seems obvious, but I find it’s something which is still easy for me to forget. 


    It is my prayer that “Reese Pieces” will encourage you to look for the ways the Lord is trying to reach you through the life you live each day and the people who populate it.

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