My daughter in law, Joy, gave me a lot of nice stuff (I don't deserve my family here who care for me). She is a wonderful Filipino mama to us and her employees (she runs one of our organic rice businesses). But alas a few years ago she got saved and like a lot of the Protestants here, they see Catholics as non christians who are in danger of not being saved...
I filed it in my bookcase. Maybe I'll read it. (luckily my early cataracts give me an excuse for not reading the fine print book).
God wanted the shepherds to know that the long-awaited baby had arrived so they could tell others about Jesus’ birth. We still celebrate His birth because His life provides rescue from the brokenness of the world to anyone who believes. We no longer have to wait to know peace and experience joy, which is good news worth announcing!
Italics mine. presto chango: say the magic words and you are saved.
Yes, instant change of heart. It does occur. But a lot of us wrestle with God and just try to do what we feel in our heart he wants us to do.
A lot of this cranky essay is also inspired by the popular Hallmark movies: oh, they are good escapism, but no one in them seems to be aware of the reason for the season is a baby born in poverty, an idea that inverts the idea that health wealth and self expression is what makes life worth living, and instead his birth (and life and death) reminds us of the idea that the meek may not inherit the earth, but that they will inherit heaven. And that family, helping each other (and the poorer ones in our midst) is how the locals celebrated the birth of this child.
Joey Velasco painted this modern version of the Nativity: Not in a stable but in the modern equivalent, a child born in a parking garage at a junk heap where scavangers live by going through garbage to find what can be recycled.
My life experience is not the same as my middle class Filipino family, or my middle class American relatives.
So I actually got a better meditation from the R rated romantic historical novel Outlander than I did from those books of meditation that my daughter in law tends to give me to read...
In the last book of the series which I am reading, I ran across a scene when Son in law Roger , who is a minister, is caught in a battle and ponders what he should do: Essentially a meditation of Isaiah Send me Lord.
And Roger, who has faced death in the past, ponders: how do I help those knowing they will die?
It was one thing to know Christ as God and Savior and all the other capital-letter things that went with that. It was another to realize with shocking clarity that, bar the nails, he knew exactly how Jesus of Nazareth had felt. Alone. Betrayed, terrified, wrenched away from those he loved, and wanting with every atom of one’s being to stay alive. Well, now you know what you’d say to a condemned man ..
And the answer: is just to be there with them.
no, don't look at me: I have never been in a battle, except the daily struggles of a medical doctor.
when someone was trying to die, I was usually too busy trying to save a life or render the person pain free than to pray with them... but my deeds are a prayer: as the morning offering says: I offer You my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day.
doctors have the privilege of being Christ's hands, and although I am now retired, I am haunted by memories, mainly of mistakes, or bad outcomes that I could do nothing to prevent... nevertheless I was privileged to do this work and that thought gives me comfort in times of despair when I feel I should have done more or should be doing more now.
The protagonist in the Outlander series is a nurse (later a physician) and echoes what we face.
Being a physician is hard work but knowing one is helping does give one a sense of purpose and peace.
this excerpt is where Claire does a difficult delivery of twins and revives the second twin who appeared to be dead:
I’d let him (her husband Jamie who came with her to the delivery) take the baby, at last. Felt his hands on mine as he took her, warm and sure, his face filled with light. He’d knelt carefully and given the baby to Susannah, placing his hand on the child in benediction....
... I’d passed clear through exhaustion and out the other side, as one does sometimes in moments of great effort, You know that your bodily energy has been used up, and yet there’s a supernatural sense of mental clarity and a strange capacity to keep moving, but at the same time, you see it all simultaneously, from outside yourself and from your deepest core—the usual intervening layers of flesh and thought have become transparent. “I’m fine,” I said, and I laughed. Let my forehead fall against his chest and breathed for a moment, feeling all my pieces come to rest, whole again, as the enchantment of the last hour faded into peace.
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