Hearing the Music

Christmas Greetings!

The coming of Christmas is always a great occasion to connect with family and friends. In Christ, you all at Christ Church are both for us! As I have done in the past, let me share a little of how your life touches ours through our family Christmas letter.  

Merry Christmas Friends and Family,

Hi everyone! My Mom (Lisa) has finally relented to let me, Zoe, write the Christmas letter this year. Or maybe she just got a little overwhelmed by life and saw me as the best route forward. I have been doing the She Reads Truth Advent devotion this season and have been reminded of a couple of encouraging things. This book has focused a lot on how advent is a season of longing and how that longing can be hard but it can also bring to mind the joys of the Lord and the pleasure that we have to wait for Him. I loved the way that Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it in this quote, “the advent season is a season of waiting, but our whole life is an advent season, that is, a season of waiting for the last advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth.” May this encourage you all, that while Jesus has already come, we have an even more amazing advent coming where we will never have to wait with longing hearts again. And while this season is busy and we have a lot going on, I pray that this might be a season where we can rest knowing that the Lord is yet to come again. 

Now for a little update on what we have been up to while in this season of longing this past year. Our family was able to enjoy a beautiful trip to Europe (London and Paris) in the spring and experience a different part of this world. My dad, Andrew, has continued to preach at Christ Church and was able to have a sabbatical for a couple of months over the summer. He was grateful for an opportunity to refuel, rest, and generally do some different things, including two weeks preaching and teaching in Peru. My mom, Lisa, does love to plan these trips, has remained busy caring for our family, and is still engaged with foster care at a number of different levels. They both most of all love to care for my niece, Eliza, and smother her with all their grandparent love. 

Josiah and Morgan have their hands full with little Eliza who is now two years old. Eliza never fails to make us giggle and has better conversational skills than some adults. Josiah and Morgan continue to wait on next steps with Morgan’s Thyroid cancer. That this cancer is still hanging around after two intensive surgeries and treatment is disappointing, but we all continue to trust the Lord that in this too His will will be accomplished. 

Malachi is working and enjoying being a part of the family, continuing to build healthy life skills. Isaiah, unfortunately, continues to do life on his own. 

Lydia and Noah were married in April and have since then settled into the routines of married life. Lydia is working as a massage therapist and esthetician at the Woodhouse Spa and as always has a love for baking and cooking. Noah works at an Optometrist office and has a love for games of all sorts. 

Sophia has a full time nannying job and enjoys the close proximity of her house to ours and never fails to pop in! She also enjoys hanging out with her boyfriend Utah. 

Ella is halfway through serving in the Army National Guard and has changed her military job, which looks to be taking her to California for training to be a Crypto Linguist. She has been busy between work and training but still finds time in it all to read and accumulate college credits. 

I, Zoe, was able to serve in Peru for two and half months with a missionary family from our church. It was a beautiful time, but also a learning experience. I was also able to serve at Ridge Haven for my third summer, this time as a counselor. And finally, I started my college journey off at Covenant College, where I am a Biblical and Theological studies major with a Spanish minor. 

Moses is the lone ranger left at home. He is doing a computer networking/cyber security program at our county’s tech center while finishing up his senior year of high school. In a addition to qualifying for a state finals in a computer networking competition (which none of us really understand!), Moses played another season of soccer and has a newfound love of working out. He was also able to serve most of the summer at Ridge Haven and learned how to make large quantities of breakfast foods. 

All in all it has been a year that will be hard to forget. We are grateful for the Lord’s provision and continue to wait on him for all things. It was fun to narrate this a little for you all who we love and cherish. I am sure you missed my mom's writing. Maybe next year I will relinquish the keyboard back to her … but maybe not …

Merry Christmas!

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

Beware of Me When I Am Right

As we continue to journey with Jonah this week, I am reminded of Jack Miller's learned lesson, "Beware of me when I am right." Miller knew his soul well enough, had discovered his own (sinful) propensity to such a degree, that when he found himself insisting on his way, his correctness, or his rights -- he knew to be on guard. Perhaps there are some readers for whom this is not a challenge, but many, like Miller, recognize this warning signal that we are headed in a bad direction. As we have seen, a part of Jonah's struggle was the surety he had that Nineveh should be destroyed. He was locked into that way of seeing, and though YHWH had a larger, grander plan, Jonah couldn't see it. "Beware of me when I am right!"

The opposite of insisting on our rightness would be to acknowledge our limits, namely, that we are not omniscient (all knowing). This acknowledgement also comes with an invitation to freely admit that we could be, or even are, wrong. Adele Calhoun puts it this way in her book Invitations from God:

Jesus' invitation to take the log out of our own eye opens a door for transformation and healing. Owning our own faults, blind spots and failures in the presence of a God who already knows us can be a freeing thing. God doesn't love us more when we are right than when we are wrong. God's love for us isn't dependent on right answers or perfect doctrine or never failing at anything. The good news is that I don't need to be afraid of being wrong. Jesus's death on the cross  undoes the lies that tell me I am lovable only when I am right.

Hallelujah! This is indeed good news. It is a heavy burden to always have to be right, to have to defend, demonstrate and display one's superiority, or simply one's competence. Jonah was invited to see the world through God's eyes rather than his own. Jesus says take the log out of your eye, come to me and I will give you rest.  

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Body Life

This past Wednesday we held our annual congregational meeting. We read from 1 Corinthians 12:12-31, a passage that talks about the church of Christ as his body. As such, we assessed together the health of our body as we looked back over the previous year. A year that definitely had its challenges still coming out of COVID, staff departures, etc... As well as noting the opportunities we have in the coming year, continued growth of our membership (spiritually and otherwise), the maturing of Campus Outreach and the full moving of their leadership to GR, and the hope that Gracehill would particularize and CC would begin work on a new daughter plant. Like any living organism, threats and opportunities abound. What will be key is staying connected to our Life-Source and Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, and continuing to cherish and uphold each member of the body. 

I recently came across an article by a woman named Kate Bowler, who at a relatively young age had been diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. She has a number of good things to say about our mortality and how grappling with it paradoxically promotes a deeper vibrancy. But she also has the following to say about the power of community coming together to embrace our struggles: There is a tremendous opportunity here, now, for Christians to develop language and foster community around empathy, courage, and hope in the midst of this fear of our own vulnerability. Our neighbors are expressing an aching desire to feel less alone, needing language for the pain they’ve experienced, searching for meaning and someone to tell them the truth. They are hungry for honesty in the age of shellacked social media influencers. They are desperate for a thicker kind of hope that can withstand their circumstances and embolden them to preach the truth of our resurrected Lord whose future kingdom will have no tears and no pain and no Instagram at all. What a gift it is to belong to the body of Christ. And in the spirit of Christmas, what a gift to share!

This week we will turn again to Jonah. Having already observed that we are objects of God's pursuit in the midst of a weary and violent world, this week we will examine our greatest obstacles to a flourishing relationship with our Pursuer. As we consider this, we will keep in mind how Jesus is the greater Jonah.