My Favorite Christmas Gift, by Jay Kelly

What an amazing Christmas holiday we’ve had here at the Kelly house. We had cancelled our warm-weather travel plans because of financial concerns and decided to have a quiet Christmas celebration at home, just the four of us. Our Christmas has turned out to be quite eventful. There seemed to be a box or two on our front porch almost every afternoon (I’ve always loved receiving packages). We received a box of Korean pears from Jay Park and his fiancé, Minjung, who are currently studying and very close to the Kingdom. We found treasures from Connecticut thanks to Carol’s parents that included a gift of a goat to a needy third-world family in our honor. They also included the gift of shopping for Paige and Chandler and many other thoughtful surprises. I’ve always been amazed by Carol’s parents; they have become mine, too. Carol’s parents are better than Santa. Where is he on my birthday? With 10 children and 29 grandchildren, 4 great-grandchildren plus in-laws they never miss a beat. They express love and generosity to their family with a God-like faithfulness and determination. That’s one more reason why they belong to “The Greatest Generation.”
My mother showed up in person to deliver her Christmas treats, buy many more and bring our gifts for my family back to my parents’ retirement home in Melbourne Beach, Florida. My gift to Carol (we decided only one gift each, a commitment which she breached) was a new and improved engagement band/wedding ring set. On our 10th anniversary (we’re coming up on #19) I had given her the set my grandmother Hazel Mae had always worn as long as I can remember. After several more years of wear they dropped a diamond and pinched Carol’s finger and were subsequently punished by being put in a box for a long time. I had them fixed and cleaned and couldn’t wait to see Carol wear them again.
We haven’t gotten to my favorite Christmas package. It came from Texas, of all places. It was sent by an old friend and spiritual brother, John Calpena. It turns out that he is alive and faithful. We converted him when he was in charge of Seattle University’s ROTC recruitment program several years ago. September 11th happened. John was sent to Texas, then to Afghanistan and Iraq. We lost touch. My letters were returned. Our family prayed almost every night that John was safe physically and spiritually. Last week I opened the box to see that he’d sent me a collection of several Christmas gifts, cards and pictures and a long letter. He introduced me to J.D., his son, and included a series of growing-up pictures. His lasting loyalty, his understanding of family and his ability to make and keep a love commitment is why this was my favorite Christmas gift. These qualities are rare in our modern out-of-sight-out-of-mind culture. John stayed in step with the Spirit, in touch with his God and faithful to his spiritual family in the face of challenges that I will never truly appreciate. I’m thankful for John’s service to our country. I’m happy to know that as an Army Division Command Sergeant Major 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers look to our brother, John, for leadership, inspiration and example in a given day. God bless you, John. Thank you for blessing me this Christmas.

And To All a Good Night

A good friend of mine who is not a Christian recently remarked, “You know, there really is something about Christmas. People really do act differently. There’s a heightened sense of goodness that you can see and feel in people.” She said this admiringly, with a sense of wonder.

On this most enchanted night of the year, I wonder. Why is Christmas infused with magic? Why do we feel differently? Perhaps it is the confluence of Forgiveness—that Jesus was born to save us from our sins—and Innocence—we tend to focus on children, their hopes, their fantasies—and Unexpected (well sort of expected) Fortune—that a visit from Santa will bless our lives in the middle of the night without all the Ty Pennington dialogue. Yes, maybe the word is Blessed. (In Greek, the word for blessing translates roughly into "Lynne, Stephen, and Ariel".)

So break out the eggnog, put another log on the fire, and thank God for your blessings. I will haul some personal favorites tonight out of memory, bookcase and DVD stack: A Christmas Carol, with its tale of redemption, A Child’s Christmas in Wales—prose-poetry that goes down like hot chicken soup, and the film Love, Actually (minus a couple of rather, ahem, adult scenes they meant to be 'funny'), in which love dreams really do come true. I will be staring at and studying my beautiful family.

And tonight I will pledge like Mr. Scrooge to keep the spirit of Christmas all through the year, and not just for an ephemeral fortnight.

Peace.

The Power of Prayer or the Power of God?

(My sweetie with her sweetie)

Today we received an answer from God via the UW Medical Center: yes, we can do that surgery tomorrow (Dec 20) and not have to wait until next year. This really mattered to us for insurance reasons (hello, big deductible). The doctors had said to Lynne, over and over again throughout the fall, “Forget it.” Healing times, the tightness of their surgical schedules, and other factors all seemed to spell clearly the need for this surgery later, as in February. But Lynne and many of you prayed for a swifter date, and that’s exactly what happened this morning.

Amidst this immense celebrating (Lynne and I danced around the room and popped some cheap champagne), a theological question raised its ugly head—did God make this happen as a response to our prayer? Here’s what I mean: God heals so much and so many every single day, routinely, but no less miraculously. We take for granted his “daily healing,” whether it’s a child’s cut on a finger (get the Bactine!) or our bodies purging tumors in ways we’re unaware of. God is at work in our bodies daily. In addition, what if God saw Lynne’s cancer and predicament and had already decided to speed the surgery before we prayed? We don’t know. We won’t know, until we see Him in heaven. He might say, “I already set up the healing in the scheme of things,” or, “I decided to intervene in the surgical calendar because I felt bad for you guys,” or, “I decided to respond directly to your prayer.” Or something else I didn’t think of.

The point is this: I need to be grateful for the power of God, regardless of whether or not he exactly responded to my prayer. I’m not trying to devalue prayer, which the scriptures tell us are powerful and effective. In fact, we need to pray more, and more faithfully! I’m just trying to say that speculating on the relative power of my prayers is the wrong focus—I just need to stay focused on the power and care of God. It’s his power, not mine. It’s his will, not mine. He’s in control, not me and my prayers.

Mr. Evolution

I was amused to read the other morning in the Seattle Times the headline, “Why don’t pregnant women topple over?” Couldn’t resist reading something we’ve all always been burning to know. It turns out that two engineering feats—differences between men and women anatomically—make it possible. One lower lumbar vertebra that in men is square-shaped is wedge-shaped in women. In addition, a key hip joint is 14% larger in women. As the article notes, without those differences women’s vertebrae would be subject to disabling shearing forces. One scientist gleefully observed “Evolution has tinkered…!”

I’m always amazed by how often evolutionary biologists anthropomorphize Blind Chance or Evolution, as if these concepts were living entities. “Tinkering” is something personalities do, not random forces. It implies design and intent. Most evolutionists do not believe in Intelligent Design, but it seems that in practice, it’s hard for even them to totally rid human development of a personal factor: dudes, if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck…

Can we stop treating Mr. Evolution like it’s some kind of cosmic Boeing engineer? Wouldn’t it just be more logically consistent to say, “Some intelligent designer has tinkered…”? Or, “blind chance has lucked into women having these amazing design shifts. Gosh, what if the mutation had been disadvantageous?”

I guess then pregnant women would be falling all over themselves to have babies.

Lead Artfully

I can’t remember exactly what recent news story brings this to mind, but the thought popped into my head the other day that the American Art Culture (and I’m including in that visual arts, theater, movies, and music) has been getting a pass from the rest of us on Responsibility. I say this as a former college rock band singer and piano hacker. This really matters for us parents because nothing could be clearer than the natural gravity of arts and media and how they pull powerfully on our teens. It also really matters for the Seattle church because we want, especially through the talents and efforts of Darin Ford, to build an outreach to the Seattle arts community that saves lives and glorifies our artistic God.

What do I mean by pass? I mean that the advocates of today’s art scene long for maximum freedom of expression (amen), including the freedom to protest (amen), but tend to fall silent when people like me suggest that with such freedom and opportunity comes much responsibility (cough). Can I get an Andy Warhol amen to that?

Let me be clearer. For a youth culture, nothing speaks louder than arts and sports. Both are actually leading our teens. The old basketball saw Charles Barkley barked, “I’m not a role model; parents are role models,” but he was dead wrong. Entertainers and artists likewise swear that their craft is only about expression. They too are as wrong as a Mondrian with a picture frame. When you influence, you lead. Excellence in any area becomes a form of leadership, whether you asked for it or not.

So here’s the challenge: ALL YOU ARTISTS out there, you are not just “expressing” yourselves. You are not just exercising “voice”. In the hard, real, world, you ARE leading our teens. So lead responsibly, morally, tastefully, and positively. Otherwise, GET OUT OF THE ARTS! Do something else that doesn’t lead--like become an art critic. (You know teens never read that stuff.)

Does God Exist Debate

There is a very enlightening and entertaining debate between Doug Jacoby and Michael Shermer (a leading agnostic author) that is posted on youtube. It is a bit long, but worth the time, and I'd say it will strengthen your faith. The video has 10 parts which can be found at the following link:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=jacoby-shermer&hl=en&sitesearch=

A report on the debate can be found at this link:

http://www.sdcoc.com/Articles/2007/apologeticsreport.htm