To the people that received our family Christmas card in 2005, please let me apologize. I shouldn’t have used that verse from the book of Joel in the card. It was depressing. It was sad. I think it was about locusts. I couldn’t help myself though. I saw that card as a platform to tell you all about my faith and what God was doing. So I wrote a really long, really intimate letter about the book of Joel. Again, my bad.
We do this sometimes, don’t we? We take something light and frivilous and put a serious layer of God sauce on it. It’s kind of like that guy we all know that really answers the question, “Hey, how are you?” when you ask him. Have you met this guy? He seems to be in the elevator a lot, at least that’s where I find him. And when you say to him, “How’s your day going?” he really answers. “My day has been good. God’s really working on my arrogance in my own marriage which has been difficult. I mean my wife and I just aren’t experiencing the type of intimacy I think we want. And my boss is starting to really push on me hard but I think she is just projecting because her mom recently had surgery on her hammer toe. Have you ever had hammer toe? It’s an interesting medical condition that seems to strike older people sometimes. I love cats although to tell you the truth, Sir MittenPaws has been acting up lately. I think he and Patricia Pussycat had a fight over the water bowl or something. I’m a Christian. Have I ever told you my favorite verse from Hezekiah?” At this point in the conversation I am using one of my keys to undo the screws on the escape door in the roof of the elevator.
Jesus didn’t share this way. He was so casual and so contextually perfect with the way he shared faith. I would have been “faithing” people with my hands left and right, like that time Oprah gave out all those cars. “You’re getting faith and you’re getting faith and you’re getting faith!” But not him. When the crowd wants to stone the woman caught in adultery he draws in the dirt casually. When he meets the woman at the well he doesn’t say, “Would you like to be covered in the power of God?” He asks her for a drink. When he met the disciples he didn’t say, “Let’s go save the world, can I get an amen?” He says, “I’ll make you fishers of men.” I love it.
That’s what I am aiming for. To witness that way and keep Christmas cards light and airy. Last year’s was a top ten list and unlike that Joel year no one said to me, “I cried when I read your Christmas card” which I think is a good thing.
