Above, Below, All Around By Wil Triggs

Long ago we drove, three friends and me, for hours across town, beyond the grapevine, into the valley, then up Sierra’s side to roads end.
 
We walked with dried foods and rolled up beds. For days we hiked, through cedar and pine, up to the place where nothing more could grow. Above the timberline we lay down on granite ground.
 
As the sun sank into night’s duvet, we looked up at the theater of the sky at the night performers: stars, planets, meteors, satellites, planes, but mostly stars leaving us entranced with awe.
 
They say there is too much man-made light for us to see this show in every-day life.
 
But then, there are other spaces to explore. Instead of looking above, we look below, and there it is again, awe springing out of the ground. Spring bulbs from the thawing mound of dirt. Spring and summer sprout all wonder—fritillarias, lavender, the blooming rose give way to autumn’s aster, mums all sing. Fount of bounty, plants burst forth. Tomatoes, corn, beans, leeks, root vegetables coming out like miracles of flavor out of the ground below.
 
Do grocery stores overflowing keep me from seeing the wonder that springs from the ground? Are the lights of modern agriculture and commerce too bright for me to see this other wonder of God?
 
Does my own focus only on the path ahead, my list of things to do today, keep me from seeing wonder? I want to check things off my list and move on. And then I must remember to add four other things I’ve just thought of to the other to-do's. Working my way through the list, this is my day. Where's my backpack when I need it?
 
But I don’t need to backpack for days or harvest a homegrown bounty to see the wonders of God.

Around me, people. Little worlds. Each one a universe of tragedy and comedy—epic, simple, different like stars or plants, collections of failure and success and seeing the good to which we all say yes, beautiful as the first snow blanketing like a wedding veil. Every person their own winter’s tale.
 
I only have to pause and look above the path or below or around me to see the awe of the shepherd, farmer, father, friend. Throughout the day and night again, in awe I live at home, at work, above, below, all around, alive and living in the song of being found. So sing the simple lullaby of awe not for the wonder of things made but the maker whose splendor will never fade.
 
All praise to You, my God, this night,
For all the blessings of the light.
Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
Beneath the shelter of Your wings.

Forgive me, Lord, for this I pray,
The wrong that I have done this day.
May peace with God and neighbor be,
Before I sleep restored to me.

Lord, may I be at rest in You
And sweetly sleep the whole night thro'.
Refresh my strength, for Your own sake,
So I may serve You when I wake.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav'nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Estate Sale Season By Lorraine Triggs

It was estate sale season, and my then four-year-old son dutifully trailed my friend and me in and out of houses. It was a season of vintage cookbooks and bakeware, and chairs. Oh, so many chairs, two for $5, four for $20 or free,they’re on the curb for the taking. It got to a point where my husband issued a no-more-chair mandate.

I may have overdone it with the estate sales and the four-year-old.

The first clue was when he wanted to know why we went to people's houses and just took things from them. I explained that sometimes when people die or elderly people need to move, their children have a sale to help get rid of their belongings and make money.

The second clue was the yellow Post-It notes on the revolving bookcase, the lamp, the area rug, the framed prints, the dining room table andthe chairs. On each note, my son had scrawled random numbers: 7, 4, 1, 0, 2.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Putting price tags on stuff I’m going to sell when you and Dad die.”

I noticed the $2 price tag on the dining room table. “Well, I bet you could get more than $2 for the table.” And then I explained that Dad and I had no intention of dying anytime soon, so there was no rush for the estate sale.

Four months ago, my oldest sister—by three and a half years—had no intention of dying either. That changed when her cancer that had been in remission returned as angiosarcoma, a rare type of cancer. A few days ago, she wrote on her Caring Bridge, “So we are faced with a decision, have a huge operation or have no continued medical intervention.”

She and her husband are still asking questions, still seeing surgeons—and my sister could be seeing Jesus sooner than expected. And this most amazing truth of seeing Jesus is the one sure thing for my sister and brother-in-law, and they are full of anticipation in this heart-wrenching time.

This might be an inherited trait from our mother. Several years ago, my mother had surgery for congestive heart failure. For some reason, maybe the proximity of Chicago to Jefferson City, Missouri, I was the designated daughter to be with our mom for her surgery.

All seemed well until her doctor came out and asked me, “Have you noticed if your mother has had suicidal thoughts?”

“What?” I didn’t see that question coming.

“Well, just as we were giving her the anesthetic, she said, ‘It will be all right if I die.’”

My reaction shows why you never send the youngest sibling to sit by a parent’s hospital bed. I laughed right out loud. “Oh, that. Has my mother ever talked about her faith with you?”

“Well, yes,” the doctor replied. I’m sure she didn’t see that question coming. “It means a lot to her.” Go, Mom.

“Well, far from despair, my mother is full of hope that should she die, she will see Jesus.”

For my sister, the anticipation of seeing Jesus was honed long before this shadow of death that now hovers over her. It’s her eternal perspective in life that has shaped her perspective of death. It’s a lot like the Apostle Paul’s perspective in Philippians 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” And like Paul, she is “hard pressed between the two.”

It’s not always easy to be hard pressed between the two. Life just takes over. Schedules fill up with commitments. The financial advisor wants to know how to invest your money. Vacation plans need to work around school schedules. College trips need to be planned. The house needs more estate sale chairs (or not).

Life has a funny way of skewing the eternal perspective, until “we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” (Hebrews 2:9, KJV)

We see Jesus. We have hope in life and in death.

The Food of the Kings and Commoners By Wil Triggs

I like to cook. Lorraine and I like to cook together. We unwind sometimes with me chopping onions, leeks, shallots, anything in the allium family, and Lorraine roasting a mélange of root vegetables—potatoes, beets, fennel, carrots, parsnips—tossed in olive oil, homegrown herbs and sea salt.

We like to read books about food and go to websites and blogs related to food—growing it, cooking it, eating it. “Are you a foody?” one of my small group members asked, after we had served them a meal. “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure,” I replied. He and his wife both said, “Yes, you’re a foody.”

I think I’m too cheap to be one of those. I’ve never purchased a restaurant meal that would cost the same as my first home mortgage payment. We try to figure out how many different meals can we get out of a roasted chicken. Usually, we prefer preparing our own special dinners at home rather than dining out. With our anniversary and birthdays coming up, it’s time to start searching for what we want to cook or eat.

Kings and rulers have an altered relationship with food. They have to think about things differently. There is a word that describes the difference. That word is poison.

If something we cook goes bad, it’s not on purpose. We don’t put poison in dinner. But heads of state with enemies can’t necessarily be so sure that their food won’t kill them.

What’s a king or despot to do?

Consider the Beefeaters at the Tower of London.

“We know that King Henry VIII executed two of his wives on Tower Green at the Tower,” says Mick King, who began working as a Yeoman Warder (Beefeater) at the Tower in May 2000. “Both these wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, had supporters, Henry was paranoid that he would be poisoned, so he had his Royal Bodyguard to taste his food first.”

Vladimir Putin’s enemy Yevgeny Prigozhin, the one who was just killed in a plane crash outside Moscow, first connected with Putin as his chef. They were not always enemies. Imagine the lives saved if Prigozhin had just dropped a little arsenic in the borscht or used the wrong kind of mushroom in the stroganoff.

Did Putin make Prigozhin, or someone else now, taste his food before he eats it? What kind of anxiety does a human leader have to live with?

Another despotic leader, Idi Amin, reportedly almost killed his chef and the whole cooking team one time because his son got indigestion. “If my son dies, I’m going to kill all of you,” Amin allegedly threatened.

There are some plus sides to the job. Mick the Beefeater pointed out that, “We have always lived inside the grounds with our families, people outside these great walls were jealous in the Middle Ages as they couldn’t afford good meat, they were eating vegetables and fish from the River Thames. We the Yeoman Warders were eating the scraps and leftovers from the Kings Table in the great halls of the White Tower, the good meat, the good beef.”

Guilt over wrongdoing and a desire to protect one’s right royal self from harm would make a lot of people lose their appetite. Guilt would surely eat away at the edges of royalty brought about by the death of others. And to eat the scraps at the table, like the Beefeaters or the dogs in the Gospel, was better than the alternative for most people.

We Commoners also have a Beefeater or actually someone who makes the Beefeater look like a Commoner. Jesus is the Beefeater who not only tastes our food but eats it all especially when it is not safe to eat. He looked deeply into the cup of wrath, shuddered, prayed, then drank it all, every sin, every dreg of humankind, dying, satisfying God’s judgment on us.

Jesus is so much more than we can imagine. He is king, beefeater, chef and food. Jesus is heaven’s bread and drink—Living Water, Bread of Life.

It was right after the woman at the well had left with her water jug, that Jesus’ disciples began to urge him to eat. John 4:32-34 records Jesus’ response, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”  So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”  Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”

No meal at the well, but soon the disciples and a small intimate gathering of 5,000 or so would enjoy fine dining of loaves and fishes. Yet, Jesus, points to himself, the bread unlike the bread we humans eat, and invites his disciples to “eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

The king eats the food we’ve earned and dies for commoners like us. He gives us life beyond death.

Draw near to the table. Eat more than the scraps that fall from the table, but the bread and wine broken for us. This food unites when the leeks of Egypt divide. Jesus food ushers us from earthly kingdoms to heaven itself.

New Sway in Town by Lorraine Triggs

It’s that time of year when we wear our or our children’s college swag. There’s a new swag in town—debate swag. In a New York Times article, “The Secrets of Debate Swag,” published the morning of the Republican presidential primary debates, Vanessa Friedman wrote: “There will be a viral moment or two; a riposte that becomes a meme. Campaign staff will be watching. And before you can say ‘in my prime’ or ‘too honest,’ it will end up on a T-shirt in a candidate’s store.”

Friedman pointed out that campaign managers will “jump on any one-liner that can easily translate into merch.”

Like campaign managers, we’re fond of our one-liners, too. A stroll through Hobby Lobby or a scroll through Etsy reveals all kinds of merch proclaiming, “Rejoice,” “Be still” or “Great is your faithfulness.” I am under no illusion that political one-liners ever began as profound truths, but these of a more spiritual nature do have origins in profound truths, like “great is your faithfulness” whose origins go back to Lamentations 3:22-23: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

But there’s more profound truth behind the profound truth of these two verses. It’s in Lamentations 3:1 where we meet the man who has seen great affliction, and we enter Jeremiah’s lament that God “has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.” (verses two-three)

Well, there goes the merch with that kind of attitude, Jeremiah.

As he continues with these painful words in verses seven and eight, “He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has made my chains heavy; though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer,” I am strangely comforted. I’m not alone in wondering why my cries for help go unanswered while other people’s cries are heard and answered.

David Powlison in his book Good and Angry makes it a point to say that this lamenting is not a lack of faith. “Grown-up, yet childlike faith is bluntly realistic . . . Faith is unafraid to credit God with controlling both the delightful and bitter things that happen to us—and faith continues to seek the help of the One who alone can help us.” In this painful passage, Powlison says Jeremiah finds “profound comfort.”

And guess what verses Powlison cites? Yep, Lamentations 3:22, 23, along with verse 21: “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

In his deep profound pain, Jeremiah had a deeper profound hope because of an even deeper profound truth: God’s steadfast love and mercies. They don’t end when we sit in darkness or pain; they don’t end when the trial does; they don’t end when either delightful or bitter events come our way. They don’t end because our promise-keeping God is faithful.

On mornings when I pour coffee into my own merch mug, I now will look at its one-liner of truth--“Be still and Know”—a bit differently, and take heart, or better yet, take refuge in unceasing steadfast love and mercy.

A Morning Walk with My Dog by Wil Triggs

When I walk my dog in the morning and want to stay in the confines of our subdivision, there are only so many ways we can go.
 
Sometimes we walk down the street where his doggy girlfriend lives. Usually that route is for the afternoon, but sometimes we head in that direction in the morning.
 
One day early in the summer, we did go down that street, and I couldn’t help but notice this scene playing out in one of the driveways.
 
A young man approached a truck in the driveway. He had his lunch bag and was about to leave for the day. He looked like a man, not a boy. Behind him an older man and older woman followed and stood watching him. They went up to him. There were hugs and words exchanged. I couldn’t hear them, but they lingered and talked. Had he been visiting and it was time to go away?

The young man drove off and the couple watched as he backed the truck out of the driveway and then down the street. They stood there for a bit, looking at the street where the vehicle their son drove had turned.
 
Was he visiting of was it something else? I thought perhaps it was his first day at a new job and his parents were wishing him well, maybe even praying for him. There was something tender in the moment.
 
But then, we walked on that street again, and there they were, hugging, talking, lingering, driving away, watching.  If I walked the dog at our usual time and turned down that street, there the three of them would be. I started to feel like I was kind of part of something I shouldn’t be, so I stopped going that way most days, figuring that I would give them their privacy. I’m sure they didn’t care, but I felt a little awkward walking by them.
 
This week, on the first day of public school, I unthinkingly went down their street. Sure enough, there were the three of them. Besides his lunch sack, the young man had a backpack and he was headed off to…I don’t know. School, I assume. They hugged and talked. The mom put her hands of both sides of his face. I looked away to give them space.
 
Of course, on this morning, I saw other kids either getting into cars or gathering at the bus stops in our subdivision. New clothes. Backpacks. Cellphones in hand. High school.
 
The beginning of another year of school also means the beginning of another year of Kindergarten Bible school for Lorraine and me. We are excited to meet the new children this year and begin teaching about truths of Jesus and the Bible. We are grateful that parents bring them, giving them over to us and the church for a few minutes each week to share with them the wonders of God and the joy of being a part of a church that cares enough to come alongside parents with their children.
 
This first Sunday, there will be scenes not unlike the scene I walked by of the adult son and his parents in the driveway. Except the children are five years old or so, and parents are dropping them off for a little over an hour. For some, this is a scary parting when we start. There will be some tears. Child hands holding the hands of mom or dad, letting go and meeting us and our teaching team. It’s going to be okay.
 
Our lesson this week is Palm Sunday. This week’s Bible story says:
People walked behind and ahead of Jesus, praising God with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen. “Hosanna!” they said. “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” The word hosanna means “save now.” The people welcomed Jesus as their promised King. They hoped He would save them from the Romans. Some religious leaders told Jesus to make His disciples be quiet. Jesus answered, “If they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out and praise Me!” Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the temple. People who were blind and people who were disabled came to Him. Jesus healed them. Other religious leaders saw Jesus’ miracles and heard the children saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” They were very angry and asked Jesus, “Do You hear what these children are saying?” “Yes,” Jesus told them. The writer of Psalms had said, “You have prepared praise from the mouths of children and nursing infants.”
 
We all were once children, then students, now adults. Out of the mouths of Kindergarteners and their Bible school teachers and their parents come words of praise. But not only them. Everybody wants to be rescued from one thing or another. So wave the palm. Throw your cloak into the street as he passes.

So often we long for Jesus to rescue us from our own Roman empires be they private or worldly. Jesus performed the miracles and then he went to the cross, the grave, the sky. Hallelujah. For now, we live in this world, somehow, mysteriously and miraculously citizens of the next. We walk out to the truck, we walk into the classroom, we say goodbye for the day, we drive off to work or school. Citizens of the heavenly kingdom, we live and work in this earthly one. God has something for us to do this day, glorify him, speak of the wondrous works to ears who have never heard.
 
Hosanna. Save now.

The Disaster You Fear by Lorraine Triggs

I have a theory that the natural disaster you fear the most is the one least likely to occur in your natural habitat. My late mother-in-law, Lula, and I proved my theory true. Her natural habitat was California, and she lived in Beaumont, CA, when we were first married—the site of my very first earthquake.

I woke up when the bed shifted. “The bed moved,” I poked my still sleeping spouse. “Wake up. Why did the bed just move?” Now awake, Wil pointed out the swaying chandelier, the askew pictures on the wall and the books sliding off the nightstand. “It’s an earthquake,” he calmly answered my question.

An earthquake? Where do we go for shelter? His mom lived in a prefab mobile home with no basement (emphasis added by this Michigan native). My husband got out of bed to check on his mom, and I followed—taking baby steps across the slightly moving floor while trying to hang onto something that wasn’t moving. The ground is not supposed to move under one’s feet.

According to my mother-in-law and her son this was a minor earthquake—nothing to fear. It bears repeating, however, that ground is not supposed to move under one’s feet.

On the other hand, a Midwest summer thunderstorm was enough to rattle my mother-in-law from 2,000 miles away. She called during one such storm. I put her on speaker phone to chat.

“What was that?” Lula asked at the same time I said, “Wow! That was close.” Lightning flashed outside, followed by a loud thunderclap that she heard over the phone.

“Oh, nothing, just a thunderstorm.”

Earthquake, thunderstorm, you say to-mae-to, I say to-mah-to.

As much as I don’t like natural disasters, at least I have an emergency preparedness plan and obnoxious alerts on every device in the house, warning me to take shelter immediately, or sooner than later.

There are disasters of another sort—the kind that come with no warning and shake me to the core. Disasters that blow in and blow out, leaving fear and uncertainty in their wake. Much like the disaster we’re going through with a dearly loved family member, and if I had it my way, should have been over long ago like minor earthquakes and summer thunderstorms. Instead, each phone call or message from him is another reminder that the disaster hasn’t passed.

And then I read King David’s preparedness plan in Psalm 57:1, “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.”

Tim Keller, in his book The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms explains David’s plan. He describes David as surrounded by danger as if by roaring beasts (Psalm 57:4) and crying out to God for help—and in the middle of this, Keller writes that David “suddenly simply praises God, ‘Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth.' Deeper than disaster, danger, and distress is the desire for God to be glorified. If that can be accomplished by saving us from our circumstances, then praise God! If it is better accomplished by our circumstances remaining unchanged while we continue to show our confidence in God before the watching world, praise God as well.”

I continue to shelter in place under the shadow of God’s wing, but I venture out, baby step at a time, to that watching world so it can see that I am holding on to the only sure and steadfast One, whose glory is over all the earth.

What Is Jesus Saying? By Wil Triggs

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. (Matthew 4:18-20)
 
It seems like Jesus often uses the imperative mood—speaking in commands, not suggestions. “Follow me” is one example, with the striking and immediate obedience of Simon and Andrew. There are plenty of other imperatives Jesus speaks to those around him.
 
Repent.
Beware.
Believe.
Rejoice.
Lay up treasures.
Ask, seek, knock.
Deny yourself.
Forgive.
Serve.
Love.
 
Jesus is really direct when we are not. He has the advantage of being the all-knowing, all-loving God. I’m not always comfortable with being so direct. That is probably a good thing. If I had been talking to the woman at the well, I would not have known about her personal history with husbands. Of course, I probably would not have bothered to speak to her at all.
 
So sometimes I am more subtle than Jesus. When nervous we, or I at least, tend to add words or overthink.
 
This brings to mind when a friend of mine asked to meet. It was urgent. I rearranged some things, and we met that day.
 
“What’s up?” I asked.
 
He explained his dilemma. A ministry project he had been working on was at an impasse. The project was to be finished in another country, but money was needed this very week, or it would mean a delay of months before the project would be complete.

Oh no. I had been praying with him about this project for over a year.
 
“Do you have any ideas of who might be able to help?” He asked me. I used a lot of words to say "I don't know." We parted and I said I’d give the problem some thought. I wracked my brain. I thought of foundations I knew, or friends with what seemed like obvious means to cover the cost. It wasn't as much as I thought it might be, but needed to be covered immediately. The turnaround was so fast.
 
This was complicated. I mentally went over and over the list, something started to happen. Then God brought just the right person to mind to supply this immediate need: me and Lorraine.
 
I know that’s not why he asked me, but we love this man and his family, the project, and we even love the overseas company he was working with. I started to get excited, happy. Lorraine and I talked about it and we both agreed. God’s gentle imperative was “give.” I went online and gave the gift.
 
Wow. Thank you, Jesus, for making this possible in the most obvious and direct way.
 
Sometimes Jesus doesn’t tell a person what to do, but he observes what they have already done.
 
The widow who gave the shekels. Surely, she generally went unnoticed by most everyone but Jesus. The sound of the rattle of the coin falling down the offering box and she went on her way. She probably relied on the help of others just to survive and still she managed to give. 
 
This was not a metaphor or a parable. She was a real woman. Would the financial advisers of her time have told her that this was a good move? Surely not. She lived behind the scenes. No one noticed except Jesus.
 
Jesus praised her.
 
“Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:43b-44)
 
In another moment, Jesus, crushed by the people all around him, singled out the touch of a lone person. Again, behind-the-scenes.
 
And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!” But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.” And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” (Luke 8:45-48)
 
There is a different kind of economy going on here from what is standard in the modern world. Fishermen leaving behind the livelihood of their nets. A widow giving everything she has to live on. A chronically sick person touching the cloak Jesus wore, believing that just that simple touch would be enough.
 
So, when I look at today, I have to wonder.
 
When I look at my financial accounts, I have to ask.
 
When I think about my calendar and my busy life, I pause.
 
When I consider the words I say, I take a breath.
 
What is Jesus saying? What can I say to him? What can I say to others about him?
 
What is Jesus saying about my nets and my money and my time, my work, my leisure and my day? Why are there so many “my”s in that question? How do I turn “my” into “his”?
 
What nets do I need to leave behind? How can I give more? How can I better touch his cloak?
 
Am I even listening to his voice today?

Jesus, help me hear your simple imperatives for this day.

Alien Love by Wil Triggs

One not-too-long-ago Fourth of July, I binge-watched the History Channel’s documentary series on The American Revolution. It felt right at the time, so this year, I flipped over to the channel only to find a marathon of shows about UFOs and aliens.
 
What happened to regular old history? Did revisionist history disown the documentary I had watched? How did 1776 get swapped out for the 76th annual UFO Festival in Roswell, New Mexico?
 
And now news of a bipartisan congressional investigation into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, promising no more government coverups of whatever.
 
I never watched the "X-Files," but I still remember their tagline, “The truth is out there.”
 
A few days more into July, I was at lunch with a couple friends and one of them asked if we thought UFOs could be for real. The discussion brought to mind years back, when I participated in the contemporary book group at the Wheaton Public Library, and we read Mary Dorria Russell’s The Sparrow. We did not usually get into overt theological discussions, but with this book many of the others said that if another species was discovered from another part of the universe that it would shake or destroy their faith in God. If there are aliens, that means that we are not the center of the created world.
 
But why does that matter so much that people said it would destroy their faith?
 
After all, the Bible has angels and fallen angels, sometimes appearing in the sky. Their existence does not threaten my place in the cosmos.
 
What would Congress and the media and modern science make of a sky suddenly filled with multitudes of the heavenly host singing words we understand: Glory to God in the highest and on earth . . .
 
It’s a far cry from greenish beings with oversized eyes who don’t speak our language. Those angels would never be mistaken for weather balloons or spy satellites. They would completely upend these modern out-of-this-world appearances that have wrought conferences and people devoting their lives to collect and study and develop theories about the universe.
 
Yes, there might be alien life out there, but the most alien of all has already come, and his name is Jesus.
 
What could be more alien in a created world than the Creator who made it to somehow become a part of it. How is that even possible? How does the Maker become the made?
 
Even more alien than that is the Creator submitting to his creation as they brutally murder him.
 
What does it say of his creation that killing him is what they would do?
 
Then, for his death to atone for their wrongdoing?
 
And that he should come back to life, bringing redemption to the fallen created beings.
 
I long for this alien being, for his love that is the opposite of what I know apart from him. I long for him to break through the atmosphere and crash land on barren desert lands. And then I realize that he already has. And the emptiness of my desolate soul can be filled with something altogether new that transforms me into his likeness, as alien as that might be.
 
It’s Christmas in July. Wait. It’s Christmas and Easter in July. It’s so otherworldly that if I didn’t know better, I would think it’s science fiction.
 
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.