I'm Good with That By Lorraine Triggs

Just the other day, the Amazon delivery guy dropped off a stack of packages on my desk, and before I could sign anything, he replied, “You guys are all good.” He left before I had a chance to bring up total depravity.

Pamela Paul recently wrote a feature in The New York Times titled, “It’s All Good, and You’re Perfect.” What good Christian would take a pass at reading this? Not this one.

She wrote, “Recently I’ve been told that I’m perfect, something I’m perfectly aware I’ve never been nor ever will be. This generous assessment has come from strangers when I apologize for bumping into them and from the exceedingly cheerful salespeople at the store where my daughter shops for clothes. 'No, you’re perfect!' they’ll insist when I explain the need to rest my Gen X weariness on the fitting room floor where a modest 'No problem' would have sufficed.

“The urge toward pronounced perfection is annoyingly catchy. Almost against my will, I now respond to emails with a knee-jerk ‘Perfect!’ where I once would have said something more in line with the never mind sensibility of my generation. ‘Sounds good,’ for example, or ‘OK.’ “

I stand guilty as charged with those email replies.

We might have a “new affirmative language” as Paul describes, but that language isn’t doing much to help our stress, anxiousness or fears. Paul comments, “Most of us are willing to believe we are OK or that we are at least not a problem. It was easy to be no big deal. But who among us can live up to being all good, let alone perfect, all the time?”

When put this way, goodness and perfection sound like undesirable human attributes, but not so for the One who is good and perfect.

From the beginning, we discover that one of God’s favorite words is “good.” His creation was full of blessing and fruitfulness. It was perfect in design, especially those humans he made in his image. Everything was truly all good until it wasn’t.

God, however, remained good as lies and deception and accusations swirled around the garden. It was a good God who didn’t turn a cold shoulder to sin but walked in the garden calling for Adam and Eve. It was a good God who judged the sin that had broken his creation and a very good God who promised rescue.

It is a capricious god who loves his creatures one minute and turns his back on them the next. This is a god who is stand-offish and doesn’t want to clean up after his creatures’ mishaps and sins. This is not at all like our God who is “good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you” (Psalm 86:5), who holds back judgment, brings the outsider in and enters his creation full of grace and truth.

There are times, however, when God’s goodness and mercy make us uncomfortable, as it did with the prophet Jonah. His mission the second time around was the same as the first—call out against Nineveh—which Jonah did, because he knew God . . . was “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” (Jonah 4:2) That’s why he fled to Tarshish in the first place. He knew God would forgive those awful, horrible, sinful Ninevites when they repented.

Just as God forgives anyone (yes, that anyone) who cries, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” (Psalm 51:1)

We need to get comfortable with God’s goodness and mercy since they're going to follow us all the days of our lives, and then some.

And that's perfect with me.

My Friend Eeyore By Wil Triggs

“Don’t worry about me. Go and enjoy yourself. I’ll stay here and be miserable.”
 
He worked in the office with me, and we became friends. He was a numbers guy, and I have always been drawn to words. He also preferred bicycles to cars. For this descendant of the old grey donkey Eeyore, there was no situation he had ever faced for which he could not find elements of hopelessness. If the business was in the black, it was a temporary fluke.  And “in the red” meant that we were approaching the cliff over which we would soon fall like the great crash of 1929. When catastrophe was averted, time after time, it was only a short-term gain and then the doom returned.
 
If a friend came to meet him at the office, we would hear something critical about him before or after the meeting. Somehow, he still had a cadre of friends. Not only that—the mostsurprising thing was he had somehow gotten a woman to marry him. How did that work? What was his proposal like?
 
“I’ve been thinking, and it makes a certain sense to me for us to marry for financial well-being and mutual protection against the onslaught of a most horrifying future. Whaddya say? Oh yeah, here’s the ring.” I imagined his marriage proposal to have been something along those lines.
 
Whatever words he actually used, he had managed to pull it off and she also said yes. For any of us who have done this and succeeded, there is a sense in which it seems unbelievable. We know ourselves at our worst and so it comes as a surprise to hear the word “yes.” I mean, was there really a period or an explanation point after it? Not “yes, well, let me take a look at my calendar and my heart and we’ll get back to you.”
 
No, Eeyore’s wife had said yes, and they were devoted to one another. Eeyore claimed his wife was just like him, but there were plenty of other times when I saw a change after they had talked. She had helped convince him that the glass had at least some water in it and it was not completely empty or planted in him the thought that it maybe even might someday fill up. People influence others for good and bad.
 
Eeyore was hard on everything. He found fault with his church. And mine. The preaching, the pastors, the programs, the congregation, his own lack of involvement, the level of giving, how his church spent its money. And he didn’t hold back on his own assessment when he looked in the mirror. He didn’t usually think he could do things better than the people he criticized. In fact, he knew most things were hopeless for most all of us.
 
But for a follower of Jesus on this side of the resurrection, there’s no escaping hope. Even for Eeyore. There is one person Eeyore couldn’t find fault with: Jesus. If he had been one of Jesus’ disciples, I could hear him complaining about trying to figure out what the parables meant, and he certainly would have had an opinion when it came to the discussion of seating order at the heavenly throne/table. He would have held court on Easter Saturday, bewailing all that had gone wrong, but even he had to admit—no human could have conceived of the Incarnation to Ascension overturning everything. Jesus was leading us to something way better than the messed up world of today.
 
Our small office staff grew to love Eeyore because underneath all the negative stuff was a heart that Jesus loved, forgave and changed. My friend cared deeply for people, even if he didn’t always feel comfortable showing it. He worked hard to help people and when he couldn’t, he would try to find others who could. He did not want the limelight, but he deserved a little more than he got, because he was happy to work always behind-the-scenes and let the bosses take the credit. In those kind of moments we could see the caring hand of God at work.
 
Attention lost and unlovely people of the world: As a people, our glasses are not filled half water and half air.  We’ve tipped over our glass, the water puddled around it, just a swallow full of it left at that. It’s not just a matter of perspective. When the glass tipped over, it broke. We’ve really lost it.
 
If you want to see most things from a sour perspective, if you want an everything’s-wrong worldview of the universe, you might want to consider another faith—one whose founder isn’t in such a dogged pursuit of the people of the hot mess. But my friend Eeyore had no problem seeing a hot mess for what it was or confusing the filthy rags of our human achievements with the altogether new and wonderful works of Jesus Christ.
 
And as I read the Book of Isaiah in anticipation for Men’s Bible Study, my dear Christian Eeyore comes to mind. His gloominess often hid the expectation that we can and should do better, that we should raise our eyes to the heights, not lower them to the folly around us. I can hear his contempt for the things of this world in which many of us all too often land.
 
Such stupidity and ignorance!
    Their eyes are closed, and they cannot see.
    Their minds are shut, and they cannot think.
The person who made the idol never stops to reflect,
    “Why, it’s just a block of wood!
I burned half of it for heat
    and used it to bake my bread and roast my meat.
How can the rest of it be a god?
    Should I bow down to worship a piece of wood?”
The poor, deluded fool feeds on ashes.
    He trusts something that can’t help him at all.
Yet he cannot bring himself to ask,
    “Is this idol that I’m holding in my hand a lie?”
“Pay attention, O Jacob,
    for you are my servant, O Israel.
I, the Lord, made you,
    and I will not forget you.
I have swept away your sins like a cloud.
    I have scattered your offenses like the morning mist.
Oh, return to me,
    for I have paid the price to set you free.”
(Isaiah 44:19-22 NLT)

The Golden Calf Awards By Lorraine Triggs

On Sunday in Kindergarten Bible school, we gave out the 2025 Golden Calf Award. It was a close contest as the children and teachers voted on what they really, really, really would love to have. The entries ranged from all the candy you could eat for a year to your favorite sports team throwing you a birthday party to the pet of your choice and you didn’t have to clean up its business to one million dollars. The two finalists were the pet and the money. I was rooting for the pet.

But when the votes were counted, the clear winner of the 2025 Gold Calf Award? One million dollars. The kids went wild, shouting the chant, “Money, money, money!” 

Wil calmed them down with a missionary story about Martin Luther, which turned out to be a providential choice considering the winner of the Golden Calf Award. Luther had no tolerance for using money to gain standing with God. I am certain that Martin Luther was not the winner of the 1517 Golden Calf Award.

As we made the transition to the actual golden calf in Exodus 32, we explained to the kids that loving money or anything or anyone else more than God was just wrong, a sin. In making and worshiping an object, God’s people had just broken the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me,” and the reason why they broke it? They had grown impatient. Moses wasn't rushing down the mountain, so let's make other gods. Makes sense to me.

The whole story would be funny, if it weren't still true for us today, I can become a bit obsessed with personal nominees for my very own Golden Calf award. Some days my idols of choice are elevated to a finalist through my association with the right people in the right places, as I am careful to avoid the poor in spirit, the meek and those who mourn. Then there are days when the glitter of my stash of talents and treasures distract me from the true treasure and the true prize.

Whether we chalk up our idols to impatience or another excuse, loving anyone or anything more than God is dangerous business. Just ask the children of Israel who drank the gold dust from their now shattered calf.

Instead of drinking the gold dust, Jesus invites us to come and drink of living water, to feast on living bread and be satisfied. Whatever we love in life can't hold a candle to one we love beyond life.

Wrote Thomas à Kempis in The Imitation of Christ: “Whoever find Jesus finds a great treasure, yea, a good above all good; and he who loses Jesus loses much yea, more than the world. Poorest of all is the one who lives without Jesus, and richest of all is the one who is close to Jesus.” 

Once we grasp Jesus as our greatest treasure, our greatest good—our very life—then everything else is worthless because we have all that matters in life and death, forever.

A Prayer for the New Year By Wil Triggs

Heavenly Father,
Maker of all things,
The One who holds all things in his hands,
We bless you for the richness and depth of your mercy and love.
 
As we begin the year, 
let us start with thankful hearts, postures of humility,
openness to new and better things from you.
 
Thank you for our homes.
Help us to remember those who are without homes or feel far from home.
Thank you for our community.
Help us to open ourselves to those who feel as if they have no community.
Thank you for the freedom to openly worship you.
Help us to remember those who risk their lives to practice their faith.
 
Thank you for our city leaders.
Give them wisdom from on high to lead us in ways beyond ourselves.
Thank you for our courts and their officers.
Help them to faithfully seek mercy, justice and peace.
Thank you for our sheriffs and our police.
Guide them in the way of peace in the midst of trouble.
 
Thank you for the creative beauty of our park district and forest preserves. 
They help us to see your handiwork all around us.
Thank you for our school administrators, teachers and staff.
Bless them as they bless our children with the gift of learning.
Thank you for our neighbors.
May we bless them throughout the coming year with our presence and care.
 
Thank you for College Church
And the gift of giving ourselves
To this church and its people.
Help us to serve with all that we are,
With everything we have,
With our hopes, treasures, trials and dreams.
 
Guide and protect those who lead our congregation.
Empower them by your Spirit
To lead with your wisdom, not theirs,
To teach with your Word, not the word of man,
To give of themselves like Christ for his bride.
Help our following to be grumble-free.
 
Thank you that you make us messengers.
Bless our messages with your grace and love.
We ask you to make 2025 a year of blessing and growth for our people, community, nation and world. 
May many discover the life-changing wonder of Jesus.
Bring peace, we pray.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, may we bless you with everything that we are, with all that we have, in our weaknesses and our strengths, we pray. 

May you bless us and may we bless others in new and unexpected ways in the days ahead, we pray. 
 
Thank you for the blessing of prayer. May we pray and grow in prayer through good and bad and glorify you in word and deed.
 
Amen
This prayer was adapted from a prayer written for the Wheaton Leadership Prayer Breakfast.

Smelling the Clouds By Lorraine Triggs

It was one of the worse insults we could bestow on a friend: “She’s smelling the clouds.” Simply put, the friend had turned up her nose on the creative endeavor my sisters and I had planned for the neighborhood for something better—if that were even possible. Smelling the clouds was our euphemism for being a snob, and one we used without a hint of irony.

According to the esteemed Cambridge Dictionary, a snob not only judges people’s importance mainly by their social position but also “gives a very high value to any quality which that person believes makes him or her better than other people.”  It’s the second part of the definition that creates some dissonance, because as Christians, don’t we have a quality that makes us better than other people?  Say the quality of our righteousness?

This perceived righteousness of ours could have potential upsides. Instead of feeling inferior to a culture gone awry, we can feel superior that we’re right and those others who sit in deep darkness are wrong. We shine our lights brightly among ourselves, assured of our rightness. It also would make it easier to follow the Apostle James’ instruction in James 2:1-4 to not show partiality. We wouldn't be interested in showing the person with fine clothing and wealth the best seats in church. We would be too busy saving them for ourselves.

There is one major sticking point in all this. Righteousness isn’t a quality anyone inherently possesses. God doesn’t change us into better people, he changes us into new people. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) It has never been, nor will it ever be, our righteousness that saves us. “For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:17)

In his blog “Does the Pursuit of Godliness Lead to Self-Righteousness?” (posted on The Gospel Coalition site on May 7, 2024), Trevin Wax wrote: “Of course, the pursuit of godliness is a dangerous path; it’s easy to be ensnared in pride, to wander into pomposity and fall into self-righteousness. Those dangers are real.

”But rightly understood, pursuing godliness ought to remind us of the massive distance between us and God. The bigger God is in our vision, the smaller we feel. The more we look up to him, the less we could even think of looking down on our neighbors. The closer we get to God, the more we see how far is left to go.”

When my head is in the clouds and I'm pursuing God in my own way, I am forgetting the way of Christ, who came to pursue me when I wasn't interested and was not running to but away from God. Pursuit is only possible because of being pursued.

There are days I am so pre-occupied with smelling the clouds that I trip and fall flat on my face, which is a grace as I land exactly where I should be before God.

Jazzy the Lamb Gets to Bethlehem—Barely By Wil and Lorraine Triggs

This musing is adapted from a story we wrote for the 4:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service this year.
 
“While shepherds watch their flocks by night, I make my great escape.” Jazzy the lamb knew how to sing, but he didn’t tell anyone. He just sang to himself. He was there that night except for the part when he wasn’t.
 
Good Shep had just finished counting all the sheep when Jazzy managed to sneak away.
 
Sneaking, creeping, running away, free from the rest of that boring flock that just followed the staff or the dog and free from the watchful eyes of the shepherds. Jazzy slipped and stumbled over the ground. Then he tripped over himself on the rocky ground. When he regained his footing, he looked back and saw flashes of light. In fact, the dark cold place where his flock was resting seemed like it was glowing. Something was going on in the sky.
 
“Whatever. If I just keep walking, I’ll find better pastures sooner or later,” Jazzy rationalized to himself.
 
But the path ahead seemed to be getting darker and darker. And where he come from was looking more and more like day. It sounded crazy but—Ouch! Oh no.
 
Jazzy’s hoof was stuck. He couldn’t get it out from a rocky crag. And the thorns—they hurt.
 
His mind wandered a bit at first. Nowhere to go now, he thought. Whatever that light show was, well, he bet good old Good Shep was getting ready to head into town to see something new and probably exciting. But Jazzy knew Good Shep would do his counting to be sure he had all the sheep.
 
95, 96, 97, 98, 99—99—there should be one hundred. Jazzy could hear Shep saying it seriously to himself. No one else was so precise and careful about each sheep. The sheep talk, and word gets around. Jazzy heard stories. Some shepherds get sloppy when it comes to the flock. A missing sheep here or there—that’s just the cost of doing business. Not Good Shep. So what if the other shepherds didn’t care. They wanted to hightail it to Bethlehem to see whatever was coming next.
 
But Good Shep would have none of it. “Go on ahead,” he said to the other shepherds. And they did.
 
Jazzy started his bleating, baah-haaing cries. His hoof had started to throb and bleed. He raised the volume on his cries.
 
“I think I hear him…It’s Jazzy.” Good Shep was the only person who could tell. “I’d recognize that bleating anywhere.”
 
Jazzy was starting to panic. No matter which way he turned, he couldn’t get his hoof out from the rock. It was stuck good and tight. Everything Jazzy did made it worse. He had heard about animals less refined than he chewing their limb off to be free of a trap. That was so not Jazzy's style. But he couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if a wolf or a coyote passed by.
 
Then suddenly, the hands of a human freed him from the rocks and thorns and raised him up high. Jazzy shook a little and then saw who it was. Good Shep lifted him from the cold, hard, uncomfortable ground and gently put Jazzy over his shoulders. 
 
“You’re quite the mess, little guy,” he said.  “Let’s get you cleaned up, and we can catch up with the others on the way to Bethlehem.” 
 
So, he cleaned Jazzy’s wool and bandaged his hoof.
 
Good Shep told Jazzy that running off meant he missed the angels singing and telling them about a new king coming. The shepherds were some of the first to know. Good news for people everywhere.
 
Good Shep and Jazzy caught up to the others just as they entered the stable.
 
And there in the feeding trough for the donkeys and cows was a baby, a human baby. A manger. In at least one human language, it means eat.
 
Jazzy didn’t really get it. After all, he was just animal, but then Good Shep said that this baby was going to save people all around the world. He was going to save people just like Good Shep who left the shepherds and the flock to find Jazzy and bring him back home.
 
Jazzy never was so happy as when he realized Good Shep was setting him free from his mess and carried him on his shoulders. If that was what this baby was going to do for people, well, that was some good news that’s really out of this world, yet somehow in it.
 
Merry Christmas shepherds. Merry Christmas lambs. Merry Christmas sun. Merry Christmas moon and stars. Merry Christmas everything and everyone everywhere.
 
Merry because—as Good Shep later told the flock—the baby in the manger would one day be a shepherd like him and a lamb like Jazzy, only perfect. On his shoulders, even and especially when comes the cross, he bears it all, he carries all.  And he will tell the people to mangent—eat. And drink and be merry. Remember that I came to live, die, live that you might know, eat and drink and live in that glowing-in-the-dark kind of light where the angels say, “Do not be afraid. Be exceedingly glad.”
 
Now both shepherds and sheep lie down by still water and rest.

It Came Upon a Midnight: Fear By Lorraine Triggs

My childhood Christmas fear wasn’t ending up on the wrong side of Santa’s list; it was the Christmas tree lights—those big, old-fashioned lights that became hot to the touch in a matter of seconds. Even though my father, the electrician, carefully strung the lights on the tree and nary a frayed cord among them, I remained convinced that the hot lights would touch innocent pine needles, and the entire tree would become engulfed in flames. It never happened, but my fear remained until the tree came down.

That first Christmas was no stranger to fear or troubled hearts.

In a setting ripe with fear (after all, it was in the days of Herod, king of Judea, according to Luke 1:5), we meet righteous Zechariah and Elizabeth—old and childless. Elizabeth’s reproach was about to turn into rejoicing, but not before fear fell on Zechariah when Gabriel, the angel of the Lord, appeared with assurances to not be afraid, because of the good news of answered prayer and John’s birth.

Six months later, Garbriel appeared to Mary. According to Luke 1:29, Mary was greatly troubled at Gabriel’s greeting—not his appearance—“Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” (Luke 1:28-29), and their conversation continues as we celebrate the child that was born. We also meet righteous Joseph and unsuspecting shepherds who are startled by fear.

What’s curious about this first Christmas fear is the ready obedience that follows. Mary describes herself as a servant of the Lord, and submits to his word, Zechariah writes J-O-H-N on a tablet, Joseph takes Mary as his wife, and the shepherds hurry off to Bethlehem in the middle of the night.

But what to make of the wise men from the east? Astrologers, astronomers, learned. Matthew doesn’t record a troubled heart among them, but an expectation of a newborn king whose star they saw as it rose. In its online seriesTroubled Passages, Crossway Publishers has a post about the wise men in Matthew 2:1-12. Wrote Dan Doriani, “Magi, or ‘wise men . . .' were royal counselors. At best, they were learned and prudent. At worst, they were charlatans, sycophants, and brutes . . . . Whatever their character, the line between astrology and astronomy was thin, if only because stargazing was respectable. Scripture both prohibits and mocks astrology . . ., yet God reversed expectations and spoke to stargazers in language they understood, thereby calling Gentiles to Jesus.”

Actually, there was a troubled heart among them—Herod’s heart, a proud heart that worshiped only himself and his power, contrary to what he told the wise men. Those stargazers, however, never did return to Herod, instead “they departed to their own country by another way.” (Matt. 2:12)

I think the wise men not only went home another way but also went home as changed people because they met Jesus as T.S. Elliot wrote in his poet, “Journey of the Magi,”

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

We all are glad for another’s death. We are glad for great news of great joy that a Savior came to save his people from their sin, glad he came to those sitting in great darkness, and glad he came for troubled and fearful hearts that choose to trust and discover all their hopes and fears are met in Jesus now and forever.

Merry Christmas.

Pink Candle By Wil Triggs

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”  (Luke 2:10b-11)
 
“Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”  (Luke 2:15b)
 
“For a second year running, there is no Christmas cheer in Bethlehem, with tourists shunning the Palestinian city and many residents seeking a way out as the Gaza war grinds on,” a Reuters story reported December 1, 2024. “Bethlehem's Manger Square in front of the Church of the Nativity is largely deserted and souvenir shops are shuttered.”
 
Life can be tumultuous.

William Blake's paintngs include two sides of humanity—one of Newton planning and creating, leaning forward with a compass planning for higher things; the other is Nebuchadnezzar, matted hair on head and beard, leaning forward on all fours eating grass in the field like a wild animal. These images are the power and folly of human leadership without God in a fallen universe.

The head on the side of the building could have been Caesar or Nero or Caligula. Think Marx. Think Lenin, Stalin, Tito, Mao Zedong. Wall portraiture rendered itself with some features but years and decades smooth over the faces, trading them out for new ones. Pilate, Kim Il Sung, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic. Nebuchadnezzars all of them. We hate or we exalt leaders in various ways. Bashar al-Assad. Duvalier. Ceausescu. Ivan the Terrible. Brilliant and powerful one moment. Animals hungry for grass the next. And then Ozymandias.
 
In contrast to human leaders of earthly kingdoms, Jesus brings an other-worldly joy to us from the kingdom of heaven. Where the world celebrates the power of human might and humans running away from or drifting toward tyranny, Jesus calls us to sacrifice, to a way that puts the good of others first.
 
The Old Testament prophets foreshadow the altogether new.
 
Hosea lives the foreshadowing—with the prophet marrying a harlot, with children named Judgment and No Mercy and Not My People. The Lord said to Hosea, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel.” (Hosea 3:1)
 
The glass is dark, but the light is flickering, dawning into a new day that is not the way of man.
 
God’s ways, not ours. Against his better judgment, Jonah journeys from the stomach of the whale into the heart of Ninevah to call people to the one true God and then to sit under the tree... “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” (Jonah 4:2b)
 
To be like Jesus is to bleed and die and, by faith, live again.
 
Did all the shepherds live to hear the Sermon on the Mount? Did any of them eat the miraculous bread and fish? Did they see Jesus on the cross? Were any of them among the witnesses of the resurrected Christ? For Simeon and Anna, seeing him as a baby was enough. It was not the full picture—no miracles yet, no cross, no empty tomb or disciples staring up at the sky. But they were not bereft of joy in their waiting.
 
We are blessed to have the full revelation of the Bible—rejoice in that! But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that we can fully grasp or attain everything here until the darkened glass grows clear. And though it is clearer than it was, it is still dark.
 
Yet we must embrace joy. We can’t help it. We follow the Jesus joy-giver.  We can know this shepherd joy before us now no matter what we might face.
 
Missionary Amy Carmichael wrote, “Joy is not gush. Joy is not mere jolliness. Joy is perfect acquiescence—acceptance, rest—in God’s will, whatever comes. And that is so only for the soul who delights himself in God.”
 
For those who pray year after year for loved ones to turn in believing faith for the first time ever,
 
For those of us with loved ones estranged from God,
 
For those who wonder—did that person die lost or was there a cry out before the end, he comes.
 
For those facing or fighting disease that robs of strength and health,
 
For people who don’t know who they are and their families who don’t know what to do,
 
For those with broken marriages who wonder if healing and change will ever come,
 
For those grief-stricken with the loss of ones loved, and loved ones who can never be replaced, he comes.
 
If you find yourself wandering in a strange land you never dreamed would be your home,
 
If you find yourself in prison—literal and metaphorical—waiting, longing, dreaming of freedom, he comes.
 
Every dream and every longing, the lost coin, the precious pearl, the smallest of seeds sown in the land and in our hearts—know that it grows. The Good Shepherd, having left the 99, setting aside the robes and splendors, finds us and hoists us onto his shoulders from the ground where we are caught or hurt or both, and he starts the walk back to the flock.
 
The inns are all filled, but the good Lord Christ enters in to the forgotten, stinky manger places of the soul; he knows the longing, doubting, fearing, loving hearts. Even when he seems far away, he’s near, right beside us. We are carried unknowingly on his shoulders.
 
With laughter and with tears filling our eyes, we light the pink candle of the shepherds, the candle of joy.