Steve's Letter: February 2012
There's an old story about some kids who, as a practical joke, slipped into a department store and changed all the price tags. The next day, some of the customers were overjoyed with the bargains while others were shocked by the grossly overpriced items.
Oscar Wilde once suggested that people know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
They do.
Me too.
Do you know why? Because everybody tells us the price and, in doing so, thinks they've defined value. The voices are everywhere and those voices are passionate. They come from the politicians, the preachers, the authors, the con artists and the "sellers of the trinkets," and they seem so sure. Then they remind us that we "only go around once," so we have to get it right the first time.
I'm old—as old as dirt—and over the years, I've listened to so many of those voices. It took me a long time to have an "attack of sanity" and to realize that those voices didn't know anymore than I knew. And I found out that most of them were wrong. Late at night, an old man knows that sometimes he, as Mark Twain put it, "paid too much for his whistle."
I'm not depressed about the voices I listened to though. In fact, just the opposite...
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Steve's Letter: Dear God of second chances, it's me...again.
January 1 is traditionally the time when we get to start all over again. We wipe the slate clean, as it were, and get a new one. Mark Twain said, "Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community."
Well, okay, but I'm cynical enough to believe that the cigars will be smoked in secret, the drinks consumed in private and the oaths uttered only under one's breath...until it's safe to assume that everybody has forgotten the resolutions one made.
New Year's resolutions are dangerous not because it's dangerous or wrong to have good intentions, to try to do better, or to try to remedy the failures and sins of the old year. Resolutions are, of course, dangerous not so much because we fail to keep them. Resolutions are dangerous because when we don't keep them, we pretend we have.
Peter was the master of resolutions and we can learn a lot from him...
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Steve's Letter: Everything else is small stuff!
As you know, Christmas isn't easy for me. I have this suspicion that it isn't easy for hardly anybody else either and I'm the only one who admits it.
At any rate, if I get the "Christmas spirit" it rarely ever comes from the traditions of Christmas. (I do like those okay though, and there is a nice and kind of homey feeling to them which I enjoy.) I don't get the Christmas spirit from being religious either. I'm more likely to feel the spirit at church at other times than Christmas. There is so much to do at Christmas that I can hardly even concentrate on the texts, liturgy, music and sermon because I'm thinking about Aunt Gertrude and the present I forgot to buy her. I like the beautiful Christmas carols but the department stores start playing them before we celebrate Thanksgiving so, by the time the season is over, I don't want to hear another Christmas carol...ever.
So I go to the Scriptures. Each year I read all the Bible texts that surround Christmas and pray, "Lord, make it real...one more time, make it real...
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Steve's Letter: I Rarely Lack Convictions and Opinions...!
I ran out of space and time last month, so let me continue. If you remember, I wrote about the second of three questions: Why can't we all get along? Why can't we all agree? Why can't we sing the same songs? All those questions have the addendum ...without losing our convictions. Those questions are actually a three-part sermon series. And I decided to first inflict that material on you.
I mentioned last month that we can't get along because we care. The principle is that the more we care, the more we're willing to draw a line in the sand. Or to mix metaphors, the more we care, the more we're willing to stand and fight on that particular hill. People who don't believe anything don't fight over anything. The more we're passionate about something, the more, as it were, guns and ammunition we have.
I wrote then that if you care enough to fight yet still have to live with Christians who disagree with you, you have to be secure and the only way to be secure is to go to Jesus who loves you without condition...
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Steve's Letter: Shut Up and Sing!
I'm aware that it's November and Thanksgiving. And I know that this letter each month should respect the season. So I should say something about Thanksgiving.
I'm not going to do that, but it doesn't mean I'm not thankful. Okay?
It just means that if I don't get this three-part thing on the hard side of the family (Why Can't We All Get Along? Why Can't We All Agree? and Can't We Sing The Same Songs?) out of my system, I'm going to explode.
Besides, next month is December. Even though I'm a Scrooge, I simply can't ignore Christmas. After years of experience, I've learned the hard way that ignoring Christmas is dangerous. And saying anything bad about Christmas (especially Santa Claus) is likely to set off a third world war. Not only that, I look like Santa Claus and Santa ought to have something to say about Christmas at Christmas.
I'm not that smart, but I'm not stupid either. So I decided that, if I'm going to break the rules, I should be careful about which ones I break. Thus, you can write your own Thanksgiving thoughts and I'll write about Christmas next month.
But in passing, let me say that I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We have so much for which to be thankful to the God from whom we receive "every good and perfect gift" (James 1:17).
Now I move the previous question (the third and final question in this series): Why can't we sing the same songs...without losing our convictions?
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