a song about saving

"i thought that we'd be further along by now.
i can't remember how we stumbled to this place...
i've seldom seen so much anger in a face..."

i was sitting in the second row of a small concert venue listening to my favorite band perform live. the hunger for truth that i found in their albums was nothing compared to the raw intensity in linford's fingers dancing across the keys. i had just quit my job and i was more hurt, more angry than i've ever been in my life. i hated the church. i hated God.

my faith was broken. my heart was bruised. my life was lost.

(...years later a friend and colleague would tell me that she didn't realize just how low my depression hit until she saw me rise out of it.)

the night of that concert was the night i began to rise.

"so tell me your troubles, let the pain rain down," karin sang.

i found myself wanting to tell her all the reasons for the aching in my soul.

"the trouble is i'm so exhausted. the plot, you see, i think i've lost it. i need the grace to find what can't be found."

i was lost in the song. lost in the moment. lost in the hope that someone, somewhere cared that i was hurting, even if it was a stranger singing on the stage a few feet in front of me. the defenses that i had so carefully constructed were falling brick by brick around me and quiet tears fell from my eyes as i bowed my head and prayed the chorus:

"i wanna do better.
i wanna try harder.
i wanna believe down to the letter.
Jesus and mary, come and carry us across this ocean into the arms of forgiveness."

i don't have the "salvation" moment that some christian faiths require. i couldn't tell you the moment i "accepted Jesus". it happened over time when i was a much younger version of myself. it wasn't a moment, it was more like a lifetime. however, i can tell you the moment that i chose to get over my anger and my hurt and my disappointment. the moment that i chose to forgive the church for its downfalls. the moment i chose to try again. i was sitting next to monica in the second row of the visualite listening to over the rhine perform "long lost brother".

of all of the songs karin has sung over the years, youtube had yet to find anyone who had captured her singing this song that has come to mean so much to me but tonight i was searching the web for bits and pieces of their upcoming album "the long surrender" and ran across a rare video of "long lost brother". the visual quality is poor and the sound lacks clarity, but the feeling...that raw intensity i felt that night at the visualite in charlotte...that feeling pierces through the muddiness with such power that i found myself holding my breath.

i will forever remember this as the song that brought me back to my faith not only in the church, but in God my Creator and Sustainer.

i wonder as i wander out under the sky...

as i walked pete around in the yard tonight, i couldn't help but marvel at the beauty of the stars. it is on wonderfully clear nights like tonight that i fall in love with living in the village. you just don't see stars like this in the city. i even pulled out my phone and checked google sky to point out some constellations. one star, in particular, shined brighter than the rest. google sky told me that the name of this star is sirius, and after some research i found out that sirius is actually the brightest star in the nighttime sky. i began to wonder...could this have been the star the magi followed to find Jesus?

so much of what we believe about christmas is based on the carols we began singing as children. we imagine mary riding a donkey, led by joseph, arriving in bethlehem just in time to give birth. we see a knock on the door of the inn and the keeper turning the young couple away to a stable nearby. Jesus, born among barn animals and laid to rest in a manger with shepherds and angels and three kings and their camels all watching as the silent baby king is lulled to sleep by his maiden mother.

according to the bible, though, there may or may not have been a donkey, that the young couple could have been in bethlehem for a couple weeks leading up to the birth, like the supposed donkey, no innkeepers are ever mentioned and knocking would not have been customary for that time anyway. the word "kataluma" which is commonly translated as "inn" could also mean a guest room, meaning that mary and joseph could simply have been visiting a family member's home and there wasn't room for them or the new baby. the only thing that we know for sure, is that they laid Jesus to rest in a manger, which makes sense as it is the perfect size for an infant.

and then there are the magi. they didn't find Jesus until he was already introduced into the Temple and was probably a toddler running around and hiding behind his parents' legs. we call them kings because it was prophesied in isaiah that the messiah would be worshiped by kings, but they were more likely zoroastrian priests of persia. we sing "we three kings" because there were three gifts, so we assume there were three magi, although the bible never mentions exactly how many there were. we sing "of orient are" because matthew's gospel tells us that the magi were from the east. just how far east, though, we cannot be sure.

we celebrate epihany on january 6th, twelve days after christmas, as the day god was revealed to us through the son. in the west, we celebrate this day as the day the magi (gentiles) visited our baby savior (and served him as king). some traditions even call this day "three kings day", but we aren't sure there were three and we don't even know that they were actually kings. what we do know, however, is that there were more than two wise men from "the east" who visited Jesus and brought him gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh, gifts befitting of a king: gold, a valuable symbol of kingship; frankincense, a perfume of priests; and myrrh, a symbol of death for its use as an embalming oil.

tonight as i was out underneath the stars i thought about those wise men, seeing a star rise at the birth of Jesus and following as it led them to the child king. i thought about the gifts they presented to Jesus and how a small child would have responded to such gifts. for some reason the two-year-old Jesus i imagine would not have cared about the gifts. he would have been more interested in watching his dad go to work on his latest carpentry project or playing with his cousin john.

but then again, kids can surprise you...

the day after thanksgiving, trevor, nicole, and zedica arrived for a short visit. i had just decorated the house for christmas and zedica seemed to like the nativities i had scattered around the house. we were playing with my favorite nativity (i bought it in prague as a memento of my first visit to the homeland) one evening when she decided to give the baby Jesus the rings she had been playing with earlier. apparently, we forgot about them because weeks later when i was cleaning up all of my christmas decorations and packing them away i found her two rings still right there with the manger.

i sent them with mom and dad who are visiting trevor this weekend to return them to zedica, although it doesn't sound like she missed them at all. mom gave them back to her, but she hadn't even realized they were gone. when grandma, who didn't know the whole story, asked zedica where the rings came from she simply replied, "from God."

what gift will you bring to Jesus this year? the gold of being King over your life? the death of bad habits? the favorite of our toys?

i think that, in the end, you'll find that the details of the christmas story aren't that important. the bottom line is that God came to earth through this child to bring creation closer to our Creator. so no matter what we put in that offering plate on Sunday morning, no matter what our new year's resolutions may be, no matter what we offer of our souls to Jesus, it all came "from God" anyway.