Can Jesus Be Born in a Place Like This?

Christmas Day of 1981 found me as the chaplain on call at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center.  Actually, I had volunteered to work that day.  I was only single guy in the chaplain’s department and I wanted my coworkers to be with their wives and children.  I volunteered for another reason.  This was the first Christmas after dad died and I thought it was better to keep busy and to focus my energies on others.  Christmas Day in the hospital is tough, because all but the sickest patients have gone home.  Those who remain face very serious illness.  As I walked the halls that day, seeing very sick patients around me and feeling terrible pain inside me, I asked myself, Can Jesus be born in a place like this? When I got to the end of that very busy day and looked back at the people and problems I’d seen, I realized that Jesus, in fact, had come into the messy painful places of our hearts. 

He came—to the parents and grandparents of a tragically stillborn child, a family that knew that because of Jesus, they had hope of one day holding their child in heaven. 

He came—to a woman who wanted to go home, but knew that her circumstances were taking her, instead, to a nursing home, a woman who, amid all the unwanted changes in her life, clung to the truth that would not change, the Savior who is forever faithful, the love from which nothing could ever separate her. 

He came—to a man who invited me to share the Christmas that his family had brought to him at the hospital because he couldn’t go home, and we knew he never would. It was a happy day; it was a good day because he knew that every day is a gift from God, every day a gift to share with those you love. 

He came to my family as we faced our first Christmas without my father.

Who would be born in places like that?  The one who was born in a stable.  The Savior of the world.  The Son of God.  Jesus. 

He will be born in you today, if you will only believe that He is born in stables, in far less than perfect places, in sinful broken people like you and me. 

Do you believe that?

Then ask Him, welcome Him, invite Him, and Jesus will be born in you, just as you are. 

Where Are Your Blessings?

This story is taken from my new book, The Stories of My Life, available at St. Andrews Baptist Church in Columbia, SC and "soon," I am promised, at Amazon.com.  I hope this story adds to the meaning of your Thanksgiving celebration.  

Where are Your Blessings?

(1 Peter 4:10-11) Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

           When I hear the word “Thanksgiving,” it opens a family album of memories.  In my growing up home, Thanksgiving Day was a holiday, almost a holy day, filled with many routines and rituals.  Amid those memories, I learned the true meaning of thanksgiving. 

Most of the Thanksgiving morning was spent in the front yard raking some of the ocean of leaves that fell from the oak tree that towers over my home place.  We raked those leaves partly to clean up the yard and partly to keep us out of the house so that more important and more delicious work could be done without interruption or unsolicited taste-testing. 

Before we were sent to the yard, however, there were several things that had to be done to prepare the way for the Thanksgiving meal.  Our home didn’t have a dining room as such, so on Thanksgiving Day we would pick up the table from the kitchen and carry it into the den, making it our banquet hall for the day.  Only on Thanksgiving, both leaves were added to the table to make room for lots of people and lots of food.  The table clothes would be put in place. 

And then, someone would be sent to the corner of the room to a lawyer’s bookcase with glass doors that my dad had found and refinished and given to mom as a kind of china cabinet.  On those shelves were the good dishes, the fine china, a set that my parents had received from friends to celebrate their 25^th wedding anniversary.  Thanksgiving Day was one of the very few days that bookcase was opened or even touched.  It was, in my house, a bit like the Ark of the Covenant.  Those who touched it without a high and holy calling might just end up dead.  There was something very special, something almost sacramental about bringing out those good plates for Thanksgiving dinner.  When everything was ready, the yard crew, myself included, would be called in, cleaned up, and invited to the table. 

When everyone was in place, Dad would say a special prayer.  His mealtime prayers were always good, but everyday meals often got everyday prayers that sounded a lot alike.  But this prayer was anything but routine.  This was a time to think and to thank.  I always listened to those prayers as though they were a State of the Family address. 

I remember my brother Barry’s strange and sad food choices.  With a feast before him, he would make a Thanksgiving meal of turnip greens (no vinegar), white rice (no gravy), and pickles (no food allowed to touch the others).  How he ended up in the food industry is a mystery to me!

And then there was mom’s dressing.  To paraphrase the old spiritual that says “take the whole world, just give me Jesus:” take the whole meal, just give me dressing. 

We ate.  We talked.  We laughed.  We teased.  We shared a great time over the good dishes on Thanksgiving Day.  But they weren’t with us for long.  As soon as the meal was over, we cleaned them carefully, washed and dried them by hand, stacked them neatly, and closed them up in the bookcase china cabinet.  There they stayed, untouched, unused, almost forgotten until the next Thanksgiving. 

Flip a few pages in that album of memories to another Thanksgiving Day at my home place.  In many ways it was the same as the others—the moving of the table, the adding of the table leaves, the dressing, the good dishes.  But this Thanksgiving was different too.  Someone was missing.  Dad wasn’t there.  When we sat down for the meal that day, we joined hands and waited in silence as though he would deliver the Thanksgiving blessing from heaven.  Barry, my brother, finally jumped in and blessed the food.  For once, the family preacher couldn’t find a word to say. 

After the meal and the cleanup and some family pictures, and sort of watching the football game on television, I left the rest of my family and went downstairs into the basement.  Halfway down the stairs, I sat down and looked around at what had been my father’s workshop. 

As a child, I’d seen him at work in that place and believed that he could do just about anything.  After a few years of adolescent blindness, I’d come to realize that I was just about right.  He made our first basketball goal in that workshop.  He made beautiful wooden cornices to go atop the windows in our den.  He often took an electric motor apart, replaced and refurbished parts and put it back together as good as new.  (I can still judge the health of an electric motor by hearing it run.)  He could take my wildest idea for a school project and bring it to life. 

Now, for the first time ever, his workshop was silent.  His tools were idle.  I could hardly stand it. Almost by reflex, I moved to the bottom of the stairs, across to the workbench and began piddling (as he called it) with one of the unfinished projects that sat there as though they were observing a time of mourning.  I picked up some of his tools.  I knew where most of them were.  I can’t say that I was accomplishing much of anything.  Still, it felt good.  It felt right.  Tools are meant to be used.  Tools are meant to work.  I liked hearing a little noise in the workshop again. 

As I worked a little in my Father’s workshop that Thanksgiving Day, something began to dawn in my heart.  There in the basement of the house where I grew up, surrounded by tools and parts and unfinished projects and memories, God taught me a lesson that forever changed my understanding of what living a thankful life is all about. 

God began to ask me, Where are your blessings?  Are they in your china cabinet or in my workshop?  That day I began to see that there are two very different ways of looking at life—two very different ways of understanding life’s blessings—two very different ways of living a thankful life. 

One is the way of the china cabinet.  In this way of living you see God’s blessings as precious gifts to be protected and preserved.  Like my parents’ good dishes, you bring your blessings out into the open on special days to see them, to name them, to count them, to give thanks for them.  But then you clean them up and put them back in that safe place unused, untouched, almost forgotten.

This way of living doesn’t work.  It leaves you as spiritually hungry as a thanksgiving dinner without mom’s dressing.  Something inside us knows that counting our blessings and then somehow safely storing them away is as wrong as counting your money in front of a person in need but not using any of it to help them.  I began to see that, for the Christian, thanksgiving doesn’t happen in a china cabinet. 

The more faithful way is the way of the workshop.  When you live a thankful life in a workshop kind of way, you see that God’s blessings are not so much treasures to be kept as they are tools to be used to love others and glorify Him.  Learning this lesson, 1 Peter 4:10 became my most faithful scriptural guide for living a truly thankful Christian life:

(1 Peter 4:10) Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.

The truly Christian way to give thanks and to live a thankful life is not the china cabinet way, but the workshop way.  And once you know that, once you decide to live that, you never see God’s blessings in the same way. The workshop way to thank God that I can read is to teach a child to read for themselves or read to an older person who can no longer see the words.  The workshop way to thank God for my health is to respect my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit and use my strength to lift up those who are weak.  The workshop way to give thanks for this nation is to exalt it through righteous living and to use our freedoms not to indulge ourselves but to glorify God.  The workshop way to give thanks for my family is to open that circle enough to share with someone who doesn’t have a family.  The workshop way to give thanks for our church is to roll up our sleeves and work hard to keep it strong and see it grow. The workshop way to give thanks for my salvation is to tell the story of what Christ has done for me and to do all that I can to help someone else know Jesus.  The workshop way multiplies the blessings in your life because you not only have the gift; you have the smile of the Giver and the joy of changing the world. 

Where are your blessings? Are they counted, cherished, but safely, even selfishly stored away? Or are they tools in God’s workshop, serving others, and bringing glory to His name?  Lives will be changed, beginning with yours, when you get your blessings out of the china cabinet and into God’s workshop where they belong.  

That Tree's Not on Our Lot

This is one of the 225 stories from my soon-to-be-released book, The Stories of My Life.  I hope you enjoy it as you decide which trees are actually on the lot of your life!   RDV

That Tree’s Not on Our Lot

Linda and I bought a lot in a new subdivision as a step toward building our first home.  One of the first choices we faced was which trees we wanted to keep and which ones needed to be cut down.  So, covered in insect repellent and armed with orange plastic tape with which to mark the survivors, we trudged through the weeds and briers of our new lot, choosing our trees.  I came to one particular tree and couldn't decide.  At first, I thought that I should cut it down to give some other trees around more room and light to grow.  Then I thought that I should keep it to keep the woods around the edge of the lot fairly thick.  I couldn’t decide so I sought a second opinion.  I called Linda over to where I was and asked her what she thought we should do.  She looked up at the tree in a moment of deep thought.  She looked at everything around it, not wanting to make a ruling until she had the bigger picture clearly in her mind.  Then, she offered me her opinion.  She said, "Dee, I don't think you need to worry about that tree.” 

“Not worry about it?  We have to make a decision about every tree on our lot!” I shot back. 

“You don’t have to make a decision about this tree because it’s not on our lot.” 

She was right.  In the process of tree-shopping I had wandered beyond our property line and didn't even know it.  Until I saw the line between what was mine and what was not, I was worried about the wrong tree. 

Learning where the line is drawn can help you make better decisions in relationships too.  One of the most painful experiences we face is rejection.  Rejection is never easy, but we can walk away from rejection with a greater measure of peace if we will learn where the line of responsibility is drawn between us as we try to share our lives and faith with others, and those who may reject us. 

As Jesus prepared his disciples to go into the world to serve Him, He gave them and us this word of guidance,

(Matthew 10:12-13) As you enter the home, give it your greeting.  If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you.

Let me paraphrase those verses to make the meaning of these customs clearer to us. 

When you come into someone’s life, offer your love and blessing to them.  If they are receptive to that gift of yourself, then let that blessing rest on that life and make it better.  But, if that person rejects you, let your peace return to you.  Don’t let their rejection take away your happiness. 

In the words of Jesus, the only decision which others make about you is whether they will be "deserving," receptive toward you.  They decide whether they will receive the love you have to offer.  You have no power over their decision.  It is on their side of the line.  But what many of us fail to see is that there is another decision, one which is crucial to our finding release from rejection, which is on our side of the line. 

You decide to let your peace return to you.  If your heart is held captive by rejection, this is the freedom that Christ calls you to find.  We cannot, we must not, let our happiness be decided by anyone else, especially by those who reject us.  That choice is not on their side of the line.  Our happiness must be decided only by our trust in the God whose love doesn't change. 

No matter what others decide about you and the love you offer to them, there is still a decision on your side of the line, it remains "your peace."  Of all of the words of our Lord which we need to hear and believe, none cry out with a more urgent message for Christians who live in captivity to rejection,

Let your peace return to you. 

Leaving Neverland

Linda was the featured speaker for a Women's Ministry event at St. Andrews on March 31.  While this script can't capture her live presentation, I'm very proud of the life lessons she communicated so well.  

Leaving Never-land

    Recently, I was speaking to a member of our church and thanking him for taking on the challenge of serving St. Andrews and Christ through his volunteer work here.  He was so sweet and thanked me then asked, “Now who are you?”  I honestly dreaded telling him because I was afraid he would be embarrassed that he didn’t know me, but that experience reminded me that many people here don’t know me, or, if they know who I am, they don’t know much about me.  So when Jeanette and Kay asked me to speak this evening and said that they  wanted me to share some stories that would enable people to get to know me better, I was delighted.  It’s amazing that I would be here talking to you because, growing up, I never thought of myself as someone who people would care about knowing or who would be speaking to a group of church women.  But here I am!  Something I never thought would happen is happening.  God has often surprised me that way.   So that’s what I want to talk to you about tonight – the “I’ll nevers” in my life and the lessons that they have taught me about myself, others, and God.

First, “I’ll never be a teacher.”  I grew up in Gaffney SC one of five children.  In those days, there were no video games, computers, or round-the-clock television.  My brothers, sisters, and I made up our own games.  One of them was school.  Along with the neighborhood children, we took turns being the teacher and students and though I no longer remember the rules, we somehow managed to have a winner.  Although I played these games along with my siblings, I never thought that I could be a teacher.  Teachers, both at church and in school, were the smartest people I knew.  In my mind, I could never know enough to be a teacher.  When I went to Furman, I deliberately didn’t pursue an education degree, because I still didn’t believe that I could teach.  After graduation, Dee and I married, and he was called as the pastor of Carey Baptist Church in Henderson, NC.  One Saturday evening, a lovely senior adult Bible study teacher asked me to teach her class the next morning.  She was sick and just couldn’t be there.  Not knowing how to say “no” at the time, (I’ve since learned how to do that), I agreed and began work on the lesson.  I was terrified and didn’t know how my lesson would turn out.  Thanks to a group of very kind ladies, my first teaching experience went well, and I later agreed to teach our young couples Sunday School class.  Years later, with many Bible study classes under my belt, I found the courage to say “yes” to Greenville Technical College and began teaching GED students.  My first class was a mixture of men and women, old and young.  One of my students was a truck driver who introduced himself to the class by saying that he had five children and two ex-wives.  He was a very smart man, but just could not understand the reason he had to learn some of what I was teaching.  One day, in class, we had a discussion about the Pythagorean Theorem.  “Mrs. Vaughan, why do we have to learn this ‘pagorum theorem’? I’m never going to use it?”  Well John, even if you don’t use it, learning how to use it will help you learn to think.  It will stretch your brain.”  “I know, but that’s not enough of a reason.”  “Well, John, a lot of people do use the Pythagorean Theorem in their work.”  “How?”  “Builders, John, might have to use it in construction.” “I’m never going to be a builder.”  “Well, John, you have to learn it to pass the test.”  “Yeah, but it’s still stupid to make me learn it.”  “John, I’m going to give you the final reason that you have to learn the Pythagorean Theorem.  I call it the Mama reason.”  “Okay, what’s that, Mrs. Vaughan?”  “Because I said so!”  John learned the Pythagorean Theorem and a lot of other stuff; he earned his GED, finishing in the top five percent in the state.  When he brought his diploma and award to show me, he told me that he not only wanted that top 5 percent for himself, he wanted to do it for me.  This was humbling – I thanked God that day for sending Alice Newton to ask me to teach her class.  I learned from this “I never” that, if we will let him, God can use each one of us(even me) to help others and make a difference in this world.

Here’s a second never that happened to me.  “I’ll never date that wild man!”  The first time I saw Dee was in the Furman University dining hall.  My roommate had a crush on Dee’s roommate, and she decided that I needed to date Dee and that she would date his roommate.  Well, Dee was wearing white, bell-bottomed overalls that were out of date even then. He had a red beard, and curly blond hair.  He also had that strange “stand on his tiptoes” walk.  I took one look at Dee and told my friend, “I’ll never date that wild man.”  A few weeks later, Dee and I met for the first time, again in the Furman dining hall, and I learned that he was smart, and funny, and kind.  He loved God and he loved his family and pretty much came across as the perfect man.  Eventually, his good sense prevailed and he asked me out.  Thirty-one and a half years of marriage later, here we are.  I learned from this “I never” that first impressions aren’t always right, and sometimes, God wraps a jewel in bellbottoms.  I guess Dee led me into my next “never.”

“I’ll never be a pastor’s wife.”  My pastor’s wife when I was growing up was Beverly Morrow, wife of Bobby Morrow.  In my mind, Mrs. Morrow was kind, and smart, and she was very holy.  She would laugh really hard if she heard me say that, but I could never picture her losing her temper, telling even a little white lie, or not giving the perfect answer to struggling believers.  I could never be that kind of person.  I grew up in Gaffney (enough said), one of five children, and fighting was in my blood.  My brothers, sisters, and I fought over the TV, who was going to ride in the front seat, and who was going to get the last piece of dessert.  Even as a child, I realized that I struggled with my temper and knew that God was so disappointed with me.  I could never marry a minister.  What God has taught me over the years is that he uses imperfect people to accomplish his perfect will.  I do try to emulate Mrs. Morrow because I’ve realized that what she did so well was love people – I can do that.  I can’t achieve super holiness, I don’t always know the answer to difficult questions, and I still sometimes struggle with my temper.  But I can love people, and I try to do that as faithfully as I can.

As time went on, I became the mother to three “preacher’s kids” which knocked down another one of my “nevers.”  “I’ll never be one of those mothers who yell at her kids in public.”  We’ve all been in Wal Mart and heard a mother yelling at her kids to shut up or come here.  I bet we have all shaken our heads and said, “I can’t believe that woman is so mean to her children.  I would never treat my child that way.  There should be a law!”  I’m glad there’s not.  When Josh was in middle school, I took him to Old Navy to buy clothes.  The operative words here are “middle school.”  He was being particularly stubborn that day and uncooperative but he really needed clothes and I was determined we were going to find him something.  I had a stack of jeans, jogging pants, and shirts piled high in my arms trying to find something that would please him.  He absolutely refused to try on anything I found.  There we stood in the middle of the boy’s department of Old Navy, and I lost it.  That huge stack of clothes went flying at Josh – “fine, you put these clothes back on the racks.  We are going home!”  Just as the clothes went flying and the words flew out of my mouth, one of our church members walked by.  She taught me a big lesson that day.  She just shook her head, laughed, and said, “I have a middle school boy as well.  Good luck to you.”  What I learned that day was never to judge someone by their worst moment.  Most of us are never as good or as bad as others might think we are.  We are imperfect people just trying to navigate our way through this world as faithfully as we can.

Let me share one more “never” that life knocked down.  This is the most recent and the most personal.  “I’ll never go to church again.”  No, those words weren’t uttered by the ten-year-old me.  They were uttered by the fifty-year-old me.  Friends at church had hurt me desperately.  My mind and heart couldn’t wrap themselves around the pain, and I truly didn’t think I could ever walk through the doors of a church again.  Then, the phone rang.  A gentleman named David was calling to ask my husband if he could help their church during an interim.  Dee agreed to talk to him, and two weeks later I found myself walking through the doors of the Parisview Baptist Church in Greenville.  Inside those doors, I found kindhearted people who took it as their mission to love me, my husband, and our children and to remind us that God still had work for us to do, people for us to serve, people for us to love, and people to love us.  The retired pastor emeritus of that church told me one day that he knew how hurt Dee and I had been by all that transpired.  He then quoted the words Joseph spoke to his brothers who had sold him into slavery.  “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.”  He said to me, “We needed you and God sent you to us.  He has used you to bless our church.”  I experienced healing that day.  I was reminded of what I should have known – that God always wants to bring good things into our lives, He always has works of service for us to do if we will do them, and He always loves us.  Some months later, in God’s time, our phone rang again.  “Dee, this is Al Walker.  I am the chairman of the search committee at St. Andrews Baptist Church and we were wondering if you would be willing to have a conversation with us.”  God brought us here to St. Andrews, he gave us a place to serve Him, people with whom to serve him, people for us to love, and people to love us.  Dee and I thank God every day for you and pray that he will allow us to bless you just a fraction of how you have blessed us.  When God knocks down a never, a great blessing appears on the other side.  May that be true for you, as it has been for me.