Wishing Christmas celebrations weren't on the list...

This posting is an excerpt of a recent email to a friend. Our conversation was struck up when he told me about his friends who wished they could be like him and not have to celebrate Christmas... Here's some of my response...

"I celebrate a present reality as much as a historical reality. The nuances of trying to peer back into history and seek out the veracity of cattle lowing and baby waking is tenuous at best. I am left with lots of questions in that regard. However, my lived faith in the present tense is how I find that story to be true. I'm offered the birth story of Jesus as the Son of God as a radical claim that leaves me no option but to accept or reject it and my decision has implications. Obviously I don't suggest to people to believe because of my experience, but my experience helps give me confidence to take the risk into faith. At the end of the day, I ask myself, What's the risk of believing the following? That the Creator of the universe loves me, that God provides a means for me to deal with my depravity, that God bears out in humanity through Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection a way for me to experience life to its fullest, that my capacity to forgive and be forgiven even exists... What risk is that to me, compared to turning away and saying, I'll imagine that I am the maker of myself and my own destiny.

I have chosen to risk into faith because I see life there. My faith is not about proving the historical veracity of birth narratives (many of your questions so well articulated are mine as well...). At the end of the day, I want to LIVE with purpose, with forgiveness, with hope and a future. This is a messed up world, how exactly am I to make it, without some help? God says, I'll give you the dignity of just offering.

Here's how I see it. I will always enjoy probing philosophical and historical questions, but at the end of the day I simply wish more for you. I meet people who choose to fundamentally doubt God rather than risk into God. There's lots of fodder in our world for doubt, all in the name of religion. But do I think Jesus can make a difference in your life, for sure... And is it because I can produce a DNA sample of the manager's straw or claw back the injustices and deceit that you have innocently had to endure? No, it's because I am just barely confident enough to suggest that God shows up in the present tense, and a way to know that is to simply say, 'I'm willing to be loved'."

Thank you for all the engaging and life-giving conversations of 2008! We'll talk more in 2009.