Fresh Thoughts on Christmas

Yesterday, our staff team took off to paint the first new house of our newest staff couple, covering up the bright reds, blues, yellows and greens to make it their own. I ended up in the living room painting edges while the new owner came behind me with the roller. In the course of conversation, he began recounting his conservative heritage and his school memories of homeschooling with the Bill Gothard curriculum. He continued on to their leadership training with its unique character building program, which took him all over the world. Applying taupe paint over gold, we discussed the pros and cons.

Our conversation only added to my already turning brain about acceptance of unique approaches to our faith. We go to a great church where one of the hallmarks is that, while tenaciously holding to the Word of God, respect for differences of opinions on how the spiritual life is displayed and worked out in each life exists. (I Corinthians 14 discussed yesterday—who really has the definitive answers?) Even on our own very unified and loving team, we have differences of backgrounds and opinions on the finer points.

Just as Bill Gothard may not have gotten it all right, neither did St. Patrick with his interesting life with the Druids, Madame Guyon with her strange physical self-denial, St. Augustine with his Just War Theory, Shane Claiborne denouncing that theory today in light of the Simple Way, our very own forefather the devout Puritan Samuel Sewall with his office of presiding over the Salem Witch Trials, Martin Luther with his transubstantiation—so many more colorful characters like Jerry Falwell and Martin Luther King we have known in our lifetimes.

Include some Christians you know personally outside your own worldview. God likely has used each to lead many to the truth and it is 100% up to Him to take what He wants and vaporize (at least) the rest of it. He wants all of it He can to take into eternity with Him.

The bride of Christ will be an incomprehensibly beautiful mosaic of the best of each heartfelt view with all the quirks refined and burned out. That is why we do what we do as a team of mobilizers—there are yet colorful lives in every pocket of the world who, when they finally do embrace the gospel, will add their own still different and unique quality to the radiant church bride. Yes, there will be more strange customs and thoughts tainted by the world of injustice each one may have grown up with, but the Christ in Each of Them, the hope of glory, will be added to His complex, mysterious, dazzling, soon-to-be-revealed Bride fit for a Groom of Perfection.

That is what we celebrate at Christmas. Enjoy yours with a new expectation of what it will one day be like to share the Spirit in all of us as One!