The Basement 

A Christmas Story

I was in the basement of my childhood home. It was dark…very dark.  I had been sent to the basement to get a Tupperware container full of some of the most delicious Christmas cookies known to mankind.  A cacophony of lady fingers, rosettes, frosted sugar cookies, molasses crinkles and more.  I couldn’t help but salivate as my 7 year old tummy rumbled at the thought of these frozen treasures. 

My childhood home was old…perhaps a century or more.  The basement had no windows and the rough cut floor joists were exposed on the ceiling.  I opened the door at the top of the descending stairs and flipped the light switch on.  I could see the glow of the single incandescent bulb as it barely illuminated the creepy space below.  The bulb was a mere 60 watts, which did little more than offer a yellow hue and leave plenty of shadows for the evils of basement creatures to linger in hiding.  I made my way down the creaky staircase.  Solid pine planks spanned across the stringers...many of them cracked along the dried grain.  There was brown paint that lingered on the edge of each tread but had worn away to bare wood where the feet of thousands of journeys had diminished the protective coat. The front edge of the stairs had rounded over from countless shoes and the falling of boys’ shins making tearful impact to the wooden corners.

I finished my descent and set foot on the concrete floor, in the North-East corner.  I walked toward the South-West corner and entered the short narrow hallway where the freezer stood humming.  I pulled the string to a second incandescent bulb that lit up the hallway…doubling the amount of light, giving less space for the evils of darkness to linger.

As I opened the freezer and pulled out the Tupperware of cookies…the 60 watt bulb of the main space went dark.  My heart jumped in my chest…someone had turned off the light switch at the top of the stairs…there was no other switch for that light. “This was going to be a problem,” was all I could think.  Sure I still had the light of the hallway…but that wouldn’t last.  I considered leaving the hallway light on to allow me to see my way back to the staircase in the opposite corner.  But I knew that was not an option.  My father was known to be the “Burning Light Totalitarian.”

“Who left the lights on in the basement?” he would demand. “Do you know how much electricity costs?”

I took this as a rhetorical questions…and so I said nothing…wondering…”How would I know how much electricity costs?”

One night we were all waiting in the car for my dad to drive us to grandma’s house for Christmas Eve.  After what seemed to be 15 minutes and a few honks from my mother…my angry father threw himself into the driver’s seat and proclaimed, “I just turned off 14 lights that were left burning…do you know how much electricity costs?”

“I didn’t know that light bulbs were on fire.” I responded.

That was a mistake. His eyes lit like burning light bulbs and he growled, “Do you want to walk home?”

“We are home.” I blurted.  I couldn’t help it. It just slipped out. Me and my big mouth.  His eyes went from 60 watts to 100 watts like lightning.  My mother’s hand touched his knee.  He calmed down and gritted, “You are lucky it’s Christmas Eve.”

It was shortly after this moment that he sat me down and gave me a lesson as to how many watts a 60 watt bulb draws.  My guess was 60…but somehow I was wrong.  Something about how watts converts to kilowatt hours.  He then began a long monologue on how much we pay per kilowatt hour and how much 14 burning lights cost and that we should turn the lights off.

I listened carefully as I stood with the refrigerator door open the entire time…until he finished because I didn’t want to be rude and interrupt him.  “Can I have some orange juice?” I asked.

“What!?...No!...Orange Juice is for dipping, (don’t ask…long story), close the refrigerator!”

I am sure that my father would be pleased to know that I still remember having that conversation…though I still have no idea how to calculate kilowatt hours.

Despite that, I did turn off 13 burning lights in my own home just this morning…I counted them…and told my children what I had just done…and proceeded to ask if they knew how much electricity costs...then…I went and drank some orange juice.

As I remained near paralyzed in the basement, consequently, I concluded that I could not leave the light on and instead I geared up for the journey ahead.  Just before I pulled the string to turn off the light I committed to memory the path that I must take.  I estimated 12 strides…6 slightly to the left to avoid the supporting post in the middle of the room…then 6 steps back to the right to hopefully find the corner and the beginning of the staircase.

I pulled the string…turned off the light…and I ran…through the complete blackness.  As soon as the light went out, I could feel the in-numerable vile creatures dispatch from their shadowy lairs.  The demons, snakes and creatures of death rose up and began chasing me…ready to devour me in the sulfuric darkness.

I sprinted from one end of the basement to the other as fast as I could.  As I reached the stairs, my heart was slamming into my chest and the creatures drew nearer.  I couldn’t catch my breath…not from exhaustion, but rather from the building terror.  I drove my arms as I climbed the creaky staircase and burst forth out of the door leaving the deadly gloom of darkness and the evil that pursued me behind.  I slammed the door shut.  I leaned by back against it and panted…sweaty and shaky.

Having reached the light…I was safe…I was secure.

In the light I had peace.

“What are you doing?” my mother would ask.

“Just conserving electricity” I said…”And running for my life against the powers of darkness of this world.” I thought.

Christmas.  It is the day when the Light of the World…came into the world.  The Light of the World…that destroyed sin, death and darkness, came and changed everything.  The light has come…and the darkness cannot overcome it.

May you find the Light of the World this Christmas.

The Gift

We are less than one week from Christmas.  The packages beneath our tree continue to multiply…which is odd…considering that they have no mind for basic mathematics.  Yet, in any case the growing number of packages creates a marvelous sense of wonder and excitement in our home.  It was just this morning that my ears heard the squeals of glee and the high pitched words, “I am so excited, I can’t wait ‘til Christmas!”  Imagine my surprise to find that everyone was still asleep in bed…and I so rarely squeal!

I remember one Christmas Eve as a child. I lay awake in bed, wishing without end, that I could just fall asleep so that morning could all the sooner arrive.  Despite my efforts, sleep eluded me. As I remained prone and awake staring at the exposed rough cut floor joists of the unfinished ceiling in my basement bedroom, I could hear my parents filling the stockings that were hung by the weight bench with care.  Excitement built all the more…which did not help settle me into any sort of slumber. 

There was one gift above all else that I hoped for that Christmas…a keyboard.  Not the keyboard of an Apple IIe…or the Tandy 1000 that sat cumbersomely on the oversized computer desk in the dining room…but rather a keyboard that would launch me into stardom.  Ever since “Video Killed the Radio Star”, and Duran Duran graced the screen of channel 34 on my grandmother’s television, I had envisioned myself behind a keyboard pounding out the synthetic sounds of glory with my right hand and running my left hand through my thickly gelled spiked hair.

Nearing the end of the morning…there was one gift that waited to be discovered.  It was the right size…it was the right shape…and as I tore into it and found the words Yamaha, I was ecstatic!  My career was launched.  However, due to my lack of any music knowledge…training…and talent…my career ended about 45 minutes later.  Despite my abbreviated career, that gift resonates in my memory, as do many other gifts of Christmases past…although all musical memories thereafter consisted of magnetic tape and digital discs.

I came to a realization this year, as I was preparing gifts for my children to anticipate, as I had.  For thousands of years mankind anticipated that first Christmas.  Since the creation of the world…God promised a gift…a savior and then…He GAVE IT! He really gave it!

It is a gift that could never be earned…deserved…or reciprocated! It is the gift of gifts!

It is Jesus! 

Paul even says so in Ephesians 2:1-8.  “For it is by grace that you are saved, not by works…it is the gift of God!”

May you come to receive the gift of gifts this Christmas…may you come to see the Gift of God for what…and WHO it is…JESUS!

 Grace Grace

I tend to enjoy surprises, as do my parents especially at Christmas.  Year after year new efforts were made keep gifts and packages secret until the day of the great festivities.  As my siblings and I grew older…new creative ways to keep the secrets needed to be developed.  No longer could my parents simply write the names of their children on the packages, because we would spend so much time handling each item…shaking it…making guesses…asking questions.  The two James Bond wannabes began disguising packages by adding weight, a bag of rice in this one…a 2.5lb Olympic weight in another one.  Small items were wrapped in huge boxes…and huge gifts were crammed in small packages…don’t ask me how…it must have been magic. 

This still wasn’t enough, and the two childlike adults resorted to creating an elaborate secret code to confuse “would be recipients” of whose package was whose.  During one particular Christmas morning, the climax of gift opening was delayed until the misplaced cipher key was found.

In 1991, my 11 year old little sister couldn’t stand not knowing which gifts were hers, and what was in those packages.  She secretly began carefully peeling away the tape and peeking behind the paper looking for her gifts.  By doing so, she successfully cracked the code and was able to discover what was in each of her gifts.

However…in a family of aspiring secret agents, things like this do not go un-noticed.  My mother went to work accusing each of us boys first.  She confronted me hard, studying my face as I denied any involvement, looking for any signs of a lie or dishonesty.  This continued with my two brothers as well and then my sister…why was she always the last to be blamed?  Probably because she was a girl and was always treated favorably…yet, in this case…she was found to be the guilty party.

In effort to deliver a punishment that fit the crime, my dad sat my sister down…still 2 weeks before Christmas…handed her one of her gifts and said, “Open it.”

“Huh?”

“Open it.” He repeated.

She opened up a new telephone…a corded one…this is 1991…cordless phones were high technology at the time and cell phones were only on Star Trek.

“Give it to your mother, so she can return it.” He directed.

Her lip curled and her eyes moistened…and I smiled as I relished the suffering of my annoying little sister.

She handed the phone to our mother. My mother, who only had one daughter, began to cry and my smile quickly faded, as I saw the hurt in her eyes that reflected her bleeding heart.

My dad handed her another gift, “Open it,” he demanded.

She opened a new Paula Abdul CD.

“Give it to your mother…”

She obeyed and the tears continued…except dad…he had no tears…he was either made of stone or just “cold hearted.”

One after another, the gifts were opened and handed over to be returned.  When it was over…so was her Christmas.

Two weeks later when Christmas day arrived, we all sat down with our gifts in front of us…as distributed by our parents.  Three piles sat in the room, one in front of each of my two brothers and one stood before me.  Nothing sat in front of my sister.

She sat, looking sad and forlorn.  Everyone was sitting and waiting for my dad to come into the room so that we could begin.

“Dad! Hurry up!” my impatient little brother called.  He was so immature. 

“Dad! Get the lead out!” I insisted.

When dad finally entered the room, he had in his arms a large number of beautifully wrapped packages and set them before my sister. She looked at him questioningly. “Merry Christmas,” is all he said.

Grace.

Grace.

Grace.

Grace is all that we don’t deserve.  On that first Christmas, the world was offered grace…from a God who has always and already been…gracious.

John 1:16 says it this way. “Out of his fullness we have all received grace...in place of grace…that had already been given.”

Jesus is grace…on top of grace that had already been given.

Grace upon grace…it seems redundant.  Redundant?...or amazing?

May we come to know the amazing grace upon grace this Christmas.

 The Day Will Come

 

It is inevitable…the day will come.

The day will come when I will slip on the ice and crack my head on the hard frozen ground, at which point everyone will gasp in astonishment and be concerned for my well being…except my wife…she will double in laughter. 

The day will come when my first child, who was just under 8 lbs and 21.5” inches long, will graduate from high school and head off to college…leaving me as an emotional wreck to secretly weep alone in the bathroom.

The day will come when some arrogant college boy, will lay his dirty little eyes on her beauty and ask her out on a date…at which time I will come out of my weeping stupor and threaten his very life with a spanking spoon used to making “roni and cheese.”

The day will come when he will ask for her hand in marriage…at which time I will pretend my hearing aid batteries are dead.

The day will come when I will escort this former bubble blowing princess down an aisle wearing a white dress that is more expensive than my first automobile, and yet cannot hold a candle to her beauty let alone her value.

The day will come when I will become a grandfather to a little 8lb, 21.5” newborn, at which time I will confront this former college boy and now non blood relative…“How dare you?” My heart will then soften once again when I make eye contact with this new life in my arms.

The day will come.  That is unless I am first hit by a bus.

The day will come when my son gets his driver’s license and my automobile insurance increases exponentially. Oh wait! That day took place a few weeks ago.

The day will come…when I get old….Oh wait!...Never mind.

There are days that lay in wait for us…days that are in the distant or not so distant future.  These days will be significant life changing days.  When they arrive, our lives will never be the same…our lives will be changed forever.  I have experienced many of these inevitable days in my life…days like my wedding day or the day when my first child was born…or like the day when my second…third…and fourth children were born. These are days of change.  These are days of anticipation.

There is a day…a single day…that changed everything.  It is the day that God came in the flesh…the day that Jesus was born. It was a day that had been promised thousands of years before. Then…at just the right time…Jesus was born…Jesus came…and offered us EVERYTHING!

Peter reminds us of this in 2 Peter 3:1 and Paul points to it in Galatians 4:1-7.  This event was the major event in human history.  This event was promised thousands of years before.  It had been anticipated for generations. The day came.  It really happened.  Let’s always remember…Jesus really came!

 

 #13

“On your marks,” My dad shouted over the 2 cycle engines whining in front of him.

“Set,” he continued, holding a makeshift flag, a white handkerchief with black permanent marker creating a checkered pattern, sitting on the end of an oak dowel.

I leaned in to the handlebars of my red Honda 50cc dirt bike; the #13 donned the front placard as well as the one to my side behind my left calf.  I didn’t mind the number, in fact I requested it…I didn’t need luck on my side…I was better than my opponent.  He knew it…I knew it…and he was about to taste it.  My right hand revved the throttle ready for the flag to drop.

“Go!”

I dumped the clutch with my left hand and my rear wheel spun violently, digging a hole behind me as my back tire sank nearly to the axle…apparently too much throttle.  My older brother, riding an identical bike, brandished with the #6, eased off his clutch and puttered away.  The race had begun, and I had yet to go anywhere productive. The race was a mere three laps and I was going to be hard pressed to make up the gap that was continuing to expand as I sat there idle.  I eased off the gas…climbed out of my hole…and took off. 

The course began with a long straight, followed by a hard left and an easy right as the surface inclined.  At the top of the incline, another left took you back down a steeper slope to a hairpin curve to lead you right back up.  Once on top, the home stretch was a short straight that led to the sharpest left of the course and back into lap number two. 

Not every 7 year old is blessed with the coolest dad in the world, who not only buys dirt bikes for his sons, but also has the foresight to create a race track in the back yard using an ancient disk and a drag pulled by an old Alice Chalmers B.

I had run this track hundreds of times.  I knew it well.  I also knew that despite the lead, I would pass my older brother, and pass him I did.  Just as I was finishing lap number two I was right on his rear wheel.  I slid wide to the right as we approached the sharp left hand turn into the long straight.  I cut hard and gunned the throttle, and shot past him to the inside like a stone from my slingshot.  I was immediately filled with a genuine aura of satisfaction that filled my gullet and tingled the hairs on the back of my neck.  One lap to go and I was creating a dominant lead.  I went up the first incline and was on my way back down when I looked over my shoulder to see where my loser of an older brother was. “Eeek,” I thought…he was closer than I had expected.  I looked a second time just as I was hitting the bottom of the hill.  However, as I looked back, my front tire slammed into a rut and I flipped the bike rear over front.  The bike was ok…I broke its fall. 

My older brother slowed down as he approached the bottom of the hill so as not to run me over.  Was he being nice…or was he gloating? Then he puttered away back up the hill.  Gloating…definitely gloating.  I hopped back on #13, kicked the starter, nailed the throttle and took off, throwing dirt, mud, and sod behind me.  I could still win! I could still win!

I never let off of the throttle! I was gaining on him fast! I was going to do it! And then…I didn’t.  He crossed the finish line about 6 feet before I did.

“Well, I guess you shouldn’t look back huh Ryan!” my dad laughed. 

I gritted my teeth…and cried…“So much for the coolest dad in the world,” I thought.

It is so hard to go through life and keep your focus.  The simple distractions that we face daily are innumerable. We face mountains of tasks, deadlines, family responsibilities, parenting, spousing the list is endless.  Life is hard enough as it is…but then you add in the daunting challenges of sin.  The Bible is clear in its teaching about sin.  Paul writes in Romans 3, that there is NO ONE righteous. Jesus challenges men in John 8, to be free to “cast the first stone,” if you happen to be without sin…there is no one left to cast a stone.  We all sin.  We all have sin in our lives, and we all sin more than we think we do. 

In Matthew 5-7, Jesus raises the bar to righteous living.  He makes what was already impossible…even more impossible…if that is even possible.  He shows us that we cannot do it.  We cannot live the righteous life…on our own.  We need help.  We need Him.  That is how we conclude this message.  We need Jesus to do a work in us.  We need Jesus to change our hearts. 

But what is our role? What do we do?  If he does the work of changing our hearts…what is my responsibility? It is to repent.

We need to repent and get our eyes back on Jesus.

This is a message for all human kind.  The Sermon on the Mount…is a call to repentance.  May we repent and get our eyes back on Jesus.

 The Penny

We all face anxiety and worrisome situations on a daily basis…you know what I am talking about…we all worry.  This past week my daughter wanted to register for a college visit, but the online registration wasn’t working. To an average human being, this is not a cause for 911.  However, my soon to be 18 year old and high school graduate, found herself in a catastrophic moment of despair. 

“Hannah, it is not a big deal…just call the school.”

“I don’t want to call.”

“Why not?”

“I am scared.”

“What!? Scared of what? The fact that you might have to talk to another human being?”

“Yes! Exactly!”

“Call them…they WANT to talk to you…they WANT your money!”

“I can’t! I am afraid!”…(Hannah often tells me that I, “Just don’t understand how hard it is to be a high school student in today’s culture.”  Obviously…I don’t.)

 “That is absurd…send an email then.” I retorted.

“Ok…I can do that.”

Disaster averted.

It is not just the worries of high school and college. The other day I was worried that Sarah would find out that I forgot to drop off the gas bill.  She found out…but it wasn’t as bad as I thought…I didn’t even get punished!

When my son was in the terrifying realm of kindergarten, he came home one spring day and collapsed on the sofa…and did nothing.  This was unusual for such a rambunctious juvenile boy. My wife Sarah, immediately began to worry.

“Isaac, are you feeling ok?”

“Yeah.”

A similar question rose from her lips a few moments later. “Are you sure you are ok? You don’t seem to be yourself.”

“Yeah.”

“Ryan…I think that Isaac is sick,” she stated.

“Isaac, are you feeling ok?” I interjected.

“Yeah.”

He has always been a great conversationalist.

“He says he fine…he’s fine.” I answered.

Well…that wasn’t good enough.  My wife took his temperature.  It was normal.  Still not convinced she gave him vitamin C and sent him to bed early. All the while, I must admit that he did seem a bit out of sorts.

In the morning she continued to check his vitals…namely his temperature.

“There! You see! 99.1! I knew it! He has a fever…He is staying home!”

Moments after I took Hannah to school and left for work…he was miraculously healed!

Until…the next morning…99.1

After, 2-3 days of this same sequence, Sarah was deeply concerned with the pattern and ready to consider the ER, She asked me, “What should we do?”

“Ask him if everything is ok at school.” I offered.

She did, and he immediately broke into tears and wept…“I lost Jimmies penny at the playground! He is going to be mad at me! I tried to find it! I looked and I looked but I could not find it! I don’t know what to do…I don’t want to see Jimmy because he is going to want the penny and I don’t have it…I can’t find it!

“Here…have a penny.”

Disaster averted.

He had literally…worried himself SICK!

But let’s be honest.  We all do the same! We worry about: our retirement, gas prices, politics, toilet paper, food prices, job security, children’s choices, vehicle reliability, calling the college admissions counselor, what do people think of me, maybe this pain in my neck is something serious like cancer, the list is endless…and that’s just MY list. Jesus challenges our hearts once again in Matthew 6:19-34. In this case he is forcing us to confront what we value.  He is confronting us with the condition of our hearts…what is it that is truly important to us.  Jesus wants our hearts to be “for God.” He is drawing our hearts away from meaningless worldly treasures that do nothing but rot away. He is drawing our hearts away from worrying about these rotting valueless items.

May we come to have our hearts transformed into a Heart for God.

Why?

 

Why do we do the things that we do?

One evening, during my late elementary school years, I stood in my dad’s garage along with both my dad and older brother.  We gathered together to admire the new kitchen cabinets that had just arrived and lay waiting to be installed.  As we meandered through the new cabinets, my dad and I both looked up to see my older brother standing 6 feet away…violently shaking his head from side to side.  His jaw was slackened and you could see his malleable cheeks flapping loosely, causing spit and drool to fly from his relaxed mandible. The two of us watched in confusion.  When he finally ceased flapping his head like a rain soaked Labrador retriever…my dad asked…”What are you doing?”

“I don’t know…” was all he replied.

That was weird.

Despite his insistence on “not knowing” what he was doing…there must have been some underlying reason as to why he decided to shake his head so vehemently. It is possible that he had just lost his mind…or perhaps was trying to shake his brain matter out through his ears.  In either case that could be considered…a reason.

Why?

Why do we tip at restaurants? I know that it is initially…”To Insure Promptness”…but let’s be honest…it is an obligation.  In fact, in some cases tips are automatically calculated into the bill.  Don’t get me wrong…I think that generous tipping is a pretty cool thing…especially when someone else is the generous tipper. 

As a couple of young high school students, my flapping faced brother and I sat at a café table just finishing up a couple of burgers that we had been treated to from a local antique dealer.  The two of us had spent the day hauling antiques to his shop from a local auction.  Upon the completion of our meal…the antique dealer (who was also our grandfather) pulled out a coin purse filled with a fistful of U.S. minted change.  He dug through the jingling pile of metal…pulled out one worn nickel and placed it on the table.  I am no expert…but I am guessing that this less than generous “tip” did NOT “insure promptness,” in any of his future visits. Why did he even bother to give a tip? Generosity? Obligation? Affirmation?

Why?

Why do we tip? Why do we give? Why do we pray? Why do we fast? What is it that draws us to do the things that we do?  I think that this is exactly what Jesus is challenging us to understand in Matthew 6:1-18. Here Jesus gives some instructions on giving, praying, and fasting.  Sometimes, I think that we take these words as more demands as to how we are supposed to live.  In a way…that would be true, yet I think that what Jesus is really driving at is our hearts.  I have become more and more convinced that Jesus is working to transform our hearts. He is working to make us more in tuned with the heart of God.  Jesus wants us to live our lives, motivated by the love of God…and the love for God. May we come to ask Jesus to do that heart work in our lives.  It is a work that ONLY He can do…so let’s invite Him to do it.