No matter what other traditions people may have around the holidays, food is always a key factor. Every family has their favorite recipes, associates certain flavors and smells with family and good times. My favorite holiday memories from childhood involve baking with my grandmother. We made piles and piles of candy, cookies, and pies.
Although most of the time I rather hate the perfectionist and time-consuming nature of baking, for a few days in December I throw myself into the process with joy. My children wait impatiently for the announcement of “baking day,” and all have their special requests. This year they were all old enough to participate independently, and my thirteen-year-old has fully co-opted her particular preference: sugar cookies.
Made of little more than flour, sugar, and butter, those economical little cookies are the perfect family activity. Everyone’s fingers and noses (and probably clothes) are floured as much as the cutting board. Reindeer, trees, snowflakes, and “gingerbread men” take shape under cutters pressed by small hands. The oven is impatiently watched between turns to “cut,” and golden cookies cover every surface while voices clamor for “just one.”
Other easy recipes soon join the marching shapes. Pretzel and cracker dips splatter chocolate in remote corners. Oatmeal cookies redolent of cinnamon fill the house with their comforting aroma. Gingerbread puffs delightfully in muffin tins. Homemade eggnog whips in the mixer.
When all the beautiful food is finished, it’s time to package it up. You see, while we do enjoy eating some of our goodies ourselves, we bake with another purpose. The time spent together is our gift to each other as a family, and the results are our gift to friends. A little of everything is packed into little bags with holiday notes attached, and on the Sunday before Christmas the kids get to hand deliver every package with an excited hug and a Merry Christmas. These gifts, made in an atmosphere of love and by the labor of their own hands, unconsciously reinforce the meaning of giving in their hearts.
Only when the gifts are ready and the mess cleared away do we taste the fruits of our labors. With a holiday movie on the screen, a fire crackling in the heater, and lights twinkling on our rather Seussical tree, we savor the taste of love.
For many years our family has been extraordinarily materially blessed around the holidays. Both parents and kids felt the magic of love (perhaps parents more than kids by knowing the sources of those blessings). This year, however, few have been unaffected by economic trials, and holidays must adjust accordingly. Instead of being stressed out or upset about this fact, our family decided to embrace the situation and make a different kind of magic.
One of my favorite holiday entertainments is looking at Christmas decorations. Beautifully coiffed trees, houses bedecked with twinkling lights, and outdoor displays that inspire awe capture my imagination every year. Not so very long ago, none of the materials for those displays existed. Instead, people used plants to dye fabric and ribbon into bright colors, and wove vines and branches into garlands to turn their homes into fragrant, cheerful, peaceful wonderlands. While fake plants did exist, materials were expensive and such things were hard to find even for the wealthy.
Instead of buying more decorations this year, we decided to emulate our ancestors and make our own. The woods are full of beautiful materials that cost nothing but the time taken to gather and arrange them. Moss, pinecone, and bark become a forest mountainside. Bare twigs in a painted bottle become winter ambience. A wild grapevine becomes a perfectly twisted wreath in my husband’s skilled hands. Adding a little saved ribbon and a few well-placed bits of bright paint creates a festive air.
The best part of it all is something that can’t be found in a store or on a website, something that can’t be bought for any money. The whole family went to the woods together, kids shouting with excitement over the perfect pinecone or insisting that a brightly colored freshly fallen leaf should take center stage in our table centerpiece. Eyes and minds focus on what God created, lungs breathe in clean air beneath the trees. Imaginations soar with possibilities. Innocent joy is shared. The world around us – filled with angst, selfishness, and materialism – is shut out. Pressures of work and school and our own differences melt away for a little while and we are just together.
What image comes to mind when you hear the word “rock?” Now imagine a rough, mossy rock. If you were told the rock was in a forest, what would you see? Would your vision look different if you read that the rough, mossy rock protruded from the loam in the deep shadows cast by ancient oaks?
Description tends to get a bad rap these days, probably because inexperienced writers often try to describe everything in their world at once without context, forgetting that readers first need a reason to care about what they are seeing. In the process of combating such boredom, others sometimes run to the opposite extreme, insisting that descriptive modifiers should be eliminated. Effective description lies somewhere between the two extremes.
The easiest way to add descriptive words is the way we all learned them in grade school. “The fat white cat lived in the creepy old brown house.” It’s easy, and it communicates facts, but it doesn’t make me want to read more.
“Coconut lay sunning herself on the front step, her round belly white against the brown boards. Her ear flicked at the sound of slow steps on the walk, and her nose twitched. Peanut butter. It was the one called Penelope again, the one who never stayed on the sidewalk like the others.
“Coconut lazily opened one eye, the tip of her tail rising and falling like a long, slow breath. Penelope’s forehead wrinkled, and the tip of her pink tongue protruded through set teeth as she took another hesitant step forward, staring at the weathered door above Coconut’s step. The cat waited until Penelope put a hand on the splintering handrail, then yawned and lurched to a sitting position, wrapping her tail around her haunches and fixing the child with a green-eyed stare. Penelope swallowed loudly, but reached one hand toward Coconut’s head with a weak grin.
“This would never do; Coconut had an image to uphold. Creepy houses did not shelter friendly cats. She arched her back and leaped straight into the air with a yowl that set her own fur on end. Penelope jerked backwards, whimpered something unintelligible, and fled. Mission accomplished, Coconut smoothed her fur with a few well-placed licks and stretched back to full-length in the sun.”
There was nothing technically wrong with the single sentence, but only one of those descriptive modifiers really crossed over to engage the brain’s sensory interpretation. We don’t absorb true sensory information so concisely, instead collecting tidbits of information and compiling them into an impression of our surroundings. That impression then engages an emotional response, allowing us to respond appropriately (or inappropriately) to those surroundings.
The use or lack of descriptive modifiers is not a determining factor for good or bad fiction. Whether or not our descriptive language can be interpreted as sensory information is what matters. Can you picture a cat behaving the way Coconut did? Can you feel the aging wood under your fingertips? Does your pulse quicken with Penelope’s mixed reactions? Can someone live within your world?
My favorite story is the Tolkien’s _Lord of the Rings_. In that story, the ring possesses power to change and shape the world to the will of its maker, appealing to the deepest desires or fears of whoever holds it. At one point, Frodo tries to rid himself of that responsibility by offering it to the most powerful being remaining in Middle-earth, Galadriel the elf queen.
At the time, all Galadriel longed for was an end to evil in Middle-earth. The ring’s power whispered to her promises of success. All she had to do was wear it, become a goddess able to banish Sauron and shape the world with her own ideals. All would bow before her, it promised, following her command, and the world would be only good. For a moment she faltered, everything she had ever truly wanted seemingly at her fingertips. There would be no more war and suffering; life would be perfect and effortless. Easy.
The problem was that all the promises were a lie. The ring’s creator was entirely evil, and the power within the ring came from the depths of his own wicked heart. Indeed, that power could not be separated from him; it was his voice that spoke through it, and he that wielded it regardless of who held it. Galadriel’s vision could never have been accomplished, and in trying to achieve it her own heart would have been irrevocably twisted into Sauron’s image.
Galadriel’s desire was natural. She and others like her were embroiled in a war against apparently impossible odds. Fear, pain, sorrow, and death covered the world as completely as the clouds of smoke and ash belched into the sky by the enemy’s forges. Any with the courage to stand against evil found themselves beleaguered from every side.
In similar fashion, followers of Christ in the first century A.D. faced the greatest hardship they could have imagined. Choosing a life that reflected God’s character brought opposition at every turn. Confused rumors led to accusations of treason. Rejection of religious traditions drove wedges in formerly peaceful relationships, even between parents and children, husbands and wives. Refusal to follow societal customs and disapproval of pagan practices often meant businesses failed, jobs were lost, families were hungry. Punishments for standing out were often harsh, as citizenship was a privilege granted to few and without citizenship few human rights were respected.
Under such circumstances, it would have been hard to resist the urge to compromise. After all, they truly wanted to change the world into God’s image. Why not punish those who rejected Him as harshly as they had been? Why not force God’s ideals on the world instead? Why not use the tools of idolatry and materialism to become accepted back into society and make life, and teaching, easier?
The problem was that being different, living that harder life, was God’s image. Everything done to them, all the power leveraged against them, was the power and mindset of evil. Satan whispered through society just as surely as Sauron used the ring in the story. Using his tools might have felt easier, but the price would have been the destruction of everything they sought to build, would have been the loss of their very identity. Sauron could not produce anything good or beautiful because he himself was terrible. Satan cannot build anything worthwhile because he himself has rejected the source of all worth. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)
Galadriel resisted the ring’s call, saying that instead of embracing power she would diminish. God’s people who resisted society’s pressure for an easy life and earthly influence apparently experienced a similar sensation of collapse as more and more landed in prison or were executed, and those who remained became outcasts. In reality, Galadriel’s act of humility regained her true greatness, the glory that had been lost in banishment from the presence of the gods. Her banishment was ended, and she returned home to the throne that should have been hers all along. God’s people who surrender control and remain content with the battle in which they are placed will also receive a greater glory than any they could seek here on earth.
James 1:11–12 (CSB): Blessed is the one who endures trials, because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.
Whenever my kids require discipline for something, their favorite excuse is “but I wasn’t trying to!” “Don’t be mean to your brother!” “I wasn’t trying to!” “You only half-cleaned the dishes; all these are still dirty.” “I wasn’t trying to!” Somehow, in their minds, lack of effort in one direction equals actual effort in the opposite direction.
Luke records a parable Jesus told about a man who had been possessed by a demon. The demon was cast out, but after wandering for a while decided to return. He found the space he had occupied within the man empty, bare. It was so wide open and inviting that the demon found seven other demons to join him in possessing the man once again, so that the man was much worse off than before.
My kids and the man in the story have the same approach to life. I’m sure if someone had said something to the man about letting demons invade his soul he would have said, “But I’m not trying to!” Sure, his mind wasn’t full of evil, but he had made no effort to fill it with anything once it had been cleaned.
How often do we behave this way about spiritual things? We feel satisfied with ourselves because we “aren’t trying to disobey;” maybe we even boast about it a little bit like the Pharisee praying in the public place. The truth is that “not trying to” requires no effort. It’s easy because it literally involves doing nothing. Unfortunately, nothing produces nothing, leaving a gaping space in our souls empty and unguarded.
My kids have to learn the hard way that “I wasn’t trying to” needs to become “I’m trying to do better.” As children they are focused on what feels good in the moment; they haven’t learned the consequences of nothing, and they haven’t experienced the fulfillment that comes from effort. Those experiences will come in time. For now they have someone to remind them, to guide them through the consequences, to show them how to be productive. As adults we have no excuse. No one else is responsible for our choices. No one else will do our work for us. No one is looking over our shoulder to make sure we take the next step. It’s up to us whether we are empty houses of “not trying to” or filled with the work of God.
Romans 2:4–8 (CSB): Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed. He will repay each one according to his works: eternal life to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality; but wrath and anger to those who are self-seeking and disobey the truth while obeying unrighteousness.
When Moses was called to release God’s people from Egyptian servitude, he feared to obey, and the first results of his efforts seemed to justify his fear. Pharaoh was so incensed by the challenge to his perceived authority that he responded with harsh punishment. Beatings, killings, and impossible expectations made the Israelites utterly wretched. Moses, who himself remained untouched, was forced to watch these consequences of standing for God, feel the pain his people endured. In addition, he became a pariah to those God sent him to rescue; the familiarity of slave life, of being treated as inferior or as beasts of burden, was more palatable than the cost of freedom.
What would have happened if Moses had told God His freedom was too hard? Had returned to shepherding in the wilderness and left the Israelites to their familiar drudgery?
Because Moses faithfully walked through the shadow of suffering with his people, eventually even Pharaoh suffered enough from his behavior that he granted freedom, at least temporarily. Like all egomaniacs, however, as those who had been under his thumb stood on the brink of escape, he reached out to trap them again. Once again, Moses had to watch the darkness of evil falling around the people he loved, and endure their panicked blame. It seemed that every action taken in the direction God sent put them all in a deeper valley of hopelessness.
What would have happened if Moses had told the people to give themselves up? If he had decided the assignment was impossible and that life in slavery was better than promises that came with fear?
When Pharaoh’s army had been drowned and the Sea had been crossed, Moses faced the task of leading a nation through cultivated lands populated by military powers who would not share, through wild lands where no food could be found, and through deserts that parched throats without relief. Over and over he watched his charges face death on the path God had chosen for them, wept for their suffering, and endured accusations from people who found dehumanization and subjugation more palatable than scrabbling for their own necessities in freedom.
What would have happened if Moses had bowed in defeat in the desert? If he had decided the hunger and thirat and recriminations were too much to bear and left the Israelites to throw themselves on the mercy of their enemies?
“Even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for you are with me;… you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…” Psalm 23:4,5
What would happen if, when threatened for following the path God set, we kept walking? What would happen if, when punished for speaking God’s challenge to evil, we kept talking? What would happen if, when hardship and death loomed because we stepped out in faith, we trusted Him to give us life? What would happen if, when in our darkest valleys, we chose to look at the Son?
Two weeks ago we embarked on a new adventure by adding six chicks to our flock of three. I grew up with chickens; I thought I was prepared. From day one these birds set out to prove me wrong.
To begin with, I didn’t realize how small four week old pullets were under all those brand new feathers. We left the house for two hours the first evening, and when we came back after dark all six had blissfully jumped through the dog wire of their run and bedded down two feet outside of the fence. I managed to pick them up three at a time and snuggle them in my shirt tail back into their appropriate sleeping area.
After adding chicken wire to the entire perimeter the next morning (while continually chasing escaped chicks), I heaved a sigh of relief. It was taken as a challenge by those overly curious toddler birds. I had built their run attached to the existing run for socialization, but separated by mesh that I could easily cut out later. By afternoon they had found a way through a gap in the mesh barrier and delightedly raided kitchen scraps under the indignant beaks of their elders. I managed to chase them back through their convenient hole and close it up before bedding them down for the night.
Problem not solved. Not a day went by for the next week that didn’t find me chasing houdini pullets and closing up microscopic escape routes. In the meantime, like all toddlers, they emptied their (supposedly chick-friendly) feeder all over the ground, turned over their water dispensers repeatedly when they weren’t kicking grass and bedding into them, and made a mess of their sleeping quarters.
It wasn’t all bad; the amount of time I spent corraling those birds meant they got used to me. By the end of a week they would call back to me when I talked to them, and when I let them out in the morning they would squabble and flutter so close to me that their wings hit me. When I brought food they would rush the gate so I had to be careful not to step on them. For a day or two they seemed to have settled in.
Then they discovered how to breach the blocked holes. Peck until the thing moves, then scratch it out of the way. Fly higher and find the hidden gap at the top. Dig a new hole! Me and those pullets spent a whole lot more quality time together. They started to argue with me and throw themselves at the door to their little coop when I didn’t open it fast enough to suit them. They started trying to eat my shoes and investigating my clothes.
We settled again for a day or two into a routine; all the escape routes seemed to be managed, and I started thinking about raking the big run in preparation for joining. I didn’t reckon on just how devious my little friends were, and I set myself up for what had to be the funniest chicken story ever.
I headed out to bed them down, but I knew as soon as I rounded the corner of the house something was amiss. I could hear them from much farther than usual, and couldn’t see them in their run. Yep, you guessed it. All six pullets were in the big run, merrily exploring in and out of the big coop. It might have been a boring story if they had stayed there.
They heard me coming. All six rushed to the gate, chirping madly in greeting. Their elders were already asleep, having the sense to know it was nearly dark, but not them! Did I mention the gate to the big run is dog wire? By the time I could get it open, those overly excited birds had pushed through and were running circles around the pen, cackling wildly. I called for reinforcements: extra hands and food.
The food was a dismal failure; they weren’t the least bit hungry. They were, however, delighted to stay up late and intended to keep that illicit privilege in spite of me. My eight year old son covered himself in glory by catching three by himself; my husband caught one. The others came to see what all the fuss was about and that was one battle won.
The next was to get them in the coop; they were gonna sleep with their elders because I wasn’t even trying to get them back through whatever new hole they discovered. I carried the food inside followed by chicks. By now they had already pecked up my shoes and tried to burrow under my shirt tail while I squatted trying to keep them contained as we caught them. They had finally realized it was bedtime, had decided I was mom, and as far as they were concerned I wasn’t leaving. Three surrounded my foot and snuggled up, one fluttered up the roost and perched on my wrist, and two curled up on my back as I bent over trying to reach things. They weren’t moving.
Once again my son came to the rescue. He closed the door so they couldn’t get spooked and escape, then moved them off me one at a time. While they were flapping around complaining about it, we ducked out and locked them in. By then it was completely dark and I wasn’t sure what gifts had been left on my shirt. In case the solar-powered but temperamental door decided to actually open at sunrise the way it’s supposed to, we hung a blanket over the gate until I can add chicken wire. What would you like to bet I find those chickens in the yard tomorrow morning anyway?
All my life, I was given the advice to write what I knew and only what I knew. For a long time I thought that meant I should only write about real life things that I had experienced personally, and disagreed with the sentiment strongly. Such an approach to creation stifles imagination, and doesn’t allow for the capacity of the human mind to learn from the experiences of others. Over the years, as I have matured and experienced more of life, I have come to understand that this interpretation could not be farther from the truth.
Have you ever watched a child play? Who do they become? What experiences do they act out? At my house we usually get a blend of superheroes, cartoon characters, and book people. These favorites fight a conglomeration of enemies, get married, hold jobs, have children, and travel. They squabble about things of childish importance with admirably melodramatic adult emotions. This is human creation, taking what we recognize and blending it all into an expression of who we are.
This is writing fiction. Even if a book is about impossible creatures or set in outer space or full of unhistorical characters, it is a reflection of reality. Every headline, every story, every image, every interaction, every moment that left an impression on the writer bleeds onto the page of a new story. Every character holds pieces of the writer and of everyone he or she recognizes in real life. Perhaps those influences are carefully and intentionally journaled. More likely they simply become so much of a part of the writer that he or she subconsciously transfers them to the page.
Write your mage who doesn’t know which side of a conflict to join. Write your space battles between aliens so entrenched in their own ideas they can’t understand each other. Write your sweet but strong-willed heroines, and your misunderstood villains. Write the argument you had with your friend into a flirtatious budding romance. Write your snuggles with your child into a hero who longs for family. Write what you know, and create what everyone can recognize: reality fiction, the human story.
Peter wrote to early Christians during a time of relentless persecution. Those who claimed the name of Christ were surrounded by neighbors and authority figures who wanted them dead, exterminated with no memory of their existence. The pressure had begun to wear on the faithful of God, inciting rage and resentment toward their enemies and causing tension even among themselves.
Rather than giving in to such feelings, Peter urged the beleaguered Christians to uphold a higher choice. By responding to attackers with anger, they merely fueled the hatred directed toward them, proving the accusations of their enemies. Instead they were to be respectful of their haters, remaining free of the trap in which their enemies had already fallen. They were simply to live their lives, keeping God in focus and demonstrating His love. If a slavemaster bullied them, they needed to be sure they had given no excuse by rebellion or poor work; the slavemaster was wrong, but they should not be. If a woman followed God but her husband did not, she was not to create a wall in their marriage over it. Instead she was to offer him all her love and trust, be a quiet irresistable strength for him. Men were not to be tyrants over their wives, even in spiritual matters, but were to be gentle and respectful of their partners in life.
If they were to hold such character toward their enemies, their relationship with each other as the followers of Christ was to be infinitely more precious and protected. They were to live in harmony with each other. Harmony in music is something that nearly everyone understands; it requires many different notes being played together in such a way that each is beautified and enriched by the others. These Christians were individuals with different cultural and religious backgrounds, different preferences and styles, different experiences, and often different understandings of spiritual matters. Instead of arguing about their differences, they were to use them to create a beautiful melody that could not be ignored even in the face of great terror. Their love and compassion for each other, and for their enemies, would provide the strength to stand for truth without rancor against an onslaught of suffering.
This approach is difficult for most. Human love is often limited by an instinct for self-preservation and exaltation. We want others to sacrifice for us, become what makes us comfortable, believe what we tell them without question, and so on, while the same asked of us is offensive. There is no room for understanding of or compassion for another’s struggle when that struggle makes us uncomfortable, yet the example of our Savior is weighted heavily in the opposite direction. To follow Him each one of us must be willing to wear another’s shoes. Respect between us as humans must be mutual, regardless of human differences. Sacrifice for other humans must be mutual between God’s faithful, and weighted against ourselves when dealing with lost souls.
The love of our Savior sacrificed everything to show hope to the hopeless, peace to the raging, love to the hateful. It did not seek to condemn souls, but to change them. It challenged them, pushed them, even rebuked them sharply when necessary, but most of all it called them by its very existence. It, He, understood the depth of human failure and used the deepest horror of it to display perfection. To display love. How can we do otherwise?
“Truly, I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen… No one has ascended into Heaven except the one who descended from Heaven – the Son of Man.” John 3:10, 11
“You don’t have his word residing in you, because you don’t believe the one he sent. You pore over the scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me.” John 5:38-39
Between the recording of the prophets’ messages and the coming of Christ, the Jews learned to avoid the obvious false gods and maintain temple worship. Admonished by God’s judgement of insincerity, they sought to ensure never to deserve such an accusation again. Rather than passing off whatever they didn’t want, they micromanaged offerings down to calculating tithes even down to the smallest grain of spice. Rather than complain about observing inconvenient laws, they argued and fought over who could be the most specific about how to obey. Synagogues were built where copies of the law and prophets were housed in state and teachers drilled endless litanies of rules into the heads of the general population. Factions and subfactions developed as pride and ambition led leaders to insist on their own interpretations and specifics to laws that God had expressed only broadly. Resentment of unchecked oppression by enemies of God was transmuted into rabid insistence that God would raise up a warrior king to crush them and form a Jewish empire to rule Earth.
When, after centuries of relative silence from God, miracles greater than any performed by former prophets began to flood Judea, these pedantic and self-absorbed leaders could not face the admission that they had been wrong. Every shred of their status and power had been built upon their micromanagement of God’s precious gift, and the sight of God in the flesh flouting their entire national structure was too much for them.
They looked the Lord and Savior of all in the eye and challenged his right to perform the miracles they could not deny. They wrapped scrolls of copied scriptures in the trappings of deity but denounced the source of those words as a criminal for not meeting their mortal expectations. Rather than argue with them, he simply and sadly acknowledged that they didn’t know him. How could they? Blinded by human concerns, they had never seen him; determination never to be rebuked again, to be completely in control of their earthly presentation, had killed any possibility of recognition. Their own version of God had become their new idol; obedience to Christ meant disobedience to that idol, and they killed him for it.
“Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in Heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?” Then I will announce to them, “I never knew you.” Matthew 7:21-23
The Word Worker 
