Grief and Persevering Love
This is going to be a tough one to write out. I apologize in advance if this is a difficult read for anyone struggling this season over the loss of a loved one, but this is something central to where I am in my spiritual journey - and I know I am not the only one. Holiday seasons can bring a lot of hope, joy, love, and fun; but for many it can also bring back reminders of people that we no longer have with us to enjoy this season with. One of those people is my dad. My dad was my rock, my superhero…always reliable, full of life, love, and fun. He was a one-of-a-kind pastor. At 69, he had the energy of kid and everyone who met him instantly became a new friend. Dad never met a stranger.
Dad got sick with COVID during Thanksgiving. He was visiting my sister and I here in Navarre, and at 2am on that Thanksgiving morning he and mom drove to Gulf Breeze hospital because it was hard for him to breathe. They released him later that morning and said to come back if he gets worse. We celebrated Thanksgiving and decided to celebrate his 70th birthday (which is on November 29th) the next day so he and mom could drive back to Tallahassee in case he started to get worse.
It’s only when you look back on things that you see the finality in them. The last hug, the last words, the last laugh. You don’t know it when it happens, life isn’t always fair in that way. I was already having a really tough year, and during Thanksgiving (despite being sick) dad still wanted to make sure I was okay. He gave me a tight hug, chucked my chin, and said, “You got this.” That was last time I saw him awake.
The next few weeks were anything but festive. While the world began trying to have as normal of a Christmas season as it could, my family experienced the nightmare of having a loved one in the hospital with COVID. No one is allowed to visit the patient, so updates could only be made whenever we called the nurse’s station to get the latest on how he was doing. There was a point when I think Dad truly realized he wasn’t going to make it. We got a call from his cell phone (I think the nurse may have helped him) and he wanted to tell us that he loved us. “Take care of one another,” he said as we all fought back tears. That was the last time we heard him. Dad was put on a ventilator shortly after that and was never able to recover.
I do have one solace in the fact that by the time we all knew the inevitable was going to happen, we were able to visit him in the ICU – one at a time. Some say when you’re sedated the patient can still possibly hear you, so we made an effort to talk to him as much as we could. I will always remember those last precious moments with Dad. During one of my visits, I brought his Bible and the anointing oil he would use on people to pray over them when they were sick. I anointed his head and then read the entire Gospel of Matthew to him by his bedside. Despite it all, my family and I were blessed to be at his bedside when the ventilator was taken off and we heard his last few breaths. We played his favorite songs from the Gaither Vocal Band and allowed him to be carried to Jesus. It was also the most beautiful day outside, as if the heavens had opened up and the party started just for him.
Many have stories like this. And they are carrying a heavy burden this holiday season. Thanksgiving and Christmas will always have a tie to the experience I have with the loss of my dad. I’ve had to learn what grief is, but I do not lose hope. And if anything, that’s what this season is about: hope. I heard a quote from Marvel’s WandaVision show recently that has stuck with me: “What is grief, if not love persevering?” And in a way I think that line beautifully encapsulates the feelings I have over the loss of my dad. When I grieve, I am continually showing the deep love I have for him. The love I have for my dad perseveres.
Christ’s love for us also perseveres. We are reminded during this time of the year that Christ is the hope of the world. The beautiful, peaceful babe born in a manger has come to give us hope. Despite the grief that God has with His people turning away from Him, His love perseveres. Despite Jerusalem rejecting its Savior at the time of the Messiah, His love perseveres. And it continues to persevere for us today. God sending his Son into the world is the ultimate sign of God’s persevering love for us. Grief is not something to necessarily avoid. In fact, some of the most beautiful, enlightening, and breathtaking art the world has ever seen or heard came from an overflow of grief. Our grief does not have to paralyze us. It can be used to create something new or motivate us. It was out of grief over His people turning away from Him that God sent his son Jesus into the world. His love for us was persevering when that tiny babe was wrapped in a manger. His love for us was persevering when that babe grew up to suffer for our sins and die on the cross.
May that hope continue to strengthen us and bless us throughout the season and beyond.
Baby Its Cold Outside
It’s finally December, which means its officially Christmas music season on all the radio stations. Radio listeners will get to hear all the classics, the modern renditions of the classics, and the one or two new Christmas songs for the year. But one song you likely won’t hear on the radio this year, well at least the past few years, is Baby It’s Cold Outside. A few years ago radio stations pulled the song from their rotations and caused a huge controversy that keeps rearing it’s head every Christmas season. As a self admitted Grinch, I don’t even remember hearing the song before Will Farrell and Zooey Deschanel sang it in the movie Elf. So I was surprised that it had such a strong following to begin with, and then even more surprised that the song is over 50 years old and I was just oblivious to it for the majority of my life.
Baby It’s Cold Outside has been around at least since Dean Martin sang it in 1959. A quick look at the lyrics will find no swear words, and what was considered pretty innocent flirting at the time. If we were using movie style ratings it would get a very mild PG, for implied alcohol consumption and kissing references (fully stretching with those). With next to nothing unclean in the song, why would a reasonable person ban the song from the radio?
Even though it feels like an eternity ago, Baby It’s Cold Outside was banned in the later part of 2018. Two very important things happened before this. The first was that the #MeToo hashtag started at the end of 2017, and eventually became a movement in 2018. It gained even more attention after Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual abuse by more than a dozen women. Moving into the Christmas season of 2018 there were a lot of open conversations about how common sexual abuse is. In this new environment, people started to realize that the seemingly innocent flirting in Baby It’s Cold Outside reflected several real world scenarios where a man wouldn’t take no for an answer and either by force or by coercion put women in situations they weren’t comfortable with (to put it mildly). In other words, it’s a song about a man continually badgering a woman who flat out says “The answer is no” and we label it as flirtatious.
I realize that “badgering” is a bit on the strong side, especially in the context of the song and the way that it was intended to be interpreted (playful/flirtatious). However, we have to be aware that for far too many people, this brings back memories of truly horrific events that were not playful or flirtatious. The other side of all of this is what a “ban” of this song actually means. The way some people make it seem you would think that there are cries for the song to be removed from the face of the Earth. While there probably do exist some people who think that way, what the practice and main controversy entail is the removal of the song from radio playlists. What that means is that people are trying to eliminate the instances where the song will spontaneously play without the listener’s foreknowledge. You cans till find hundreds of versions of the song on Spotify, YouTube, and probably even CD (do people even buy CDs anymore?). In other words, it’s not a true ban, just not broadcasting it on a radio station where there is no “next” button.
The bottom line is there are reasonable people on both sides of this argument. The song was intended to be innocent (well at least as innocent as two adults engaging in consensual relations can be) but it has real world implications that can make it very uncomfortable for thousands of people (on average there are 463,634 victims of rape and sexual assault each year). If you want to listen to the song, you have several avenues to listen to it any time you want. If you don’t want to listen to it, I’m glad that you won’t turn on the radio and hear it unwillingly.
Of course, I wouldn’t complain if they banned all Christmas songs and movies, but I’m just a grinch that way.
I Told You So
I don’t care who you are, I TOLD YOU SO are not words that are well received. Nobody likes to hear those words, even if we know the person is right! I have known people who will invent different scenarios just in case there is a small chance they get the opportunity to say, I TOLD YOU SO!
I have done my best through the years to look at things differently. I have certainly had my moments where I acted or spoke and there was no need to. We've all had those moments when we look back and want to kick ourselves.
Ephesians 4: 2
2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
I remember years ago, my son and I were walking around the mall and decided to take a break. As we were sitting on a bench, I asked him if he would shake my hand. When he did, I explained to him that shaking a person’s hand is an honest gesture of acknowledgment. I told him, it is important not to bury the person’s hand; but to grasp it firmly, shake it, and let them know you are honestly glad to meet them. We got up from the bench and no more than 2 minutes later, a colleague of mine came up to us. As I introduced my son, the man shook his hand. The next thing the man said to my son was, "Nice handshake, young man."
I can still remember the look my son gave me to this day!
In Romans Chapter 5: 3-5
3 Not only so, but we[a] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Each time we fall short, God is preparing us and molding us into the people he knows we can be.
So, this week is the week that has been set aside for us to step back and count all the blessings God has given us. Scripture says:
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
We will gather around family and friends the next 5 weeks and sometimes those with strong personalities will “Get on our Nerves,” and many will want to be right and say I TOLD YOU SO!
This is not a time for right and wrong. This is a time to gather with many unique personalities and be thankful for the blessings we have.
A friend of mine has a quote that says “Quit griping that your stuff is tearing up! Be thankful you have stuff”. Step back and take your eyes off all the "stuff" and look at all the people around you that you have the opportunity to share your life with. God has blessed us.
So, the next time you have the urge to say I TOLD YOU SO, step back and see if this can be a moment of trust, admiration, or clarity. When you say I TOLD YOU SO, it is for your personal benefit? Does it make the other person feel less? Somehow, that does not feel like the right thing to do!
Have a great Holiday Season,
Mike
Living Each Day
Living in the present, not the past, is much easier said than done. We read about living intentionally, about being in the moment, about not dwelling on the past, and not to ruminate over our past mistakes and failures.
How many times have we told ourselves that we should not have said something, and even more often, how many times have we not said something that we should have said. We can not go back and relive any moment in time. Each minute of each day is given to us. It is a gift. A once in a lifetime opportunity. What is it that holds us back from telling a family member that we love them? Paying a compliment to a stranger? Holding the door for the person behind us? Letting in 1 car on highway 98? And even more so, sharing the Gospel?
And yet we all will need to account for our actions, our speech, and our passing up of opportunities. Each moment is a once in a lifetime gift to us, not to given up to a missed opportunity, telling ourselves that there is always tomorrow, or we can do it next time. This is the time. This is the moment that we have been given. Let us go forward, living each day as the gift that it is, and sharing that gift. Let us live each day, as we wish we would have lived it. when we stand before God.
Laura Beth Snow is the manager at our Good Neighbor Thrift Store and We Care. Her laugh and smile are contagious and she continues to break store records on a regular basis.
Religious Exemption
Nobody likes getting shots. There’s an inherent fear about sticking long needles through your skin and injecting something foreign into your body. Yet, over the past several months millions of people have voluntarily received a vaccine for COVID. It wasn’t until move recently where it stopped being voluntary for certain groups of people. The word mandate just rubs people the wrong way to begin with, but when it’s about something that has been as politically divisive and hotly debated as this vaccine it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some people are looking for a way to get around the mandate.
What has caught me by surprise is the number of people that are now trying to claim religious exemption from the shot. Because this is such a sensitive and passionate subject for some, I have to put in a disclaimer here. This is not about whether a vaccine mandate is ethical, the politics behind the shots, or anything other than the logical conclusions of being a Christian and receiving any vaccine or modern medicine.
The starting point for most religious exceptions to the shot are from the use of aborted fetal cells in the development of the vaccine. This is, of course, part of a much larger conversation, but in general the church has been historically opposed to abortion. People argue that the use of cells that were obtained in a way that departs from church doctrine is sufficient enough to exclude them from the shot. This is a reasonable conclusion. Where things become less reasonable is when you consider that this isn’t the first or only vaccine to contain these cells. Hepatitis A, Rabies, Rubella, and Chicken pox vaccines also use these cells.
We also have to talk about where these cells originated from. All fetal cells used for vaccine research are from two abortions preformed legally back in the 1960’s. Scientists continue to develop and grow these cells in laboratories, which means that the cells used in todays vaccines are several generations removed from the original cells. In other words, we are now over 50 years removed from the actual origin of these cells.
At this point, the argument becomes whether or not all vaccines or medical practices that have roots in areas that go against the church are permissible or should be avoided. There isn’t a single mainline denomination that has officially objected vaccines. Even the Catholic Church, which is vocal about its objections to abortion, took a stand back in 2017 and said that the lack of vaccinations represents a serious health risk. It’s for these reasons that very few religious exemptions are granted, because there really isn’t much to go on. If you have been consistent in refusing modern medical treatment in favor of miraculous healing and have refused every shot or vaccine because of the origins all for religious convictions, then you have a solid argument for a religious exemption.
The other piece of all of this, beyond the medical realm, is the continuity through the rest of their personal lives. I’m reminded a little of Samson from the Old Testament. He had a legitimate religious objection to cutting his hair. However, he slept around, was an alcoholic, and in just about every other way lived a life that did not reflect any kind of religious leaning. That’s why he’s a bit of an anti-hero of the Bible and not exactly the model we want to follow. His story illustrates that even with some deeply held religious convictions, if our whole lives don’t reflect those values we are really missing the mark.
So while there is a small basis for religious exemption from vaccines, it’s really from a viewpoint to which few Christians actually ascribe. Without the full conviction and followthrough in all areas, what this push for religious exemption has become is more of a political scapegoat that hurts the church. I’m aware that this might be a very unpopular statement. However, I’m also confident that this statement wouldn’t be controversial at all three years ago. Our doctrine on the issue hasn’t changed, and we need to be carefully and prayerfully intentional about allowing current events to change our theology.