Traditions – Godinterest

December 21, 2024December 21, 2024

Hurting Holidays Pt 3

If you are hurting this holiday season remember:

Christ is the hope for the broken-hearted. Pain is real. He felt it. Heartbreak is inevitable. He experienced it. Tears come. His did. Betrayal happens. He was betrayed.

He knows. He sees. He understands. And, He loves deeply, in ways we can’t even fathom. When your heart breaks at Christmas, when the pain comes, when the whole thing seems like more than you can bear, you can look to the manger. You can look to the cross. And, you can remember the hope that comes with His birth.

The pain may not leave. But, His hope will swaddle you tight. His gentle mercy will hold you until you can breathe again. What you long for this holiday may never be, but He is and is to come. You can trust that, even in your holiday hurts.

Be patient and kind to yourself. Give yourself extra time and space to process your hurt, and reach out to others around you if you need extra support.

Find a cause to invest in. There is a saying, “grief is just love with no place to go.” Find a cause that honours the memory of a loved one. Giving time or money to a suitable charity can be helpful, as it gives expression to the love in your heart.

Create new traditions. Hurt changes us. Sometimes it is helpful for us to change our traditions to create a new normal. If you have a holiday tradition that feels unbearable, don’t do it. Instead, consider doing something new… Creating new traditions can help alleviate some of the added sadness old traditions often bring.

Today, you may be overwhelmed, bruised and broken, but there is still goodness to be welcomed and blessings to be claimed this season, even in pain. There will be holidays in the future when you will feel stronger and lighter, and these very difficult days are part of the road to them, so accept whatever gifts God has for you. You may not fully open them for years, but unwrap them as the Spirit gives you strength, and watch the heaviness and hurt disappear.

“And in the same way the Spirit is a help to our feeble hearts: for we are not able to make prayer to God in the right way; but the Spirit puts our desires into words which are not in our power to say.” (Romans 8:26)

Let’s Pray

Yahweh, thank You for Your greatness. Thank You that when I am weak, You are strong. Father, the devil is scheming and I know he desires to keep me from spending time with You and loved ones this holiday. Don’t let him win! Give me a measure of Your strength so that I might not give into discouragement, deception and doubt! Help me honour You in all my ways, in Jesus’ Name! Amen.

April 16, 2018April 16, 2018

The Gospel: From Oral Tradition to the Written Text

The oral tradition begins our discussion today. You have to start with the presumption, How did Christ become God? The phrases used in years gone past is the historical Jesus and The Christ of faith in the New Testament. The argument goes that the historical Jesus is factually correct but the Church made Christ into a God. How do we resolve these issues?

How do you prove that the historical Jesus is the same as the Christ of Faith? We already have evidence that historical Jesus lived and walked the earth. This was well documented in the previous blog, Did Christ live? Just because you can not prove something does not mean it is not true.

Most cultures even today teach by oral tradition, word of mouth. During the time of Jesus, nobody could read or write they were illiterate on this point. Does not mean they were stupid. This means that during Jesus time you had an event, then that event was retold over and over again. Rabbinical teaching would teach by word of mouth, retelling the event over and over again, till the student would remember it and was able to pass it along to others. This way the student could memorize large portions of the Torah.

In an oral society there are three ways to retell an event;

Informal uncontrolled, which means anyone could tell the event with no controls as to the accuracy of the story.
Formal control, this meant that only the Rabbinical priest could retell the story.
Informal control, this meant during the first century of Christ the apostles or disciples would retell the story. This is where you see the different versions of events in the gospels between Matthew, Mark or Luke. However, if you were retelling an event. You had respected folks in the community that would correct you on your story. Perhaps they were an eyewitness to something or that was not the way they were taught. So you have differences in the story but it does not take away the core of the story. It stays factually true.

During the times of Christ in America as early as the 18th-century children were taught to memorize the entire Bible by their parents and the schools. Just a footnote.

We can all remember a core event like when America landed on the moon. We can retell the core of the story but perhaps not who the astronauts were. However, in a corporate pool, you have more folks remembering and coming closer to the truth. It takes on its own life. The core of the story does not change the morality of it. This was the same mechanisms in place during the time of Christ.

It must be noted that during the first century their memorization skills vastly outpaced ours nowadays. Everyday life had to be memorized not like today where we write everything down. Coupled with the fact as it states in John 14: 26,

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you”.

I believe the Holy Spirit would have made sure the stories retained their accuracy. So can we trust the gospels with their variations? I would have to say yes.

Do We Know Who Wrote the Gospels? We have seen that in an oral society as was the case with Jesus in the first century. There were rigid traditions in place to safeguard the accuracy of the events. Keep this in mind when we look at the authorship of the 4 gospels. The church just would not have assigned just anybody’s name to the different synoptic gospels. Without having clear evidence of authorship at hand.

November 25, 2017November 26, 2017

The Benefit of Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude

When I was growing up, the day after Thanksgiving was always one of the best. My dad and one of his friends planted three acres of pine trees on a north facing hill. The plan was that one-day mom and dad would build their dream home in the middle of those pine trees.

“O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree How lovely are thy branches.”

As life happens, those house plans stayed in that cardboard tube and never grew at all. Ahhh..but those pine trees? They grew and grew and grew, and after Thanksgiving, the phone rang and rang and rang.

Lucky for me, Dad and I (probably my big brother too, but I was to self-involved to log that into my memory banks) would walk through that towering green forest (at least it was to me) to find the perfect tree to tag just for us. By the time we returned, Mom would have hot chocolate waiting with plenty of marshmallows.

“Your boughs so green in summertime Stay bravely green in wintertime.”

As the first weeks of December began, Mom would have some kind of Christmas craft for us to do together. Sometimes they were for us; but most of the time, we would give them away. Sometimes to relatives. Sometimes to friends. Sometimes dropped off in secret as a Christmas miracle.

Nighttimes were devoted to watching mom sit at the cardboard table, writing card after card while Dad and I watched TV, read, or individually – a nap for Dad and homework for me. Friends, Relatives, Dad’s Army buddies, Business acquaintances. I still don’t know how she ever managed to work a full-time job, put up with me, care for a husband who had his first of three heart attacks when I was 10, and write L-O-N-G greetings to each person on the list.

“Let us all remember our gift giving and our merriment with our family and friends and loved ones real and true meaning of Christmas birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ”

That Gratitude Attitude kicked in today as I finished up my own tradition of decorating around the house by the end of Thanksgiving weekend. My furbaby who tore her ACL now is sick and not eating. We are praying it is a passing thing, but the worry is still lurking as I sit on the floor with her and look at the decorations around the house.

“When I look back on the suffering in my life, this may sound really strange, but I see it now as a gift. I would have never asked for it for a second. I hated it while it was happening and I protested as loudly as I could, but suffering happened anyway. Now, in retrospect I see the way in which it deepened my being immeasurably.” ~ Ram Dass

Traditions are treasures to hold close to the heart. However, those traditions tend to change as one family member morphs their traditions with a spouse’s traditions.

There is only one constant. One very precious constant.

While I am thankful for traditions, I am more thankful for the birth of a baby. A baby who brought us more than traditions. He brought us a new covenant a new chance to return to the Garden, a new chance to see Him face-to-face.

Grace. “O tannenbaum, o tannenbaum How lovely are, are thy branches.”~”O Tannenbaum”, 1824