Life's fulfillment in the Great Divine
Some old friends came by to check on some of my goat ladies I had for sale. My favorite goat gets a great home nearby & I might get some of her kids if I ever need any. Why sell my favorite goat, you ask? The one I kept gives more milk longer. Personality only goes so far when you’re talking feeding the children. I’m content knowing she is nearby with some of my favorite folks. 
1O LORD, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty;
Nor do I involve myself in great matters,
Or in things too difficult for me.
2Surely I have composed and quieted my soul;
Like a weaned child rests against his mother,
My soul is like a weaned child within me.
3O Israel, hope in the LORD
From this time forth and forever.
She isn’t the epitome of beauty. He has his eyes closed as if drinking her in her smell, enjoying living in this moment.The windows look as if they haven’t been cleaned all year, yet he still seems to LOVE his wife in a tender embrace. I have the strong feeling it was not a staged photo, just one caught off guard, as if it were a natural, every day occurrence. They have been together for many years and have many children, yet true love never fails. He jealously guards over her comings & goings because one time I wanted her to come up to meet her face to face, but he was hesitant to let her travel so far unprotected. I bet this home is his safe haven from the cruel world. He wouldn’t endanger that treasure for the world.
I wonder who took this sweet photo? An older child who feels the warmth of this marriage?
I have been reading Madam Guyon’s autobiography the last few days & and she is wonderful. You have to take some of her viewpoints with a grain of salt as Martin Luther’s reformation hadn’t quite taken off yet, so she was stuck in the Catholic church, but ahead of her time. I love this lady’s zeal for Christ & and honesty. Here is a quote I value from her book.
“…if the value of prayer were but known, the great advantage which accrues to the soul from conversing with Thee, and what consequence it is of to salvation, everyone would be assiduous in it. It is a stronghold into which the enemy cannot enter. He may attack it, besiege it, make noise about it’s walls, but while we are faithful and hold our station, he cannot hurt us.“
Christ charges me to believe His daylight at midnight.
Look for crosses, and while it is fair weather mend the sails of the ship.
Let not the Lord’s dealings seem harsh, rough, or unfatherly, because it is unpleasant. When the Lord’s blessed will bloweth cross your desires, it is best in humility to strike sail to him and to be willing to be laid any way our Lord pleaseth; it is a point of denial of yourself, to be as if ye had not a will, but had made a free disposition of it to God, and had sold it over to him; and to make use of His will for your own is both true holiness, and ease your peace.
“16 I heard and my heart pounded,
my lips quivered at the sound;
decay crept into my bones,
and my legs trembled.
Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity…
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD,” (I will speak to my heart)
“I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
I’ve been busy! This post has given me fits, I can’t get it to do right. I wanted the pictures bigger with an explanation in between, but alas, they don’t even show up on the edit page. You have to click on the picture to get it to come in larger.
The first one is my butter bean row with my all purpose birthing stool that I use to scoot along & pick the bb. It takes 2 & a half hours to get down. That is Susie our dog running down it.
The next pic is the tomatoe row, peppers, & snap beans. The rows are so long, you can barely see in this picture that Neo & Hallel are at the end of these rows, in the middle. Next pic, Neo is by our very hopeful, fledgling watermelon patch. The second to the last picture is the butter bean row from the other end. The purple hull pea rows are behind Neo and the okra is ahead. You can’t see Hallel in the last pic in the corn because it is too small, but she is there. Maybe Hannah can figure out how to get these pic.s straightened out, but she now has her own blog!
My children went through a phase of taking movie character profile quizzes. “What character are you in Pride & Prejudice? Who are you in Narnia? There were some on the internet & some were on face book. I was dully amused by results. There was one good one, “What historical figure are you?” Ron was William Wallace, (yes, I cannot believe he took it!) and Caleb Frederick was William Wilberforce.
What I would like to see is a Pilgrim’s Progress personality quiz. If I were more savvy with details & had more spare time, I would like to develop this quiz. I’d make people take it who wanted to join our church. (So… should we kick Mr. Worldly Wiseman out, or hope he’ll see the error of his way & repent?) I personally pray He’d send us His lovers.
I do think it might be beneficial to see where you stand.
When Ron & I first got married, we attended a Bible study every Fri. night. One of our friends brought some guy she was evangelizing. He was very eager to come, asked many questions, and was quite faithful. It wasn’t long, however, until we saw his motive. He was gathering information. We were going through Revelations, which is a topic most anyone who isn’t even a believer, can be interested in. As we got to know him better, we found him knowledgeable on many topics, anything you can think of, actually. He could drone on for hours after it was over about many meaningless things. He wasn’t interested in Christ, he was interested in this girl who’d brought him, (she wasn’t interested in him) and he was also interested in getting a little more knowledgeable in Biblical mysteries. I think so to puff himself up as a know it all on great things. We’d met Talkative.
In the quiz, I’d have a selection of movie entertainment choices. There’d be comedies, dramas, documentaries, or anything Oscar award winning. I know it would have to be more specific, such as missionary documentary or the great drama of Amazing Grace, but you get the gist. This idea is in infancy, welcoming your input.
Favourite reading choices: classics, the newspaper (or web news,) theology, the Bible, biographies, thesaurus, ect.
Where is most of your treasure? Here or THERE?
Vacation preference? Trip to Scotland, Calcutta, Ethiopia, or Hawaii?
There are so many characters in PP that could be developed. I do think it is important to be face to face with who you are. Mr. Fearing is one of my favourite characters. He had his faults, but he knew his desired destination.
We recently listened to a sermon by Paul Washer called “10 Indictments.” He said something that resounded with me. He said the church is not a whore, the church is the Bride of Christ, so be careful how you speak of her. His bride may not be perfect, but she is his & is out there devoted & true to him. A lot of goats are in the church, who sound like sheep, (people who come to our farm are sometimes mistaken in the identity of the two) are smearing the image of His bride. His bride LOVES HIM. We are like fish out of water when we don’t walk in obedience to Him. Our lives are miserable existences when we don’t walk in obedience & communion with HIM. We have a magnetized needle in our heart that points North to our Christ. No apologies. The goats in the church do not love Him or care anything about obedience or the glory of His Name. On the contrary, they like to see how much they can get by with & still have their ‘Golden Ticket.’ What is culturally acceptable for the ‘Christian’ to get away with, but still be labeled *Christian.* When a Christian finds a hard saying, he might think, ‘oh woe is me, that looks hard, but O God, please give me the grace.’ “I desire to do Your will, O God.”
The heart is desperately wicked & DECEITFUL above all things. I think some people who honor Him with their lips, don’t realize how far their hearts are from Him. I think a personality quiz could nail it. If only I had time, or maybe you do?
Do you have just an idea to throw in the pot about a character trait for one of the travelers?
I came across this photo last night in my new, ever growing interest in medicinal herbology. A Picasso, Monet, or my personal favorite, Andreas Orpineas, couldn’t have had more of an emotional impact on me than this beautiful, intricate little work of art my Father made.
This little seed. It is not a mustard seed, such as the kingdom of heaven is like. It is a curry leaf tree seed that when matured can be used externally to cure eruptions and the bites of poisonous animals. The green leaves are to be eaten raw for curing dysentery, and the infusion of the washed leaves stops vomiting. The chemical examination of this oil has been reported to exhibit a strong antibacterial and antifungal activity.
Wow…Revelations 22:2 “And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” Ezekiel 47:12” Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.”I am finding God has given us abundant natural medicines in proliferate varieties of fruits, vegetable, leaves, & flowers; it is so exciting because so much of it is still so undiscovered. God gives us healing for our bodies by what He provides. Man, in setting himself up to be God, thinks he has trumped the healing answer in a chemist lab, only to yield super-bugs & vast amounts of side effects known & yet unknown. But all this is not my point.
One of my all-time favourite parables is the Sower & the Seed. (Mt.13 & Mark 4) It was, even before I became a farmer’s wife. The gospel seed is God’s seed. He is male, the church is female. The seed of the gospel comes to the church. The seed of man comes to a woman’s womb.( I tend to disagree with the pro-life movement who say life begins at fertilization. I don’t see that anywhere in scripture. Who came up with that? What scriptural basis do they have? I haven’t seen none at all in all my scriptural back & forths. God says life is in the seed. Job 10:10″ Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again?10 Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, Hebrews 7:1010because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor. Proverbs 23:22″Listen to your father, who gave you life“) The womb & the soil nurture & give the seed a place to grow & thrive.
What kind of ’soil’ will the seed find when it hits your heart? A hard, rejecting path that the seed cannot penetrate so lays upon the ground for the birds come to eat? Paths are made by much traveling on the dirt. Some of the most resistant people to the gospel are those who’ve had much traffic on their soil. They think because they’ve gone to church their whole life & said a ‘magic formula prayer, they’re ok. They go & do their duty week after week, year after year, while their mind is a million miles away from the most exciting sermons & they’re hearts are far from Him, while they honor Him with their lips. One modern example is when a lot of those kids who’ve grown up & said the ‘magic formula prayer’ get home from 4 or so years of college, and that magic formula prayer goes “poof” & all effects disappear. Another is the American church’s divorce rate. I personally haven’t stayed married to Ronnie all this time because we’ve have goose bumps romance, we weren’t high school sweethearts, & there were a lot of years the locusts ate before we met. I’ve stayed married to him more than one time because I loved Christ, my First Love, more than him. “A cord of three strands isn’t quickly torn apart.” Ecclesiastes
“Some (seeds of the gospel Lk. 8:11) fell among the rocky places, where they did not have much soil. They immediately sprang up, but withered in the scorching sun because it had no root.” Roots are what pull the water & nutrients out of the soil for the growth & health of the plant. Jesus is our Living Water. We grow by partaking of “My Flesh is food,”(the Body of Christ) ” solid food is for the mature,” & “it is My food to do the will of the One Who sent Me.” The heat comes on the seed in this unfortunate nook & it withers away by persecution or affliction because it had not enough soil for a root, even though at first it was received with great joy.
“Still other seed fell among the thorns..” Aaahh… the part of my favourite parable that Satan would tease me with for a few years before I came to Christ Community Church. I was tortured into thinking I was this soil. I was exasperated in the darkness of the shadow the Lord’s back turned to me.”My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” I had resolved to thinking I was an apostate, chosen to be an object of wrath, that I just had to uneventfully play the part in this sad land of woe. I felt the gospel seed was choking in what I thought was my thorny soil, even though I feebly cried for the contrary. In my busyness of being a mother with small children with a full time farm, the worries & cares (dissipations, distractions) of this life engulfed me. I saw no crop coming from the seed of the gospel in my life. My hope was, “I thought about the former days, the years of long ago; I remembered my songs in the night. My heart mused and my spirit inquired: “Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion?” Selah… Then I thought, “To this I will appeal: the years of the right hand of the Most High.” I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.” (Psalm 77) All was dead & barren. Unless the seed falls to the ground & dies, it remains only a single seed.
But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop. I often feel in my own life, I am no where near a harvest.
But oh, the beauty of life coming out of this little seed, reaching for the soil that will deprive it of life or nourish it. I see little gospel seeds cracking open around me in my church. If you know me, you know I love spring for the hope it holds, the dreams of things that might transpire, the seeds that might not only one day have blossoms, but actually come to bear fruit. What a blessing the many fruits our Father gives us are. When we abide in the Vine, we bear fruit, but apart from Him we can do nothing.
Oh Abba, Dearest Daddy, may our hearts be fertile soil for your gospel seed so that we may be a blessing of spiritual nourishment to those hungry for You & in need Your healing. Please may we be trees that bear good fruit, yielding a crop thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, until You are gracious to us.
The elders of the Daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence; they have sprinkled dust on their heads and put on sackcloth. The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. Lamentations 2:10
This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength Isaiah 30:15
He makes me lie down in green pastures Psalm 23:2
Tonight is one of those nights again I can’t sleep. I’m excited. My Great Divine is the Lover of my soul & I’m so full I need to pour forth. “My soul is satisfied as with the richest of foods.” The past two Sunday have been amazing! No matter who steps in the pulpit at our church, the result is electrifying. God is so good to bring us to green pastures! My heart cries, “Yes, yes!” to the things being spoken, I am as alive now as I was when I found my First Love. My pastor can slice religion off Christianity with the precision & skill of a brain surgeon. One of our other preacher brothers stirs my zeal to pursue hard after the “One my soul loves” like young David under the starry hosts playing his harp & watching over his sheep. I am in the company of great men & women of God who are concerned of the things of the Lord. I have been full circle.
I trust my Shepherd now when He uses the rod. It is to share in His holiness. I have felt the dark shadow of His back turned to me in my pride & self-righteousness. One form of self righteousness is when you get proud of the righteousness you’ve been *given* (keyword, here) & are frustrated when you try to get others to do it too, & they don’t want to. HE hasn’t called them there, YOU are trying to make them do *it.* ( Whatever you pet righteous act is.)The pride comes when you think others must be like *You* & do like *You* do. God can take care of His children, each one does the function He wants them to do, not what you decide for them to do or be like. He can take care of His business. The focus is not our righteous acts, the focus is Christ & Him alone. All other things flow out of Him. I now feel the light of His countenance turned towards me in clear fellowship again with a clean conscience. I am however, very rotton. He is holy. He has mercifully imputed His holiness to my rottoness. Nothing can change that I now know. I went through a dark time in my life when He applied the rod to me, & I sulked away in a corner thinking He didn’t love me. Things didn’t go my way. His ways are better than mine, I now trust him as a child trusts his parent when daddy says, “No, no, the flame is hot. You cannot play with that.’” He saves me from myself, He knows what I need, & when I need it. My Daddy is LOVE!!
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you.
1. I love thunderstorms…I love to see everything washed & brilliantly green after wards.
2. I love the fact I don’t sleep much these days. I like to get up before dawn & see the sunrise. I love the morning quiet & mist over the pasture. About 2 nights a week of sleeping like a rock is sufficient. Moms learn not to love sleep, just embrace the interruptions. (Although I think it is contributing to more wrinkles…., aaahhh well. So what.)
3. I have been miraculously married for almost 18yrs. to Ron. I can’t tell you how much of a hothead I was when I first married. I got fixed in the counseling office. I come from a multiple divorced home & needed a new Biblical perspective. I find I can keep my frustration level down if I concentrate on MY sins, instead of his annoying ones. (mine aren’t, ya know
4. I have this burning desire to be a part of a real revival movement, whether it be persecution or revival. Just something besides the norm. I can’t stand the thought that I might not be a part of a magnificent movement of the Lord, but if not, hallelujah, I’ll have to get over it.
5. I love meeting new people & finding out where they stand. I’m often too curious.
6. I live to evangelize. If I don’t get a good dose of it at least every now & then, I get depressed for me, which is basically a little grouchy. I wish the Lord would use me more, but maybe I’m not good & ready. I feel it is my gift. I want to be busy about my Father’s business and help people find the Light I enjoy. Mostly the last few years, it has been at home with the children. They can’t get that in public school, “The fear of the Lord is the BEGINNING of wisdom.”
7. I absolutely love spring! I love the growth of spring & detest the deadness of winter. I love the hope of things to come, whether it be planting this, that, or the other, or getting something else improved around the farm. And the new, warm nights with the crickets singing.
I love spring cleaning & de-cluttering, although you can’t tell it around my house. I can’t imagine how bad it would be if I didn’t try to stay on top of it. Heaven will be spring, winter is here looking through a glass darkly.
8. I love to sit outside on a full moon nights & commune with God, although I don’t do it enough.
9. I feel bad I was such a perfectionist parent with my eldest, but am very thankful God has given me grace to chill out to be a better mom with each consecutive child. The more I have, the better I get. Truly, women are saved in childbearing.
10. I love turbo…. too much. I don’t think the video games of race car driving gives a healthy concept of driving for young kids. I think I was negatively affected by it. If I had a hobby, I would like to be a race car driver. I’m not saying this is a good thing, just an adrenaline rush.
11. Don’t put off until tomorrow, what you can do today. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
12. I am a cheapskate, but am too cheap to get the Cheapskate Gazette. I think it stems from a perspective of “I don’t need it & it isn’t worth that.”
13. I like to be continuously spiritually challenged. I hate mediocrity & stagnation.
14. My favorite colors are forest green, midnight blue, & maroon (blood red)….I love rich, deep colors, but not to decorate with, only color with.
15. I am earthy when it comes to decorating…I like things made out of nature. Usually, however, Ron’s decorating trumps mine. He is a sanguine choleric.
16. I’m unusually amazed at the juice pods of grapefruits & oranges. I love this amazing creativity of God. I also to look at the texture of bananas. Garlic bulbs are beautiful, with the wispy, papery wrappers, & the ‘wrappers’ of pecans, pineapples, and coconuts were a stroke of His genius. (Better than shrink wrap for freshness) I mean, would you have thought of such things? It is cause for worship. Variety is the spice of life. Speaking of which, I take pictures of my Cincinnati chili spices. All of them in a bowl, unstirred yet, make a beautiful palette. They are so different & contrasting. Look up the recipe, it takes about 10 different spices; it is a favorite dish of the children.
17. I’m usually aware of the gift of sight & mobility God graciously gives everyday. I love to see the stars on a dark night in the country, the full moon with mist over the pasture, and the sun setting behind my childrens’ hair. I try to burn images in my mind that I treasure to see just in case I go blind one day. Weird, I know.
18. I’ve struggled for years to be compassionate. Finally, ‘he who has suffered in the flesh is done with sin’ & I’ve been given a decent measure of it. I’ve usually felt like you just need to suck it up & go on.
19. I abhor shopping for anything over $10. Why should I pay more when I could get something BNWT or very comparable at my Pontotoc Salvation Army, (as opposed to the Tupelo or New Albany ones that only put out junk.) God knows what I NEED & He’ll let it cross my path if He wants me to have it. God just blesses me sometimes with high ticket items. (My mom got me a $1,100 leather sofa for $150)
20. I can’t wait to die to be with Jesus, (not my mother, cousin, aunt, or whoever makes it before me). Phil 1:20. I want to go out with a bang, however, like martyrdom, not a plain death of dying in my sleep. I have my preference, but God knows what His plan is for me. I would like to be counted worthy for this, but not for my glory, but to inspire others to suffer for Him. He is totally worth dying for.”Fear not those who can kill the body, but He that has the power to cast your soul into hell.”
21. I kinda would like to go back to the Caribbean. My dad took me when I was nine & I loved the clear water & white sand. Not a priority at all, just if the Lord ever let me go again, it’d be nice.
22. I hate getting distracted by the TV. I think there is always something else to be doing, whether it be cleaning or changing the world by downloading theology into your brain so you can be salty, or contemplating my next blog post, or praying. I’m hoping facebook will have redemptive value in spurring one another on to good works & not become an unproductive branch in my life. I think it is an atrocious crime to be spiritually lazy if you are a Christian. What else are you here for? What other purpose do you serve? Sitting before worthless & un-redemptive entertainment? NOT!!!
23. I abhor most all sports, especially spectator sports. Volleyball is fun. I’m finding I’m beginning to enjoy sorta running. Meagan is pushing me. I always thought I hated it, but I feel great doing it & I need aerobic exercise in my life, not just busyness, before I need to fill out an application to be on “The Biggest Loser.”
24. I don’t like teasing, if you want to be mean, don’t make a joke of it. Repent, and say something that edifies, instead of tearing down, devouring one another.
25.I love groovy praise music & dancing to it with the kids. Sorry, CCC, the hymns don’t fit this category. The Union with Christ section is worth all the dull music because they are easy tunes to sing by myself when I’m thrown in jail one day for my un PC views. Music is fun with pep & a piano only can’t accomplish this. I am passionate about music, I really enjoy it. I guess I need to be more thankful for my hearing.
This time of year can be a very hard time of year for some people. Our culture says the way to emotional fulfillment is to walk around in a “Christmas haze” & become absorbed in the mystical “spirit of the season.” The ‘magic of Christmas’ should overtake your life with wonder & joy. It often tends toward unrealistic expectations, depression, and frustration for those who are not in Christ, and sometimes even for those that are. It can breed dissatisfaction with normal life.
Like I said in the previous post, I was born again in this frame of mind 20 years ago this Christmas morning. It wasn’t in a Christmas morning service either, I didn’t go to church. My deficiencies of the wondrous joys of the season started plaguing me after Thanksgiving. My sister & her husband had just married, so they were giddy newlyweds. I was recently singled and very depressed about it. Their home wasn’t the ideal place for me to live at that time, but it was where I wound up. I had a deep hole in my heart that I began to try to fill with a lot of things. I’ll skip glorifying sin, & sum it up with the fact that my conscience was defiled, I was empty, and the world & it’s delights were being realized for the fool’s gold they were. I surprised myself at the level of depravity I’d ‘attained’ as of late. I ran into an old friend of my brother’s who was a rough drug addict, but now was very different, gleaming with the joy of the Lord. There had been an obvious change in him. I tried to tell him my woes, he told me of the wonders of Jesus. I was happy for him and we parted ways. A couple weeks later on Christmas morning, about 4 am, I thought of him. God was ‘irresistibly drawing’ me. I was restless, ‘no sleep for the wicked’ for 2 days straight. I went to talk to him about God & he showed me the way. That morning my sins were washed away, a 1,000 lbs lifted off my back, and I had a peace I’d never had before. “Heaven came down and glory filled my soul..”
“The things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His Glory..”
That night I went to church for the first time in years, only to fall asleep. It was alright though, just a rough start to a new beginning. Christmas was now my new birthday, mine & Jesus’s. Right?
Weeeelllll, maybe not….
A careful analysis of Scripture clearly indicates that December 25 is an unlikely date for Christ’s birth. Here are two primary reasons: First, shepherds were in the fields watching their flocks at the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:7-8). Shepherds do not stay in the fields at night during December. Since December is cold and rainy in Judea, it is likely the shepherds would have sought shelter for their flocks at night. Second, Jesus’ parents came to Bethlehem to register in a Roman census (Luke 2:1-4). Such censuses were not taken in winter, when temperatures often dropped below freezing and roads were in poor condition. Taking a census under such conditions would have been self-defeating.
So how did we arrive at celebrating Christ’s birthday on this date? Christmas (Christ-Mass) as we know it today, most historians agree, began in Germany, though Catholics and Lutherans still disagree about which church celebrated it first. In 350, Pope Julius I declared that Christ’s birth would be celebrated on December 25. There is little doubt that he was trying to make it as painless as possible for pagan Romans (who remained a majority at that time) to convert to Christianity. In Rome, the Winter Solstice was celebrated many years before the birth of Christ. The Romans called their winter holiday Saturnalia, honoring Saturn, the God of Agriculture. In January, they observed the Kalends of January, which represented the triumph of life over death. This whole season was called Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The festival season was marked by much merrymaking. In northern Europe, many other traditions that we now consider part of Christian worship were begun long before the participants had ever heard of Christ. The pagans of northern Europe celebrated the their own winter solstice, known as Yule. Yule was symbolic of the pagan Sun God, Mithras, being born, and was observed on the shortest day of the year. As the Sun God grew and matured, the days became longer and warmer. It was customary to light a candle to encourage Mithras, and the sun, to reappear next year. In ancient Babylon, the feast of the Son of Isis Goddess of Nature) was celebrated on December 25. Raucous partying, gluttonous eating and drinking, and gift-giving were traditions of this feast.
It is popularized on the Christian radio the story that pagans have paganized a Christian holiday, even though the reality is the reverse.
The tree is the one symbol that unites almost all the northern European winter solstices. Live evergreen trees were often brought into homes during the harsh winters as a reminder to inhabitants that soon their crops would grow again. Evergreen boughs were sometimes carried as totems of good luck and were often present at weddings, representing fertility. The Druids used the tree as a religious symbol, holding their sacred ceremonies while surrounding and worshiping huge trees. The earliest record of an evergreen being decorated in a Christian celebration was in 1521 in the Alsace region of Germany. The Romans decked their halls with garlands of laurel and placed candles in live trees to decorate for the celebration of Saturnalia. In Scandinavia, they hung apples from evergreen trees at the winder solstice to remind themselves that spring and summer will come again. The evergreen tree was the special plant of their sun god, Baldor.
Jeremiah 10:1-4 “Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O House of Israel: Thus saith the LORD, learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain; for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold.
This verse is speaking of making idols.
One common reservation expressed about family Christmas observance is its tendency to promote worldliness or materialism in adults and children alike. This is certainly a legitimate concern. The manner in which a large percentage in our culture spend beyond their means and lavish their family members with frivolous gifts or unnecessary luxuries will certainly promote a selfishness, materialism, and greed that are contrary to the explicit teachings of Scripture. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” contradicts teaching our children to make a list of things they want for Christmas. 1 Timothy 6:8 “But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” For a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions (Luke 12:15), and because riches make themselves wings and fly away (Prov. 23:5), we should not set our affections upon them (Matt. 6:19). Scripture, moreover, regularly forbids a covetous, greedy, and discontented spirit (Prov. 1:19; Jer. 6:13; 1 Cor. 5:10,11; 6:10; Eph. 5:5). Is the gift giving & receiving the way to show our love for Chirst? Surely, it has nothing to do with personal gratification. How does it keep the children’s hearts & minds on Jesus’s birthday, as if that makes any sense? Seems more like they are trained to use ‘holy’ things as a means to selfish ends. In view of criticism of the commercialization of Christmas, it is interesting to note that the holiday’s secular, not its religious, aspect, has been most responsible for its popularity. Many Christians are uneasy about the crass commercialism and greed associated with with the day which they hold as ‘holy’. The lure of profit has proven so strong that, since the 1870s, merchants have vigorously promoted Christmas. In the United States “retailers have come to count on yuletide sales for up to 50 percent of their annual profits. The shopping season now pumps an estimated $37 billion into the nation’s economy. Without Christ’s birthday, how will this holiday stand? Should it stand? Can we evangelize the heathen without this holiday? Did Christ himself ask us to celebrate His birth?
He left explicit instructions regarding how His followers are to commemorate His death (1 Corinthians 11:23-26), but nothing about His birth. Man himself sanctioned this ‘holy day’ and the keeping of it is a ‘tradition of man,’ one that seems to be to me,’conforming to the pattern of this world‘ & not beneficial, but ‘legal’ nonetheless.
When the Puritans came to power in England, Parliament, in June,1647, they passed legislation abolishing Christmas and other holidays. In this legislation, they wrote the following: “For as much as the feast of the nativity of Christ, Easter, and other festivals, commonly called holy days, have been here-to-fore superstitiously used and observed; be it ordained that the said feasts, and all other festivals, commonly called holy days, be no longer observed as festivals.”
Christmas was not a holiday in early America for the Pilgrims. From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston…
Congress was in session on December 25, 1789, the first Christmas under America’s new constitution. Christmas wasn’t declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870.
Samuel Miller, a Puritan and professor of history and church government at Princeton Seminary, stated in 1896 in his book why Presbyterians reject the holy days of Christmas and Easter. He stated that “the Scriptures were the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and that no rite or ceremony ought to have a place in the public worship of Yahweh, which is not warranted in Scripture. Not only does the celebration of non-biblical holidays lack a scriptural foundation, but the scriptures positively discount it.”
Opposition to these church holidays remained in American Presbyterianism through the latter half of the 19th century. Historian Ernest Trice Thompson wrote the following:“There was no recognition of either Christmas or Easter in any of the Protestant churches, except the Episcopal and Lutheran. For a full generation after the Civil War, the religious journals of the South mentioned Christmas only to observe that there was no reason to believe that Jesus was actually born on December 25th; it was not recognized as a day of any religious significance in the Presbyterian Church.
Charles Spurgeon, stated in a sermon given on Christmas Eve, December 24th, 1871, the following:
“We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas: first, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be said or sung in Latin or English; and secondly, because we find no scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and, consequently, it’s observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority.” [C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 1971, pg. 697
The holidays of Christmas and Easter were banned from the Church of Scotland.
David Calderwood [1511-1651], representing the Scottish ministries, asserted in reference to Christmas and Easter: “The Judaical days had once that honor, as to be appointed by Yahweh Himself; but the anniversary days appointed by men have not like honor. This opinion of Christ’s nativity on the 25th day of December was bred at Rome.”
I am afraid that very often the Church gives a very unbalanced view of the Christ-child during the Christmas season. We must not let the world forget that Jesus grew up. When he did, he drove the moneychangers from the temple, ridiculed the Pharisees for their wicked perversions of God’s law, and spoke of the need for faith and repentance. Can the world see past the baby to the reality behind the Christ child — that God had become incarnate through the Virgin in order to save his people from their sins and judge all enemies of his kingdom or is His Name & Image in this season used in vain, violating commandment #3?
John 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
Note: These are just my personal views, I know of no one else who believes this strongly on this subject. So take it or leave it, just my ramblings.
