My Best Christmas Ever

One person who we interact with here in Manila has been so devastated by the Ondoy Flood earlier this year that she is in a mode of hinting to us and to everyone we and she knows that she could use some extra help. We have already helped her and we are continuing to help her which will include a Christmas blessing that she and her family will receive on New Years Eve.

In the meanwhile, we have to watch our attitudes so that we don’t get annoyed at all of the hinting, remembering that she is in a desperate situation. She has a decent home but they don’t have a stitch of furniture anymore, barely were able to afford to re-outfit their kids for school and she does laundry every night because her family members only have a few items of clothing. As with most of the victims of the flood, it will take more then a year to recover.

This constant hinting has gone to a new intensity the closer we get to Christmas because of the expectation that most of us have that we should be able to do special things such as exchange gifts and share special meals (multiple times) in order to... celebrate the birth of Jesus?

This last Sunday, I delivered a sermon entitled “Egyptian Escape” which is about the account in Matthew 2:13-15 where we read that Joseph was instructed by an angel to escape with Jesus and Mary to Egypt until Herod died. This was to avoid Jesus being killed after the Magi foiled his plot.

One of the main points we can understand from this account is that after a great victory will often come a brutal attack. Sometimes, God will direct us to escape to a foreign place that we don’t want to go for a season. Jesus was not a slave in Egypt as the Children of Israel had been at one time, but it was definitely uncomfortable. If living in a foreign place was not uncomfortable at some level, don’t you think there would be more missionaries to hard places?! :-) I don’t imagine that Mary felt that abandoning their home, business & disappearing from their family was any small thing! It’s good that the Magi had endowed them with riches enough to sustain them for this season... God’s provision for sure!
To give a summery of this teaching, it is important that we come back and don’t get stuck in our Egypt. You can delve further into this by reading the original prophesy quoted by Matthew in Hosea 11. A breakthrough point from this prophesy is that Jesus went to Egypt and was then called out of Egypt and we can follow Him by following His roar. In my opinion, the Roar of His Word! Amen! Don’t get me started...

Back on track, I shared about one of my Egypt experiences which has stayed with me to become what I consider my best Christmas ever.

This is more then 15 years ago now. I had experienced a severe business failure. What this meant is that we moved from a large and comfortable home to a small and cold apartment. We called it “cozy” but that was to throw anyone off the scent who might have discovered we had been forced to downsize. Even worse, we went from driving beautiful cars to driving a car that I could not determine the color of. It was so oxidized that I could not tell if it had originally been green, or brown, or...?? My two kids were so horrified that they no longer wanted me to drop them off at school. They instructed me to drop them off a block and a half away and they walked the rest of the way. EGYPT!!!

I went into a depression that I almost didn’t make it out of which lasted nearly two years. My wife HAD to work for the first time during our marriage... I had previously always brought home more then enough bread.

We didn’t have a Christmas tree for the first time ever, not even one present for anyone in the house and we were anticipating not tasting turkey, ham or any other holiday food. We were eating toast with small amounts of melted cheese (sometimes) and top ramen (all the time).

It was a few days before Christmas and it was cold. My oldest son discovered a notice on the door informing us that our power was going to be shut off due to non-payment of our electric bill. I didn’t have it. EGYPT!!!

I heard that the Salvation Army was paying power bills as their primary form of charity at the time. I swallowed my pride and went to their office. I sat in the car for what seemed like an eternity as I built up the courage to go in... Or was it as I killed my nasty pride. I was an arrogant, a self made person who had never received charity before in my life. And that was the problem. I wanted to be self made. And this was what I believe God wanted to deal with. My attitude, my pride, my arrogance. I told the congregation yesterday that they wouldn’t have wanted to know me back then... and that I wouldn’t have wanted to know them either!

I went in. Nobody else was there except for one secretary. I took that as an answer to prayer that God was allowing me to remain mostly anonymous! The young Jamaican woman took my disconnection notice, called the power company and handled it in about 3 minutes. She then asked me some details about my family.

When I walked in the door of the house, my wife anxiously asked if it had been handled. I gave her the good news, but I was still rocked by the ordeal of killing my pride. I was grateful but embarrassed.

Not long after I arrived home, a van pulled up from Saint Vincent De Paul, the Catholic Charity. That Jamaican secretary had called them! They put a tree in our place and filled the space under it with presents for Chad and Devin with their names on them. Then they brought bags of groceries in! Unbelievable!

To this day, I am thankful for and occasionally support the Salvation Army. I was thrilled when they received the 1 billion dollar donation from Mrs. Croc, the wife of the founder of McDonald’s a few years ago. Praise God!

I firmly believe that God changed me on that day and in that season of my life. I would not be where I am today if it had not been for being forced to overcome my pride while living in Egypt.

I know that I need more Egypt experiences in order to continue to become the person that God wants me to be. I’m in EGYPT now in some ways. How about you? This is sure to be another stellar Christmas filled with anticipation, hope and adoration of Jesus. It will be a great year for you too, no matter your economic condition... as long as you follow the roar of Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah out of Egypt as well! Let us not turn the 11 day journey into a 40 year journey as the children of Israel did long ago...

Let us stand on His Word and on His promises! The best is yet to come, partly because He will bless us more and more, but more importantly, we will be more and more ready to receive His blessings! For we are stewards of God and “it is required of stewards that we be found faithful!”