FAMILY IT! — Wednesday Family Devotional — “Unexpected Guests”

Supplies: Bible

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This week, PoC K.I.D.S. wraps up our “Unexpected Christmas” series as we look at the last part of the nativity story.  Read Luke 2:8-18 and Matthew 2:1-2, 7-11.

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“Unexpected guest” is not a phrase one hears much these days.  It’s become pretty taboo to arrive at someone’s house unannounced, with the possible exception of family or close friends.  Gone are the days of the pastor just showing up on your doorstep or a neighbor randomly dropping by for coffee and a chat.  It just doesn’t happen.  Admit it—the thought of someone knocking on your door right now to sit down and just visit inspires panic in many of us.  “My house is a disaster area—what will they think?”  “I have so much to do, and this will mess with my plans for the day.”  “Why are they here?  What do they want?”  Even an unexpected knock at the door drives most of us to the window instead of the knob.  (We want to know to whom we’re opening the door!)  Can you think of a time when you had to process an unexpected guest?  What was the situation?  How did you handle it?

The most glaring example in my mind is Christmas 2007.  This was a special holiday for me—it was my first Christmas as a mom.  Our firstborn was just two weeks old when Advent started, and I was uber excited.  I had so many thoughts about how to make the holiday special for the first grandchild, and it culminated with a celebration on Christmas Day with both sides of our family.  (Hi, I’m Karin, and I’m a control freak.)  It was going to be a picture postcard: two parents, four grandparents, two great-grandparents, and an uncle, all around our tree, all oohing and ahhing over my absolutely adorable daughter.   Move over, Norman Rockwell!  Then, like the day before (or maybe three), my mother-in-law called to inform us that she was bringing a guest.  A guest!  To MY house!  For MY special first Christmas with my baby.  And not a friend of the family or distant relative guest.  This was a stranger!  Some recent transplant to the area with no real job or connections beyond my mother and brother-in-law.  And now he was going to bust in on my postcard picture!  I was too gracious to refuse him, but my frustration (insert: wrath) bubbled not too far under the surface.  I did almost nothing to welcome him and instead found myself resenting just about everything he did…like when my mother-in-law suggested he be the one to open my daughter’s presents (since she obviously couldn’t do it herself).  As if!  I look back with true shame at my behavior that day.

THINK

Oh, how I wish I had been like Mary!  After being shut out by the town she was visiting, she turned around and opened her makeshift delivery room to absolute strangers.  And this wasn’t just Joseph’s extended family she hadn’t met yet.  These were dirty, smelly, lowly shepherds kneeling around her barely-a-few-hours-old child.  Many months later, there were more unexpected guests.  These visitors came dressed in finer clothes, for sure, but their language and customs were likely very strange.  Even the gifts they brought, though valuable, were incredibly odd.  But just like she did with the shepherds, Mary opened her home to these “wise men.”  Her goal for both was the same: she wanted to share Jesus with them.

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As if I didn’t feel bad enough from my poor behavior seven Christmases ago, now the Holy Spirit is really pinching.  Because the reality is unexpected guests show up in our lives.  Not just at the door or even around our holiday table.  They show up at work.  They pop up at school.  They drop into our neighborhood, even our families.  Sometimes they come dressed as strangers, and sometimes they come as people we know but don’t really like.  Sometimes they bring absolutely nothing into the relationship—no help, no apparent value or benefit.  At other times, they bring too much.  They’re loaded down with critical words, manipulative behaviors, or just loads of baggage.  It’s not who we were looking for, and yet here they are sitting next to us in math or wearing a “Manager” name tag at work or sporting a new name, like “in-law.”  It’s not who we were expecting, and yet they’re here.  With us.  In our world.  In our space.

What are we going to do?  Are we going to get huffy because these people dared to knock on our proverbial doors of life unannounced?  Or are we going to be like Mary?  Are we willing to set aside the inconvenience and intrusive feelings and just share Jesus with them?  That’s all we’re asked to do.  In fact, if God is sending people our way, that’s probably why.  I did not share Jesus with that young man that Christmas.  Thankfully, my mother-in-law did.  She shared Jesus that day and many days after.  In fact, she and that “stranger” became so close that he traveled back to Illinois this summer to serve as one of her pallbearers.  Oh, what a difference Jesus makes!  Will you share Jesus with someone unexpected this Christmas?

PRAY

Precious Jesus, thank You for coming to us, for trading Your royal robes for swaddling clothes.  You came unexpectedly into this world, for sure.  You came unexpectedly into our hearts, as well.  Guide us and help us now, Holy Spirit, as we seek to share the Prince of Peace with the unexpected people you’ve brought into our lives.  In Jesus’ Holy Name we pray, Amen.

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Did you and your family enjoy this devotional blog?  We'd love to know about it!  Our hope is to continue providing this weekly opportunity for families to do a devotion together.  If your family did this devotion, please shoot us an email, text or just post a comment to this blog.

FAMILY IT! — Wednesday Family Devotional — “Unexpected Events”

Supplies: Bible

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One of the biggest words to work its way into our culture in the last two decades is “vision.”  Bill Hybels defines vision as a preferred picture of the future.  It’s your dream for some part of your life.  School, relationships, business, personal health, family life, anything that involves your personal future.  What are some of your dreams for your future?  What’s your personal vision?  Maybe it has to do with something big, like your career or getting married.  Or it could be something on a smaller scale, like what you envision this Christmas will be like.  Pick one for some area of your life and share it with your family.  

Visions can be as helpful as their hype.  They help us focus our energy, give us guidance for decisions, and direct us as we plan for next steps.  They can be incredibly beneficial…until reality happens.  The one big problem with vision is that our preferred pictures of our future, our dreams, don’t always match up with reality.  Then we have to figure out how to deal with the discrepancy.  My first experience with this came the Christmas I was seven.  I had many things on my list that year, like most seven-year-olds, but the biggest by far was a Barbie DreamHouse (circa 1980).  I knew better than to expect something so grand, but when I got to my grandparents house on Christmas Eve, under the tree was a ginormous gift with MY name on it.  Could it be???  I spent rest of the night dreaming about that DreamHouse, certain that that’s what I’d be unwrapping.  The next morning I waited patiently while other presents were opened.  I watched everyone fawn over my toddler cousin and her new shopping cart.  Finally, the box was pulled out from under the tree and slid over to me.  I ripped off the paper and stared in amazement…at the child-sized electric organ inside.  Can you hear my crest falling, even 33 years later?  The gap between dream and reality opened and swallowed me whole.  It was not a pleasant day. 

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I think today’s passage is another great example of vision colliding with reality.  Read Luke 2:1-7 together as a family.  This is a story you’ve heard dozens of times.  Try reading it with fresh ears this time.  Think about each part carefully.

THINK

There’s no way to really know for sure, but I’d bet just about every penny I had that this was not Mary’s vision for this moment in her life.  While it was her first time personally, she had probably seen other women give birth.  Her “dream” likely involved a comfortable and familiar place surrounded by people she knew who knew what they were doing, with her husband likely pacing outside.  A typical first century, middle eastern birth, with all it’s joys and traditions.  Now interject reality.  

It cracks me up how few details there are about the actual birth of Jesus.  Read verses 6 and 7 again.  How simplistic is that description!  The author treats it like it was an every day event:  Mary went into labor, she had the baby, and then put him in a feed trough because the Super 8 was full—what’s the big deal? Hello???  She’s in the streets of a strange town in full-blown labor.  The people around her are not exactly friendly—no one would even open their house to this poor couple, even though their circumstances were extreme.  Instead of her dream delivery, she had to settle on a stinky barn surrounded by animals and a likely frantic husband trying to help.  I don’t care who you are, this is no one’s vision for how to bring a baby into the world.  

But here’s the best part.  Skip down a bit and read Luke 2:19.  Mary could have thrown a fit.  She could have fallen into a pit of depression left by the gap between vision and reality.  She could have let bitterness build toward God—this was HIS plan, after all.  But instead, Mary chose to treasure the events.  No, it was not fun.  No, it was not pretty.  In fact, I can’t think of a single enjoyable thing about the whole scenario.  (I don’t care how much you like animals, no one wants a cow in the delivery room.)  And yet Mary was able to find solace in God’s events.  She found treasure in her circumstances and held them close to her heart.  

APPLY

How are we going to handle unexpected events?  How will we deal with the inevitable collision between vision and reality, God’s reality?  When we get passed over for the team?  When we don’t get into our first choice of schools?  When we find ourselves in a job we despise?  When Prince Charming turns out to be a frog?  When the pregnancy tests keep coming back negative?  When the cancer tests keep coming back positive?  What will we do when we don’t get what we want for Christmas?  

It will happen.  It will.  Today, tomorrow, in forty years—sometime reality will fall short of your vision.  How will you choose to handle it?  It may last a moment or a season.   But however long it is, you can choose to find the treasure inside.  Look for Jesus in those gaps, and you will find Him.  Mary knew, no matter what her circumstances, that she was sitting in that barn cradling the Savior, the Christ.  Remember that now, no matter what your circumstances, the Savior, the Christ, is cradling you.

PRAY

Loving Jesus, we thank You so much for that giant step You took in leaving Your throne and coming here, as a babe in arms, so that through Your sacrifice, we could know salvation.  We are responsible for the deadly gap between God’s vision and our sin-stained reality, but You bridged that gap on the cross so that we could know true peace and fulfillment.  Help us pass on Your legacy!  In Your Holy Name we pray, Amen.

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Did you and your family enjoy this devotional blog?  We'd love to know about it!  Our hope is to continue providing this weekly opportunity for families to do a devotion together.  If your family did this devotion, please shoot us an email, text or just post a comment to this blog.

FAMILY IT! — Wednesday Family Devotional — “Unexpected Beginnings”

Supplies: Bible

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We like predictability.  Yeah, ok, it’s fun to be spontaneous once in awhile, but all in all, we find comfort in the fact that life operates in a certain, relatively consistent pattern.  The sun comes up in the east.  If something tastes delicious, odds are it’s not good for you.  Half the kids in the mall will cry when it’s their turn to sit on Santa’s knee.  Good brings good, bad brings bad, and the Chicago Cubs…well, you get my point.  We expect certain things in life.  That’s why, when we don’t get what we expect, we are often taken aback.  We even have a catch phrase:

“It’s not supposed to happen that way.”

The slacker in your history class who sleeps through every lecture ends up getting the best grade at the end of the semester. — It’s not supposed to happen that way.

The short, geeky guy ends up at the dance with the prom queen. — It’s not supposed to happen that way. 

You slip on some ice and do a phenomenal hip-hop ballet move, never once spilling a drop of your latte. — It’s not supposed to happen that way.

A wonderful family who love God and serve others gets into a fatal car accident. — It’s not supposed to happen that way.

Can you think of anything that would fit this category?  Good or bad, what’s happened to you lately that caused you to say, “It’s not supposed to happen that way”?

READ

Read Luke 1:26-49 together as a family. 

THINK

If we have a certain expectation for the predictability of life, we have an even greater expectation for the predictability of God.  We have built God a nice little box and expect Him to do His work within the confines of that box.  And let’s face it—Mary and Elizabeth’s story are waaaaaaayyyyyy outside that box.  I think we get so used to the story that we forget how absolutely absurd it is: first-time parents who are old enough to be grandparents and a pregnant unwed teenager.  This story that kicks off Luke’s gospel is the stuff of tabloids.  Can you imagine the headline in The Judean Enquirer?  “Teen Pregnancy Shocker: ‘There’s no dad!’”  Then inside there’d be a picture of a partner-less Mary and her senior citizen cousin taking their Lamaze classes together.

It’s not supposed to happen that way!  God’s not supposed to work like that!  Or is He? 

God is the Master of the unexpected.  Some of His greatest works happen in unexpected circumstances, in unexpected places, and through unexpected people.  We just need to open our minds to see them and recognize His hand at work.  Mary’s family and neighbors likely had a hard time with that.  Joseph certainly did, until an angel set him straight (how unexpected!).  When we go through difficult seasons, when we struggle through the difficulties, when we’re fighting the slings and arrows of gossip and judgment, it can be challenging to think of our life circumstances in those moments as part of God’s plan.  It just seems counterintuitive.  But we’ve got to remember that God uses the unexpected to reveal His will and bring salvation.  Our job is not to manipulate our circumstances or even try to make sense of them.  Our job is to be like Mary and say, “I am the Lord’s servant…My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,…for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name.” (v 38, 46, 47, 49)

APPLY

Think about the situations you shared a minute ago.  Maybe you’ve had a couple of other examples come to mind.  The temptation may be to try and figure out how God is working through those situations.  You can certainly ask Him—and He may choose to tell you.  But in the meantime, you still have a role to play.  Whether your struggle is at work, at home or at school, choose to be the Lord’s servant in unexpected circumstances.  Commit to submit to God’s will as it unfolds in and around you remembering that great things have come from unexpected beginnings.

PRAY

Glorious God, thank You for being all that You are—completely indescribable in every way.  Forgive us, Father, for trying to pigeonhole You and limit Your ways and workings in our lives.  Have Your own way, Lord!  Today we surrender fully to Your purpose, in all its unexpected wonder.  In Your Holy Name we pray, Amen.

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Did you and your family enjoy this devotional blog?  We'd love to know about it!  Our hope is to continue providing this weekly opportunity for families to do a devotion together.  If your family did this devotion, please shoot us an email, text or just post a comment to this blog.