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Confident and Grateful

December 28, 2022 / / 0 Comments

My beautiful wife of 33 years, Carrie-Anne, and I are in Houston today for cancer surgery and two weeks of follow-up and recovery. Carrie-Anne was diagnosed with a stage-zero, non-invasive, grade three carcinoma in her right breast on October 28 and tomorrow’s surgery has been scheduled for about a month now. And the words that keep coming to mind when we’re asked how we’re doing are confident and grateful.

They found the cancer super early – C-A is diligent about such matters. We’re treating it aggressively, getting rid of any possibility of this thing ever returning. M. D. Anderson is by far the best place in Texas for cancer surgery and treatment and we’re in – the surgeons and doctors have been so kind and helpful and reassuring. Carrie-Anne is surrounded by two or three really tight circles of friends in Midland who are supporting her and caring for her – we can’t imagine any other place or any other people we’d rather be with right now than our church family at GCR. And our Lord has promised to never leave us. We’re confident. And grateful.

Obviously, this is not a journey anyone chooses for herself. We never would have picked this on our own. But our Father has decided this is good – at the very least, he has guaranteed us that he will use this for good – so Carrie-Anne and I are going into this with two overriding mindsets.

One, we’re going to walk through this together faithfully. How our God gets Carrie-Anne through this and how  we respond and behave during this crisis will be a testimony to his goodness. We want to bring him glory through this thing. We want to pay attention to how he’s at work in our own lives, we want to hear what he’s saying to us, we want to see what he needs to show us, we want our antenna up and our radar on. We’re committed to our behavior witnessing to others about our God’s faithfulness and transforming us more into his glorious image.

Two, we want to be a blessing to others. We’re going to run into people at M.D. Anderson, in this medical apartment complex, and throughout this city we never would have met otherwise. Our Lord is putting us right in front of brand new people and we want to show them his love and grace. We want to be bearers of God’s glory to everybody we talk to in Houston – the greeters at M.D.Anderson and the Bellaire Wal-Mart, the Texas Tech and Ole Miss fans at Papasito’s and the plastic surgeon’s P.A. in Sugarland, the guy making my Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich at the hospital cafeteria, and the lady taking our money at the parking garage. We are going to reflect the joy and the peace we have from God in Christ Jesus to everybody who sees us.

Thank you so much for the kindness and generosity you are showing to Carrie-Anne and me. The surgery is  scheduled for 9:00 tomorrow morning and should last about four hours. She’ll be released  on Friday and we’ll be here in this furnished apartment graciously provided by the Kingwood Church of Christ until probably Wednesday January 11.

I’ll try to post updates in this space often. Probably not tomorrow. The next update will come after we are released from the hospital late Friday. And it’ll be good news. We are confident in our Lord. And very grateful for you.

Peace,

Allan

Advent #5 Christ

December 24, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Tomorrow is Christmas Day and it falls on the Lord’s Day and it’s beautiful. We won’t only be gathering with our families in our homes, we’ll be gathering with our brothers and sisters in Christ in beautiful worship centers designed for coming together in the presence of God. We won’t just be eating turkey and ham and jalapeno corn with our relatives, we’ll also be eating and drinking the communion meal together with our Lord and with one another as members of his eternal Body. We won’t only be unwrapping presents purchased at stores and online, we’ll be receiving the gift of Christ’s unmitigated peace and joy through song, prayer, Scripture, and the proclamation of the Good News with fellow believers. What a blessing!

Tomorrow at GCR, we’re planning a traditional Christmas service with Christmas hymns, candle lightings, a story time with our kids on stage, and readings from Luke 2. I’m going to show a whole bunch of pictures from our trip to Bethlehem in a sermon we’re calling, “For All People.” There will also be a photo area for family pics and hot chocolate and candy canes.

The Bundys and Hills are lighting the Advent candle at the beginning of tomorrow’s assembly. Here’s the script we’re using:

CHRIST
Today we light the center candle of Advent, the candle that symbolizes the arrival into this world of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
This candle is white, to represent the light that now shines into the darkness.
Jesus is born! Jesus has come! Jesus is God with us!
Jesus is our eternal hope! Our surpassing peace! Our everlasting joy!
The curse is no more, God’s covenant promises are fulfilled, and we live today and forever in righteous relationship with the Lord and with one another because Jesus Christ is born!

Luke 2:8-14

Christmas Day won’t fall on Sunday again until the year 2033. This is special. Where will you be in eleven years?  How old will your kids be? Or your grandchildren? Make tomorrow special, make it an out-of-the-ordinary Christmas. Take the opportunity to teach them and show them and experience with them what’s really important to us and why. Take ’em to church.

Peace,
Allan

Season’s Greetings

December 20, 2022 / / 3 Comments

I don’t really want to get into a whole thing here, but can we all just relax on this “Merry Christmas” versus “Happy Holidays” thing? There is no war against Christmas. There is no threat in the United States to anybody’s freedom of religion or right to religious expression. Don’t get sucked in to the harmful hijacking of the Christian faith for national political purposes.

There are many American Christians who believe those who say  “Happy Holidays” are intentionally undermining Christianity and working to remove it from its rightful place as the dominant religion in the U.S. Many American Christians instruct their fellow believers to resist this movement, to fight back, by shouting “Merry Christmas” at every opportunity. We’re told to use the phrase as a weapon against the left-wing secularists and atheists and Muslims who are seeking to destroy our right to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

(Does anybody else find it ironic that those in the Churches of Christ who are making the most noise about this belong to a movement that, for most of its existence, purposefully ignored the Christ in Christmas? We refused to sing Joy to the World in December. We pridefully preached anything but the birth of Jesus on the Sunday before the 25th to prove some weird point that we were right about the season of Jesus’ birth, we were more biblically accurate, and we were not influenced by the culture to use religious words and displays to celebrate a pagan holiday.)

Is Christianity so fragile? Is our faith so feeble that when we are confronted with change that threatens our perceived power in a pluralistic and democratic society we respond with anger and defensiveness? True Christian faith is not frail. It doesn’t need to be propped up by a symbolic greeting snarled at every cashier and passerby  to assert dominance over other faiths. Or no faith.

The threat to Christianity is not saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” The real threat to Christianity is people who claim to be Christian not acting like Christians.

Our faith is much better served by following the lead of our Lord Jesus: feeding the hungry and clothing the needy, visiting the sick and those in prison, welcoming the refugee and loving our enemies, forgiving and accepting and loving every single person our God puts in front of us. That vision of Christian faith is much more compelling to our pluralistic and democratic culture than the one that proclaims “Merry Christmas” as an act of defiance with a hint of aggression and arrogance.

We are a people who claim to be saved by grace, rescued by love. Why do we act like people who don’t see things the way we do will be saved by our contempt and confrontation and lines in the sand? Whatever you say should be said as a demonstration of kindness, warmth, peace, joy, acceptance, and love. Whatever you hear should be received with patience and understanding and peace. The world will be won when we act more like the infant Jesus who came here as a helpless and vulnerable baby, with no rights, to serve rather than to be served, to seek and save the lost with kindness and acceptance and joy.

Peace,

Allan

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