...the price of glory is change

I wrote this an never posted it.  But considering I'm about to take a hard look at idolatry in I COR, I realized it all comes together in "change" and my willingness to go there.  So here's the foundation I received as a Christmas gift to launch me into the new year.


Christmas.  Today is December 30th.  Lots of people have already packed away their ornaments and are headed into the New Year with clean floors and bathrooms.

My bathrooms are OK since we've had continual out of town company since Thanksgiving.  YAY.

But our tree is still up.

I still need Christmas.

I was rather numb this year.  Normally, getting ready for Christmas always meant Christmas music, sappy Christmas movies playing while I wrapped gifts, preparing madly for a Christmas play, baking cookies.

All these things happened, but through delegation.  My family has been FANTASTIC, but I've discovered I don't care for being an executor of Christmas tasks.  I don't know how we could have done it differently, but I almost lost Christmas this year.

Still, in a candle, it came.  Wonder.

I stuck this candle in my pass-through as an afterthought.  But it's the serviceable area where I spend the most time cooking and looking through to the living room.  For some reason, the candle melted in a fluted pattern around the edges.  (Maybe the fluted dish caused it?)  I was mesmerized by the gorgeous design that I had nothing to do with.  Christmas.  A gift.  The Holy Day began to slowly warm up.

On Christmas morning, my husband handed my dad a Bible and asked him to read the Christmas story from Luke.  The print was small causing my Dad to read slowly and carefully.

...and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

  (Luke 1:9)

This one phrase, read so carefully, caused me to see the something so simple that it was profound.

The price of glory is change.

We pray and pray hoping God will listen to our tired, repetitive, begging prayers.  We beg God to change things.  But when He actually shows up, it can be terrifying!  Why?

...because, when He shows up, we invariably have to DO something.  You simply can not be faced with the presence of God and remain unchanged.  We are altered when we face an encounter to answered prayer.

Why?

I think it's this.  We pray our heart's desire, but within that prayer is our own vision of how God should answer.  Typically, we envision Him changing everyone and everything else while we get to stay comfortably as we are...unchanged happy beneficiaries sitting comfortably in our favorite spot receiving our heart's desires.

But that's not the M.O. I see when I scroll through encounters with Jesus in my mind.  Every person was given something to do that would require a change in their mindset and behavior.  "Go and sell all you have and give to the poor."  "Leave all that and follow me."  "Go and sin no more."  "Go dip."
"Go show yourself to the priest."  "Stop getting in the way of children."  "Feed the crowd."

It occurs to me that the actions He requires are a gift.  They cement the work He does.  They give us personal ownership. They are the first day of a new habit.  The first step out... out of fear, out of muck, out of "old".